Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw
131–140 of 203 posts
Re: Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw
#132Can somebody explain what is going on here? I'm having trouble understanding what this story is about.
Facebook and mobile-phone companies in India got together to try a project.
The project aimed to provide cheap internet access... only to their "approved" websites. Anything else requires more money from the customer... Or perhaps money from the companies whose websites are blocked.
People are starting to realize/acknowledge that the arrangement is a bit of an anti-competitive conflict of interest with a tinge of "pay us or we'll block you" extortion.
Re: Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw
#133Internet.org is offering a free service to people who would otherwise have no access to the Internet. Net neutrality on a free service in a developing country is an entirely different issue than net neutrality in developed countries with high Internet access rates. I see similarities between this and GMO in developing countries, where rich, well fed people in developed countries oppose gmo in countries that can't fee…
I don't want to argue with you since I don't know much about it, but it seems the backlash came from India itself, not from developed countries.
Re: Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw
#134Happy that someone wrote about this. We don`t need Facebook's walled garden. It is surprising to see "Wikipedia" aka champion of free speech part of internet.org.
Would you feel the same way about Facebook installing "Facebook PCs" for free use of Facebook, say in every Starbucks?
Re: Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw
#135Happy that someone wrote about this. We don`t need Facebook's walled garden. It is surprising to see "Wikipedia" aka champion of free speech part of internet.org.
Maybe this should cause some hard thinking about what Wikipedia's interests are, and who actually ends up with editorial authority at Wikipedia.
Re: Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw
#136After limited protest/outrage in communities like /r/india, the news finally hit big when a comedy group AIB decided to make a video explaining what Net Neutrality is: https://youtu.be/mfY1NKrzqi0 and then it finally hit mainstream media. Amid pressure from everywhere, Flipkart finally withdrew from the Airtel Zero deal which would have been a blow to Net Neutrality in India. Of course, next step was Internet.org and…
> https://i.imgur.com/PAwf6e3.png "Some connectivity is better than no connectivity, hence the violation of NN is justified" Does he really not see the enormous liability that a precedent like this can create?
The precedent already exists, at least here in Australia. Luckily it hasn't caused too many problems thus far, but whether that is merely an outlier remains to be seen.
Re: Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a bigger picture you're not aware of that is in play here. Zuckerberg is providing free internet to millions.
Except providing free access to Facebook is not "free internet." It is just free Facebook (and whatever related services). It is not truly "the internet" if it is restricted to Facebook (and associated services).
Better no internet than facebook? Sounds cynic.
Re: Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw
#138Very good for India that they finally realized what facebook plans to do, which is have all the next Billion people coming online having free access to its site and therefore increase its revenue on Ads and other means. Its absolutely unacceptable any government sign up on this, this defeats the entire idea of internet being open to everyone. Last week Mr. Zuckerberg met with the Brazilian President to announce that he intends to bring this to a number of places in Brazil, and the dumb idiot(Brazilian President) was all proud to be announcing that she is making another American billionaire even more billionaire by delegating the work that should be done by her government. I really hope that this "partnership" of them won't last too long, otherwise facebook will have even more leverage and power, than they already have, over anyone who wants to build products that may compete with their apps for consumer's time.
Re: Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a bigger picture you're not aware of that is in play here. Zuckerberg is providing free internet to millions.
There are ways to provide free internet to millions, while NOT compromising on neutrality or providing convenient network leverage to Facebook and Reliance to pick winners. How is X megabytes / month for free but with ads (this is network neutral) not better than Internet.org's current model? Why not let those millions decide which are the essential internet services for them ? Do the poor millions don't deserve choi…
This is not about choice. (.. or we would appreciate the option to browse facebook for free.)
It's about net neutrality. Unconnected people in India shouldn't destroy the bad impression we associated with this policy in the first place.
Re: Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw
#140I really find it very hard to believe that a company like Facebook with (probably) so many intelligent people on-board will launch such a project without considering the serious downsides and the available better ideas (like the ones mentioned below in comments about free capped internet) etc. I don't want to, but the more I think about it, the more it seems that they just want their own profit with this.