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Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

economist.com

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Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#181

Post by rms_returns »

ignoramous wrote: post #179
devindotcom wrote: post #15

Personally, I believe Zuckerberg is sincere in wanting to connect everyone in the world with each other. However, I believe he is also sincere in thinking that Facebook is the best and perhaps only platform by which this is possible. In this he is sincerely mistaken. I feel sure he doesn't think of it as a land grab, even privately. But he is looking from the inside out. If he wants to be seen as the Great Connector,…

Strange that you find the CEO utmost sincere but the company utmost suspicious. If I were you, I'd question the intentions too. The arguments have been laid out against "Free Basics" but Facebook has refused to engage the community. It continues to push its agenda forward by running dubious ad-campaigns and surveys. This is the second time Facebook has tried something similar, after having lost the first round of bat…

> with "Free Basics" they're taking steps to ensure that dominance stays intact.

It is not just that. The worrying thing is that they are violating net neutrality by making sure that "FB and friends" is the only thing accessible on this free internet. If Mr. Zuckerberg is that altruistic, why not provide proper full internet? Even a limited (say 500MB per person/month) internet for free is better than nothing.

But no, they want to violate net neutrality by disallowing everyone else. They don't want to provide HTTPS security, but again snoop around their user's data so monies could be made out of that. Is this altruism, Mr. Zuckerberg?

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#182

Post by dkarapetyan »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #155
dkarapetyan wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an either/or. You're drawing a false dichotomy and then choosing the lesser of two evils. There is a third possibility as others have pointed out which is to actually lobby for improving all the basic infrastructure so that the real internet and not some hobbled version of it is available and accessible to everyone.

It's not a false dichotomy. No one is offering to improve the basic infrastructure, nor lobby for it. The actual choices are the ones he outlined above. Do you ascribe to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics? http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethi...

Yes, but false dichotomy does not mean you can't make up a valid third option. I don't know about the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics.

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#183

Post by kuschku »

chejazi wrote: post #122
kuschku wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, let’s give the users of Facebook predecessors of Free Basic a voice. Here am I, a German who used to use Facebook Zero (free access to Facebook via 3G) while I was in middle (and later high) school. As soon as it became available, I – and some of my friends – stopped using SchuelerVZ, the social network most people used to use at the time – and instead actually tried to convince others to switch to Facebook, to…

Are you happy with the outcome? Would you make the same decision knowing what you know now?

No, I’m not really happy. With the unability to turn the news feed to a normal setting, with the huge privacy issues with Facebook, etc I wouldn’t have done the same again.

But by now they have a next to monopoly, and a new competitor can’t fairly win on the market anymore, and would have to resort to the very same tricks.

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#184

Post by slaxman »

dingo_bat wrote: post #172
slaxman wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you reach a certain scale of users, percentage growth don't matter because it's hard to hit big absolute numbers. In whichever way you look at it, 52Mn is a freakishly huge number. And this timeline is 6 months, not a year. Further "Free basics" has been launched in other countries. But there is not proof that it results in more internet connectivity. ( http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/the…

I do not see any proof that such a correlation does not exist. Your link contains an offhand remark that does not cite any study or data. I think it's common sense that if you offer something for free, more people will use it.

It's not common sense. A good example is the vast number of open source projects that are never used. Or free books that are never read. Also, I would like to remind you that, it's not the internet that facebook is giving access to. It's sites that have paid facebook to be on it.

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#185

Post by beccasanchez »

ganadiniakshay wrote: post #169
beccasanchez wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet gravity is still going strong... Make an ally out of gravity and you can use its strength for something half-decent instead of all-bad. I think this land grab by Facebook is half-decent instead of all-bad. Facebook is treating the poor better than the Indian government has, at least. Neither institution really gives a fuck about them.

Facebook is treating the farmers better by giving them access to facebook. What has the government done except no interest loans, free seeds and fertilizers, subsidies and free training programs. Sounds about right

You aren't expecting much from the government. Who has more resources and power than the government? If Zuck had that much power I'm sure he would do a lot more than just give free internet.

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#186

Post by ocean3 »

dingo_bat wrote: post #153
slaxman wrote: post #151

Few points here: 1. It's not really internet. It's a set of 100 sites that includes a real estate portal and a personal blog. If you are talking about connecting the unconnected with essential services, why have these on your list? On the other hand, chennairains.org, a website that helped people during extreme floods in chennai was not on that list. 2. There is no proof that "free basics" actually improves internet…

Even though it seems a big number, 52 million is nothing compared to the people who still do not have access. I think the growth rate is not fast enough. We should be doubling the installed base every year. 52 million is just about 1/6 of the total number of users. And I'm inclined to believe that this sluggishness is due in part to the cost of access.

Cost of access would come into picture when they have a medium to access it. Even with low cost Android been available most might not be be to afford it. I see still a good number of middle class people using mobiles which don't access to Internet.

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#187

Post by chdir »

It's unbecoming of a large corporation that "wants to work for connecting people" to make statements like these against net neutrality advocates :

"Facebook has been urging users to sign a petition that claims that “a small, vocal group of critics… demand that people pay equally to access all Internet services, even if that means one billion people can’t afford to access any services,” and that “unless you take action now, India could lose access to free basic Internet services, delaying progress towards digital equality for all Indians."

Facebook has resorted to slander when they can't give transparent answers to the issues raised against Free Basics.

Quote Source : https://www.accessnow.org/open-letter-to-mark-zuckerberg-on-...

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#188

Post by ocean3 »

petke wrote: post #22

> Though the programme is promoted by Facebook, its costs are borne by the mobile-telecoms operators it works with. How does that even work? Why would the telecoms agree to pay the bill on behalf of Facebook? Surely there must be some money from Facebook back to the telecom, to make it worthwhile for them. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Zero http://telecoms.com/opinion/0-facebook-com-means-zero-money-..…

If free basics get through then telecome operators could potentially come with up Netflix package, Youtube package like TV packages.

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#189

Post by bduerst »

rms_returns wrote: post #181
ignoramous wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange that you find the CEO utmost sincere but the company utmost suspicious. If I were you, I'd question the intentions too. The arguments have been laid out against "Free Basics" but Facebook has refused to engage the community. It continues to push its agenda forward by running dubious ad-campaigns and surveys. This is the second time Facebook has tried something similar, after having lost the first round of bat…

> with "Free Basics" they're taking steps to ensure that dominance stays intact. It is not just that. The worrying thing is that they are violating net neutrality by making sure that "FB and friends" is the only thing accessible on this free internet. If Mr. Zuckerberg is that altruistic, why not provide proper full internet? Even a limited (say 500MB per person/month) internet for free is better than nothing. But no…

Facebook is blatantly violating net neutrality.

I'm surprised this isn't in headlines. Imagine the backlash if Comcast charged you to access Netflix but gave you free NBC.com streaming.

Re: Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India

#190

Post by o0o0_ooo »

dingo_bat wrote: post #171
RodericDay wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Donating money directly almost never helps in the long run. What? The debate about the benefits of direct cash-transfers vs. more managed forms of aid is alive and well in 2015.

Do you think donating some money to farmers is going to help in any way? The government has been doing that for a long time (through subsidies and minimum purchase prices), at a much larger scale than any single person is capable of. And it hasn't improved anything much. I think it is clear that the only way to improve conditions is to enable farmers to convert their business into a sustainable one. And for that, che…

Stop calling it "free internet". That's absolutely not what Facebook is offering.

> Do you think donating some money to farmers is going to help in any way? The government has been doing that for a long time (through subsidies and minimum purchase prices)

You're talking about two different things. Subsidies are different than unconditional cash transfers, the latter of which there has been recent promising research on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_cash_transfer

https://www.princeton.edu/~joha/publications/Haushofer_Shapi...

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