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Facebook Opens Internet․Org to All Developers Due to Net Neutrality Concerns

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21–30 of 80 posts

Re: Facebook Opens Internet․Org to All Developers Due to Net Neutrality Concerns

#21
post #2

"Facebook expects partner services to be optimized for smartphones and feature phones, and be free from JavaScript or SSL/TLS/HTTPS elements" No HTTPS? Really??

No JavaScript is also curious given their own React Native. Maybe they don't consider it "optimized for smartphones"? No SSL/TLS/HTTPS is just ridiculous and flat out unacceptable in this day and age. I'd expect a "no HTTP" clause and not the other way around. The linked technical guidelines from the original FB blogpost also seems to be dead: https://www.facebook.com/docs/internet-org/platform-technica...

Re: Facebook Opens Internet․Org to All Developers Due to Net Neutrality Concerns

#22
post #21
post #2

"Facebook expects partner services to be optimized for smartphones and feature phones, and be free from JavaScript or SSL/TLS/HTTPS elements" No HTTPS? Really??

No JavaScript is also curious given their own React Native. Maybe they don't consider it "optimized for smartphones"? No SSL/TLS/HTTPS is just ridiculous and flat out unacceptable in this day and age. I'd expect a "no HTTP" clause and not the other way around. The linked technical guidelines from the original FB blogpost also seems to be dead: https://www.facebook.com/docs/internet-org/platform-technica...

They don't consider it "optimized for featurephones".

Re: Facebook Opens Internet․Org to All Developers Due to Net Neutrality Concerns

#23
post #2

"Facebook expects partner services to be optimized for smartphones and feature phones, and be free from JavaScript or SSL/TLS/HTTPS elements" No HTTPS? Really??

They have explained the reason: [0]

Your service will be proxied by Internet.org. Since we cannot support SSL, TLS, or HTTPS as part of proxying, your content or service should not rely on passing or collecting encrypted information — resources that do so will not be accessible within Internet.org or will be dropped altogether. While we would prefer to support fully encrypted connections between user and website in all cases, proxying for third-party sites does not allow for this in its current implementation without introducing man-in-the-middle capabilities.

[0]: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org/platform-t...

Re: Facebook Opens Internet․Org to All Developers Due to Net Neutrality Concerns

#25
post #21
post #2

"Facebook expects partner services to be optimized for smartphones and feature phones, and be free from JavaScript or SSL/TLS/HTTPS elements" No HTTPS? Really??

No JavaScript is also curious given their own React Native. Maybe they don't consider it "optimized for smartphones"? No SSL/TLS/HTTPS is just ridiculous and flat out unacceptable in this day and age. I'd expect a "no HTTP" clause and not the other way around. The linked technical guidelines from the original FB blogpost also seems to be dead: https://www.facebook.com/docs/internet-org/platform-technica...

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

Re: Facebook Opens Internet․Org to All Developers Due to Net Neutrality Concerns

#26
post #15
post #6

Better than their first attempt but still not the real thing. If you want to give internet for free to some people there are no alternatives than paying them a full blown data connection with no artificial limits. I believe that my original comment of 2 weeks ago is still relevant: "Dear Mark, this open-to-ISP initiative is one way to look at what you're doing. Another one is closed-to-most-of-the-Internet. Let's tur…

Facebook is a business. Don't be naive. They don't care for poor people, they care about getting money. They are even obligated to do so. Don't expect business to solve all issues for humanity, because they won't. A government is needed to take responsability we don't want to entrust business with and to do necessary things no business wants to do, and it needs to be strong to be able to do it even if business oppose…

> They are even obligated to do so.

You might be pleased to hear this is actually not the case :)

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-co...

As far as businesses solving all issues for humanity, Facebook is (again fortunately) quite a strawman for that argument.

Re: Facebook Opens Internet․Org to All Developers Due to Net Neutrality Concerns

#27
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming a dumb pipe, SSL is no harder on the ISP than unencrypted traffic. It's likely that they want unencrypted because the data is then easily cacheable, drastically reducing cost on network operators.

Surely for network operators the cost isn't in external connectivity, its in radio channel capacity at the edge.

In the west, sure. But that can't be generalized to all over the world.

In some developing countries the internet connection costs of an operator can be very significant. High enough that it's been profitable to deploy expensive caches even for non-HTTP protocols, which account for a very small proportion of traffic. In the most extreme cases it's not just that the connectivity is expensive, it's that there's an absolute hard cap on bandwidth for a whole country, which is rationed among all the operators. No amount of money could buy a bigger portion in a sensible amount of time.

Re: Facebook Opens Internet․Org to All Developers Due to Net Neutrality Concerns

#28

If it's a choice between Wikipedia and Facebook, or nothing at all, telling poor Indians they should only be allowed to have the latter seems quite cruel. Yes, it's unfortunate they can't be given the whole Internet, but the fact they can get anything at all should be celebrated.

Nope. We train them that way the internet is scarce, closed and walled.

A DSL line and a wifi router could cover a whole village and give the real deal.

Re: Facebook Opens Internet․Org to All Developers Due to Net Neutrality Concerns

#29
post #15
post #6

Better than their first attempt but still not the real thing. If you want to give internet for free to some people there are no alternatives than paying them a full blown data connection with no artificial limits. I believe that my original comment of 2 weeks ago is still relevant: "Dear Mark, this open-to-ISP initiative is one way to look at what you're doing. Another one is closed-to-most-of-the-Internet. Let's tur…

Facebook is a business. Don't be naive. They don't care for poor people, they care about getting money. They are even obligated to do so. Don't expect business to solve all issues for humanity, because they won't. A government is needed to take responsability we don't want to entrust business with and to do necessary things no business wants to do, and it needs to be strong to be able to do it even if business oppose…

Facebook doesn't care about poor people but Facebook is ultimately run by people making decisions and some people care about poor people.

Re: Facebook Opens Internet․Org to All Developers Due to Net Neutrality Concerns

#30
post #15
post #6

Better than their first attempt but still not the real thing. If you want to give internet for free to some people there are no alternatives than paying them a full blown data connection with no artificial limits. I believe that my original comment of 2 weeks ago is still relevant: "Dear Mark, this open-to-ISP initiative is one way to look at what you're doing. Another one is closed-to-most-of-the-Internet. Let's tur…

Facebook is a business. Don't be naive. They don't care for poor people, they care about getting money. They are even obligated to do so. Don't expect business to solve all issues for humanity, because they won't. A government is needed to take responsability we don't want to entrust business with and to do necessary things no business wants to do, and it needs to be strong to be able to do it even if business oppose…

The are not "obligated to do so". It's a myth that a business can't pursue anything but short-term gains. Executives have a lot of leeway in how they conduct their affairs and the only thing that can stop them is the board, which is often dominated by the founders, a few large investors or the CxOs anyway.

Remember "corporations are people, my friend?". If that idea can't be stopped, it should be coopted to imply that companies should behave morally above and beyond what the law requires. If we expect people to volunteer and donate, why not expect the same from corporations? That's not my idea, by the way. It's a trend called "corporate social responsibility".

There's also just too much ambiguity between "good business" and "morality" for any hard rules to apply. Is paying workers in poor countries a living wage a waste of money (and thus "illegal") or does it make business sense because it creates employee loyalty & good PR? Is Tim Cook wasting the shareholders' money when Apple spends a few million extra to power their data center with renewable energy or is that good PR, as well as future-proofing your investment?

In the case of Google & FB, their size creates a situation where any additional internet user creates so much value for them that it becomes economically viable to spend a significant amount of money to get that user online. In this case, the idea that "cooperations should only care about the bottom line" actually creates the insane situation that people like you argue that companies shouldn't do something simply because it _also_ happens to help people.

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