Facebook's “free internet” programme hits a roadblock in India • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by bduerst » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 7:01 AM UTC

avar wrote: post #118

tylermauthe wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is not necessarily a bad thing? In what way could it possibly be a good thing for anybody outside of Facebook?

There are some people who are using "free basics" now that wouldn't have any Internet access without it. Now, you could argue and I'd probably agree with you that it's bad in the long term, creates a distorted market etc. But if a foreign company offers a net subsidy to access a part of the Internet shouldn't that drive down the price of Internet access for everyone? I.e. you could access "free basics" and also have…

The whole "helping the poor" is a red herring.

Facebook could just as easily offer a net neutral internet, but they're not - that's what people are upset about.

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

#192

Post by jace » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 7:05 AM UTC

mkagenius wrote: post #167

abhaga wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is not a static scenario. Internet users in India grew by ~30% over last one year itself and that growth is not slowing down. And FreeBasics is not limited to people coming on the internet for the first time.

free basics is doing that at a rate of 50% per month. (according to them) i doubt people would want to shift to free basics from a full internet and if they do then that's what they like, its their choice. We should continue using normal broadband. Now you can argue that telcos will then overcharge for normal broadband, but who knows, they might not and even if they do then TRAI can send them a notice to not do that,…

That stat is misleading when you compare percentages against raw figures:

1 million: Free Basics users in India in 2015 (source: FB press release)

5.8 million: Data users acquired by Reliance, FB's sole partner in India, in 2015 (source: IAMAI)

109 million: Data users acquired by all telcos in India in 2015 (Sep 2014-Sep 2015, source: same IAMAI report)

So if Free Basics converted 50% of their users to the full Internet, that's about 500k users, or less than 0.5% of the industry's success rate.

Asking for dangerous policy exceptions because your flawed scheme has an actual success rate of 0.5% and presenting this as 50% is disingenuous at best.

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

#193

Post by nileshtrivedi » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 7:30 AM UTC

mkagenius wrote: post #167

abhaga wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is not a static scenario. Internet users in India grew by ~30% over last one year itself and that growth is not slowing down. And FreeBasics is not limited to people coming on the internet for the first time.

free basics is doing that at a rate of 50% per month. (according to them) i doubt people would want to shift to free basics from a full internet and if they do then that's what they like, its their choice. We should continue using normal broadband. Now you can argue that telcos will then overcharge for normal broadband, but who knows, they might not and even if they do then TRAI can send them a notice to not do that,…

50% faster conversion to full, paid Internet. Clearly, these users CAN afford the Internet, hence they are NOT the poor.

In fact, 80% of FreeBasics users are EXISTING Internet users, not NEW.

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

#194

Post by icebraining » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 7:33 AM UTC

MawNicker wrote: post #142

icebraining wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I pointed out in my earlier post, I don't agree that fiber cables are anything like roads (or sewage, for that matter). "Infrastructure" means many things, and it's certainly not obvious that the same solution is the best for all. My point was actually that when the inherently monopolistic aspect is factored out the free market can flourish. This is how it works in Europe. I live in a Western European country. Thi…

As I pointed out in my earlier post, I don't agree that fiber cables are anything like roads The earlier post: Except fiber cables are not at all like roads, in that you can run dozens side by side in less space than a single water pipe. Ah. That's a great point actually. Maybe the solution is just to have the public provide and support this "fiber pipe". Not the fiber; Just the pipe. This would lower the barriers to…

Ah. That's a great point actually. Maybe the solution is just to have the public provide and support this "fiber pipe". Not the fiber; Just the pipe.

You're in luck :) that's exactly what the Broadband Conduit Deployment Act is all about.

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

#195

Post by kbart » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 7:34 AM UTC

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…

"Do you think donating some money to farmers is going to help in any way?"

Of course it would. They could buy new, better equipment, tools, fertilizers, seeds, animals etc. My country (Lithuania) joined EU in 2004 and started direct payments to farmers via projects, that helped A LOT. Now we have big, modern cooperatives and companies that sell products worldwide instead of small, inefficient farms. What I don't understand, how could Facebook (and friends) help them? I doubt that even an unlimited Internet would be useful without an extensive education, as most older/uneducated people struggle to use even a simple cell phone.

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

#196

Post by Pyxl101 » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 7:38 AM UTC

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…

I thought that Facebook claimed that anyone can make apps available in Free Basics:

https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org

> Free Basics by Facebook provides free access to basic internet services to a billion people all over the world. Your service can be part of it.

> In order to make your website display properly within the Free Basics Platform and be accessible to people on all types of phones and data plans, your mobile website(s) must meet certain technical conditions created by the Free Basics proxy. [...]

Granted, I don't know how difficult it is to get a service included, but I've seen them mention a number of times that they intend enrollment to be open to anyone. The participation page seems focused primarily on technical issues like how easy the site is to proxy and cache, in order to serve a bandwidth-light version.

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

#197

Post by vaishaksuresh » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 7:40 AM UTC

Pyxl101 wrote: post #168

vaishaksuresh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Why is that it's ok for the poor to give up their liberty because they can get something of value in return? In this case, choosing how to access the Internet.

I don't see how anyone is giving up the choice of how to access the Internet. Opposing Free Basics is opposing that choice. Free Basics is offering a new choice, and more choices is always a rationally better thing. What is your position on the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics? http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethi...

Nobody is giving up a choice at the moment, but if Free Basic becomes a thing, there won't be a choice in the future. That is the problem people have with it. Almost everyday I hear people complaining about how Comcast/ATT have monopoly in the US and how they are exploiting the helplessness of people. How is FreeBasic any different? For a lot of people, the only internet they will know will be the version that FB thinks is right for them. This is less a question about choice, more about net neutrality.

About the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics, I am not knowledgeable enough to form an opinion yet. I'll get back to you on that.

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

#198

Post by vaishaksuresh » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 7:46 AM UTC

asift wrote: post #146

vaishaksuresh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Heck, I might not even mind some gated internet in the US if I was free to opt-in/out of it and it reduced my internet costs. The key difference is you would still have choice in the US and people in India would not.

I want people in India to have a choice. They can choose to accept Zuckerburg's free internet or they can wait for something else to come along. It's Zuckerburg's critics that want to deny Indians their right to choose by taking away their free service and leaving them without internet in the present. As was noted earlier, the most vocal critics in this situation are not the poor people in India that are most directl…

This issue is not about having a particular choice or not having anything. Accepting this paves the way for facebook to control the internet that a majority of people are seeing for the first time. Also, it is not really a land-grab as the title says, it is grabbing an untapped market with millions of new users. Facebook most likely wants to mine data from a new potential market.

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

#199

Post by tim333 » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 7:51 AM UTC

rms_returns wrote: post #150

avar wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on, this is a guy who poorly disguises a press release about a restructuring of his finances as a letter to his daughter. It's much more likely that Zuckerberg realizes his company is overvalued, and that he needs to acquire a massive amount of users to make up for that gap. Subsidizing a walled-garden version of the Internet where users can only use Facebook in developing countries makes strategic sense for…

I'm from India and the conditions of many farmers is pathetic here, poverty isn't a word enough to describe their condition. They are illiterate, exploited by higher-ups in the society and struggle to get even basic necessities in life. Conditions are so gloomy that on average, one farmer commits suicide every thirty minutes in this country! And these are the people whom Zuckerberg is targeting for the FreeBasics fre…

> farmers...illiterate, exploited by higher-ups... millions ...would have been much better spent by actually donating that money to the farmers

One of the things you might hope for connecting them is they could educate themselves, organise and fight back against being exploited. Maybe their kids can go online if they are illiterate themselves. That kind of thing is more likely to improve conditions than a modest amount of cash.

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

#200

Post by tim333 » Thu, Jan 07, 2016, 8:03 AM UTC

ecobiker wrote: post #47

I'm personally disappointed by the comments in this article and others, specifically from people here in the Western world, that portray the fight by the internet activists as a fight against internet access to the poor. No one would make arguments like that here. Almost everyone rallied behind Net-Neutrality. Why is that it's ok for the poor to give up their liberty because they can get something of value in return?…

It's ok for the poor to 'give up their' liberty by using crappy free internet in the same way it's ok for me to 'give up my liberty' by watching crappy free TV. It's not perfect but it's not the end of the world either.