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India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

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Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#211
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, such holier than thou attitude. Anything thinking the problem is that the poor people aren't connected enough is seriously misinformed. India connected over 300mil people last year, and guess what, Facebook's effort only contributed ~1% of that number. Not to mention, over the long term, the very real problem that the Facebook walled garden of apps would present in terms of opportunities for entrepreneurs is muc…

> such holier than thou attitude [...] your condescending comparison Please edit such personal rudeness out of your posts to HN. It's not allowed, even when someone else is condescending and wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

A) I don't see the edit button.

B) I don't see you saying the same to the parent comment.

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#212
post #99
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! This comment is really far away from reality. 1/ There are no studies that show correlation between free basics and increase in internet penetration. In fact, Reliance Telecom, Facebook's free basics partner in India, marketed it was a way to surf facebook & whatsapp for free. 2/ Google is giving away free internet in Railway stations in India. Unlike free basics, it gives access to the complete internet and not…

1. Facebook has provided studies that do indicate increased internet adoption after free basics (real internet adoption, after having been introduced via Fed basics). You're welcome to read the studies and debate their bias, but the studies exist. How the telecoms market is irrelevant to this discussion. Of course they're going to market having access to the most popular websites and apps. Hell, they probably use the…

Facebooks data has always been vague.

Live in Mumbai and while I dont travel via train every day, I do it quite often and spend hours at the platform or in the train. People actually spend 3-4 hrs in trains traveling.

Yeah. It might have, again might have some benefits I. Short run but free basics is and will hold both the people and companies back. Nobody is criticising Google and others trying to provide free access or subsidised access to internet because they actually befefit from the open internet and there companies aren't breaking net neutrality. Your farmer from rural India probably doesn't need an email address, his needs are quite different.

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#213
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's just that Hindi Wikipedia and Google suck And you think enabling tens of millions of people to access these resources will make them....worse? Wikipedia is a community encyclopedia, by its very nature it gets better the more people access and use it, the more editors there are translating articles from other languages, etc. You have not listed a single thing that would make it a net positive for a corporation t…

> What do you say to the Indian coder who today is working on his WhatsApp competitor? tough shit, facebook already bought the internet in this country? How about saying to him that he should make his WhatsApp competitor work well on feature phones and low bandwidth connections, and then submit it for inclusion with Free Basics? Free Basics is open to almost any site that can meet a few technical requirements, which…

Yeah Facebook says so. How many times have companies (even Facebook) said something and something entirely different. Facebook still reserves right to not allow you on their service. In addition they want ability to see and even modify content going between you and the customer.Facebook can actually say that they can't accept you because of reason X while they actually want no competition to Whatsapp or Facebook

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... is a cliche at this point and should be considered racist in India... " How is that racist? Expressing nationalism is not racist unless in specific other circumstances. In the U.S, Japanese and Korean auto makers were accused of stealing jobs and Latino Americans still are... I see it as a form of nationalism. [edited: to remove Europe and fix punctuation]

In India Nationalism is a good word, whereas in the rest of the world it's an awful word because the rest of the world saw what Nationalism eventually takes you to (WW2, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan). Nobody in US who opposes foreign labor in US would ever wanna be called a 'Nationalist', it is the same thing as being called a racist(actually, it might even be worse).

Nationalism could be considered good thing if you are in early to mid 20th century. But today when we are this global, being this nationalist makes no sense. Yes I understand nationalism here is grounded in our freedom history but in todays world it makes no sense.

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#215
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helping the poor is a red herring. Facebook could easily give fair, unbiased acccess, but they want a monopoly. Would you be so apologetic if Comcast gave everyone free NBC streaming but charged more for Netflix?

How could Facebook give everyone unfettered access? Wouldn't that involve paying for everyone's data plan?

The amount of money they used for lobbying and andverts was enough for them to pay for actual costs of internet packs if they worked with carriers on that

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#216

Note in the USA, Verizon does not ding uses of their data cap if they use Verizon's video content Go90, however it does if the users use YouTube. It is interesting that in India the net neutrality has been taken to a much higher degree than in the US itself. But I don't think what India did is a bad thing in the long run(even though the acceleration of people moving to use Internet for first time will get hurt a litt…

As stated above, even Facebook themselves couldn't point to a single user that for to internet for first time using the free basics campaign. People who want internet and a smartphone required to connect to internet can already get to internet. On other end, people don't have a smartphone to access the free basics program and Facebook doesn't solve that problem. Facebook is jsut trying to get more people to use Facebook by giving access for free and bundling a few low usage apps people rarely use in name of charity

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#217
post #17

So - I wonder how Facebook will respond to their market penetration and lock-in effort being declared illegal, as granting access to one set of sites for free and not allowing access to others surely falls under this legislation. I expect that they'll continue business as usual, and will drag out the battle until they have a captive and indoctrinated audience (after all, they control the content, so you can be sure f…

They will offer all of the web in free package, throttled to 100bytes/second. Because current legislation was solely about pricing.

Now that's something we actually can accept. 100bytes/sec is too low for any practical use but 64kbps-128kbps is a good speed.

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#218
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helping the poor is a red herring. Facebook could easily give fair, unbiased acccess, but they want a monopoly. Would you be so apologetic if Comcast gave everyone free NBC streaming but charged more for Netflix?

How could Facebook give everyone unfettered access? Wouldn't that involve paying for everyone's data plan?

By not using a man-in-the-middle vulnerable proxy and giving fair and unbiased access to all websites.

Who said they would be paying for everyone's data access?

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#219
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such holier than thou attitude [...] your condescending comparison Please edit such personal rudeness out of your posts to HN. It's not allowed, even when someone else is condescending and wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

A) I don't see the edit button. B) I don't see you saying the same to the parent comment.

The 'edit' option lasts for 2 hours. I meant please edit such stuff out of future posts.

The parent comment was wild, inflammatory, and snarky, so it was a bad comment for HN—but still wasn't personally abusive. That is beside the point here though. The rules apply to you whether someone else broke them or not. If we all just point at others, this site is lost.

Re: India bans discriminatory pricing based on source/destination/app/content

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is what government's services gets you Why are you assuming that the only alternative to walled garden internet connectivity is government services?

Look at the post I am responding to, it specifically talked about government providing services to the poor people.

since it was my comment you responded to, i can assure you it did not.
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