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Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics

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Re: Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics

#91

Post by Crito »

prostoalex wrote: post #89
quadrangle wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Facebook is rich enough and powerful enough to MAKE the choice be full-internet or nothing. They and other powerful entities can provide full internet. It is THEIR fault that the choice is FaceBook or nothing because they want that to be the choice. FaceBook is not some savior here. The ramifications of pushing everyone to FB are also devastating because they would force everyone to get locked in to using F…

Facebook is not a carrier. If any carrier chooses to provide full Internet access for free, they may do so. So far they haven't, though. Which is why company-sponsored basic service that's free to the users emerged in the first place.

If they truly had altruistic intentions, they damn well could be.

Re: Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics

#92

Post by fwn »

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #49
addicted wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the equivalent Facebook solution to the drug problem would be "Hey, we don't need to do clinical trials, because some medicine is better than no medicine, since there are desperate people who are willing to accept anything right now".

Right, because the wrong kind of Internet access could kill people.

Worse. It could be seen as something positive and then Netflix could be more expensive.

Re: Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics

#93

Post by stcredzero »

soared wrote: post #76
stcredzero wrote: post #19

Okay, if an activist can contemplate a program giving everyone in India who wants it 500MB a month mobile bandwidth, then I have to call out western web app developers for committing a heinous crimes against global Internet access equality. It used to be that I could get by with a 500MB plan on my iPhone, and so long as I avoided video streaming, I'd usually use 300MB. Now I see that my Maps apps alone use that in a…

You're blaming devs because you us 6gb a month? That is a joke. I share 15gb with 6 people in my family and we've never gone over. Obviously you are doing something out of the ordinary.

The devs must have done something, because I haven't changed how I use Maps. How is it that Maps alone is using the entire allocation of the bandwidth I used to use in a month?

Re: Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics

#94

Post by gpvos »

firasd wrote: post #42
gpvos wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a Western corporation trying to aggressively meddle in India has an unhappy precedent. Are you referring to the East India Company as the linked article does? Please be clear, I am not familiar enough with Indian history, and I've seen no-one else bring it up on this page.

Yeah, I see people reference colonialism in general as well as the EIC in particular.

Okay, I was just curious if you meant something more recent that I was not aware of. (Not that the colonial era wasn't bad enough, mind you.)

Re: Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics

#95

Post by bigbugbag »

petke wrote: post #70
erbdex wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a screenshot of what's the permanent top-notification if you're an Indian and on Facebook- http://imgur.com/uykRY8G

I agree Facebook is doing this for their own greedy reasons, but they make one very good point: "Banning free basics on the basis of net neutrality [...] means 1 billion people cant afford to access any services." It isn't a choice between having facebook, or having the full internet. Its a choice between having facebook, or having no internet at all. Surely no internet at all, is the worst option. Nobody else is goi…

> Its a choice between having facebook, or having no internet at all.

So.. a choice between having no internet with a chance to be part of the effort to destroy it and having no internet ?

It is critical to understand that there can be no internet without net neutrality, if you support in any way a choice that goes against net neutrality, you're taking part in destroying the internet.

Re: Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics

#96

Post by jeevand »

Coming from a rural farming community in India i think this is a very bad deal. I speak with my folks when i visit India about how they use technology. The use cases are very practical such as turning off/on the pumpset, since the fields are far and the power comes and goes at different times, this kind of app is amazing. I can think of similar use cases once IoT takes off. ex: Checking the water levels in paddy fields (The crabs make holes and if you are out of luck all the water is gone, resulting in midnight trips to fields to make sure everything is fine). The startups which might provide these kind of services will do well only if the internet is free, else FB will build its own apps to do this. FB will have a monopoly over the future use cases. The last thing my folks back home need is to play farmville or poke at each other or put booty shots in instagram :)

Re: Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics

#97

Post by r3bl »

stcredzero wrote: post #93
soared wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're blaming devs because you us 6gb a month? That is a joke. I share 15gb with 6 people in my family and we've never gone over. Obviously you are doing something out of the ordinary.

The devs must have done something, because I haven't changed how I use Maps. How is it that Maps alone is using the entire allocation of the bandwidth I used to use in a month?

Not that I want to support Microsoft, but I had the same issue until I switched to HERE (Nokia's old product). Basically I have downloaded a map of my country (~300 MB in size) and set the application to work offline. Works like a charm, does not feel like a downgrade at all.

Re: Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics

#98

Post by bigbugbag »

mahranch wrote: post #75

If I was facebook, I'd tread lightly. India has a long history of reneging on deals. Once a deal is struck with most nations, that's it. Done deal. With India, they don't care - they'll do whatever is convenient for them. They did just that on a huge WTO deal years in the making (source: http://www.npr.org/2014/08/10/339292735/why-indias-modi-defi... ). The also reneged on a solar energy trade agreement with the U.S…

India has been around for two orders of magnitude longer than facebook and is doing quite well without facebook and hopefully will gladly continue to do so.

It's quite the reverse situation here: Facebook leaves India, India continue unfazed. India gets rid of facebook, the overvalued facebook shares will plummet because facebook future depends on its success in conquering new users.

Re: Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics

#99

Post by prostoalex »

Crito wrote: post #91
prostoalex wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is not a carrier. If any carrier chooses to provide full Internet access for free, they may do so. So far they haven't, though. Which is why company-sponsored basic service that's free to the users emerged in the first place.

If they truly had altruistic intentions, they damn well could be.

Sure but what's a solution that's a reasonable compromise until that happens?

Re: Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics

#100

Post by bigbugbag »

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #49
addicted wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the equivalent Facebook solution to the drug problem would be "Hey, we don't need to do clinical trials, because some medicine is better than no medicine, since there are desperate people who are willing to accept anything right now".

Right, because the wrong kind of Internet access could kill people.

Not really, no. But you kinda got the idea: the wrong kind of network access could kill the internet.

This is the whole net neutrality issue. No net neutrality, no internet.

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