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About Internet.org and net neutrality

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Re: About Internet.org and net neutrality

#31

Post by zefei »

It seems most people here are against this because of Facebook's (or other service providers') gain from it, but no one is arguing against Mark's actual point: "some access is better than none at all", which I think is more important.

Internet.org may not succeed at the end, because of the conflict of interests in many parties (corporate and political) involved in its running. But the idea of providing limited access for free is IMO very good and important, and arguing details before anything being done is at best unproductive.

All the people here already have internet access, and most without any limit or censorship. But can you try to think of this from POV of the users of internet.org? Not to think for the children in poor regions, but think AS those children.

Let me explain from my experience, where limit of access mostly comes from heavy censorship.

I was born in China at the end of the Culture Revolution. Fortunately, my family still had got TV when I was in elementary school, and we had internet when I was in high school. All the information, programs, news, cartoons, whatever contents from TV or internet were heavily censored. They were censored so heavily that I, as a kid, could not realize that they were censored at all. But I still enjoyed a lot of information, entertainment, knowledge from TV and internet as a kid. As an adult now, I hate and want to fight those censorship with all I have. But without TV or internet, I'd very unlikely to be able to code, or to write English, or anything I enjoy doing today.

To me, the limit of access that's forced by government doesn't differ much from the ones by corporates. But having some limited access to information is absolutely critical, when the ONLY other option is no access.

Re: About Internet.org and net neutrality

#32

Post by nphyte »

Reading facebooks values, it makes me extremely sad to see what they're doing. No one wants to stand in the way of providing access of the internet to the poor. But it has to be done right. Saying that telecom providers recommend these services without any bias is untruthful. Furthermore internet.org is an initiative to empower people with tools. Not providing them unused/ rarely used services. I get that one of the values is move fast and break things but at what cost?

Re: About Internet.org and net neutrality

#34

Post by cmadan »

zefei wrote: post #31

It seems most people here are against this because of Facebook's (or other service providers') gain from it, but no one is arguing against Mark's actual point: "some access is better than none at all", which I think is more important. Internet.org may not succeed at the end, because of the conflict of interests in many parties (corporate and political) involved in its running. But the idea of providing limited access…

> "some access is better than none at all"

Not really.

Mark said that governments and telcos decide which services go on internet.org

Do you really want the government (or even your telco) deciding which news source that the poor (who are easily influenced) read?

Leaving aside the preservation of competition, government deciding what news services to provide to the poor has huge political ramifications, especially when every media outlet has a bias towards one end of the political spectrum or other.

In this case, no access is far better than some access. Just because it didn't play out as bad as it could have in China, doesn't mean that the same will happen in India. See North Korea for example.

Re: About Internet.org and net neutrality

#35

Post by espadrine »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #20
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #15

There is a lot of double-speak in this post by Zuckerberg. And it starts with a thinly veiled "think of the children". He talks about "basic Internet services", not clarifying that this is only access to a few sites, including Facebook, and says they respect net neutrality. As if those two things were not contradictory. To me this feels like it is about a market grab, camouflage, probably even to himself, as a humani…

It's a sneaky ploy to become to gatekeeper. How come e-mail isn't a "basic internet service" but FB Messenger is? Internet.org is neither the Internet nor a .org.

How can you even create accounts on most websites without an email address, including on Facebook?

I think the intent is to generate revenue from Facebook ads while getting good press from developing countries. Still, I'm glad it generated a backlash. Enforcing a data cap for free accounts would definitely make more sense. Internet is the whole shebang, not just a limb.

Re: About Internet.org and net neutrality

#36

Post by anant90 »

There are two quotes from above I'd like to call out here:

1. "Net neutrality ensures network operators don’t discriminate by limiting access to services you want to use." - in a country where there are huge economic obstacles to connectivity and the internet is not affordable to everyone, offering certain services for free automatically discriminates against the services that are left out since they are not deemed to be "essential" by the government or local mobile operators. Also note that these countries don't have the most ethical of the governments (yes, I'm from India and have seen how the government works pretty closely), and mobile network operators are ultimately responsible to the share price of their stock, not the overall social welfare of the country.

2. "Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle any other services or create fast lanes -- and it never will." This is true, but if one looks from a slightly different perspective, free lanes are as bad - maybe worse - than fast lanes. One has to admit that internet.org is ending up creating free lanes for certain services, in a country where the toughest obstacle to internet connectivity is not lack of availablity of mobile network infrastructure, but the economic situation of the country's poorest poor.

Like with all tough cookies, the solution doesn't lie in suggesting that this is better than nothing. It lies in admitting to the apparent problems in the internet.org ecosystem (clear lack of net neutrality) and working out the answers. A solution lies in offering the internet as a whole for free upto a basic data usage (limited by bytes, not services), working on innovations like the low flying drones or loon style projects which place mobile internet infrastructure in places where there's none (I know internet.org is already working on this), working on business and technical innovations to enable the mobile operators offer better, faster and cheaper services to more people and finally, working on faster, cheaper mobile devices. ($50 is not cheap enough in a country where median per capita income is as low as $616 (2013) - in comparison, the same figure for US is around $26k)

I understand internet.org was founded by Facebook to connect the remaining 4 billion - and it's a very noble initiative. But we have to be very careful of the long term.

Re: About Internet.org and net neutrality

#37

Post by unicornporn »

zefei wrote: post #31

It seems most people here are against this because of Facebook's (or other service providers') gain from it, but no one is arguing against Mark's actual point: "some access is better than none at all", which I think is more important. Internet.org may not succeed at the end, because of the conflict of interests in many parties (corporate and political) involved in its running. But the idea of providing limited access…

A risk: this will foster a generation of internet users whose definition of the internet is something along the lines of cable television. Pay per site acceptance will be fed with Mark's mothers milk.

Also, I'd rather not call this "internet".

Re: About Internet.org and net neutrality

#38

Post by blumkvist »

nphyte wrote: post #32

Reading facebooks values, it makes me extremely sad to see what they're doing. No one wants to stand in the way of providing access of the internet to the poor. But it has to be done right. Saying that telecom providers recommend these services without any bias is untruthful. Furthermore internet.org is an initiative to empower people with tools. Not providing them unused/ rarely used services. I get that one of the…

Of course he gets what the problem is. You're being very gullible.

Re: About Internet.org and net neutrality

#39

Post by lewisl9029 »

awalton wrote: post #9

"It's too expensive to make the whole internet free." Translation: "It is not lucrative enough to us to make the whole internet free. We only want you looking at things where we stand to make money off of you, not anyone else." Sure, Facebook wants to help connect some of the poorest people in the world, but only if it's the company that stands to make money from the proposition. Remember kids, if you're not paying,…

> "It's too expensive to make the whole internet free."

> Translation: "It is not lucrative enough to us to make the whole internet free. We only want you looking at things where we stand to make money off of you, not anyone else."

There is nothing inherently wrong with a CEO trying to maximize profit for their business. In fact, that's in their job descriptions. I understand that.

What I find distasteful is their dishonest marketing attempts trying to mask Internet.org as a benevolent "lets-help-the-poor" effort and as something compatible with net neutrality, when it's obvious that their goals of providing a walled-garden version of the Internet where Facebook is the gatekeeper is in conflict with net neutrality on a fundamental level.

This poor, self-conflicting denial certainly isn't helping their image in my book, but judging from many of the replies on this thread, it appears they have the masses fooled.

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