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Facebook’s “Save Free Basics in India” Campaign Provokes Controversy

63 points by potench 11y ago

Grue3 11y ago
Privileged people with Internet complaining that people without Internet access get free access to (some part of) the Internet. What are you doing to provide free Internet access to the poor?
- shubhamjain 11y ago
  Privileged people complain because a pure business move is being fed to the less-aware as a huge philanthropic effort. Having been to many villages, I can say without doubt that so called free-internet will hardly bring any improvement in people's lives. How do you except a person who hardly knows how to use a phone to use the internet productively? No doubt, information access is important for human development but sorry, I don't have a reason to believe people who can put Internet to a good purpose will have any trouble paying for it.
  - Grue3 11y ago
    The most famous scientist in my country [1] had to travel 1000 km on foot from his home village to university to get decent education. He then proceeded to make a lot of important discoveries in many areas of science. Now imagine if we had Wikipedia in every village. Imagine how many more people could make use of their talents if they had access to the basic information to get them started. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lomonosov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lomonosov
devnonymous 11y ago
This is going very quickly from > Nothing to worry about, I trust the people in charge > to do the right thing, after all they did show better > judgement in the past to > We hope the people in charge know what they are doing The worst part is this (Narendra Modi/BJP led) government is enjoying popular support these days due to the progressive steps that they have taken as far as public spending on development and infrastructure are concerned. These appear to be well thought out and are pro-development (albeit might also be involved in cronyism) However, in this one instance the government seems to think that Facebook's Free Basics thing is a 'Good Thing'. I hope better sense prevails !
- lgp171188 11y ago
  The original TRAI paper for this Net Neutrality discussion looked exactly like if it had been written by someone from the telcos. This repeated "call for feedback" attempts made by TRAI seems to be a ploy to ignore the 1.5 M+ responses supporting net neutrality that they had received during the April consultation. If Facebook can (ab)use their monopoly and userbase to trick people into supporting Free Basics, just imagine what they will do when they monopolize access to Internet in India for most of the people? Scary!
r3bl 11y ago
I used that message box to contact TRAI, but I don't think that my message is exactly what Facebook expected. > Hey TRAI, you're doing an awesome job! > Net neutrality is awesome! Don't let shithead companies like Facebook from stop you from your goal. You're doing a good job!
- captn3m0 11y ago
  FB won't be reporting each individual message to TRAI, I think. They'll just submit a few picks, and give out the aggregate number of people who submitted the form.
  - r3bl 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure that nobody's going to read every message that gets submitted through that form (because there'll be thousands of them, if not millions), but still, I felt so outraged when I have read the text beneath the form that I had to type what I had in mind.
horsecaptin 11y ago
Facebook provides free access to Facebook / Wikipedia etc... then customers that have no access win because they get access and along with it, some pretty nifty tools to gain information and share news with their friends and family. On the other hand, if Facebook doesn't provide free internet, then all those people stay in the dark. What does net neutrality have to do with this? It's not those people are paying for an unequal service. It's FREE!
- captn3m0 11y ago
  This is the "some internet access is better than none" argument. However, the end result is - facebook controlling internet access for those people - Zero Rating creates an imbalance in the ecosystem, favoring websites and services that can get into the walled garden - facebook gets to mine your usage data. There are better ways of improving internet access, such as : - The Mozilla Foundation runs a program with Grameenphone, where users get free data in exchange for watching an advertisement. - The Mozilla Foundation also runs a program with Orange in Africa, where those who purchase a $37 handset get 500 MB of free data. - There are data cashback schemes such as Gigato offer data for free, for surfing some sites. Airtel has launched night plans, which give data as a cashback upon usage of the Internet between midnight and 6am, helping bring cost of access down. These things work, without breaking net neutrality. See [0] for a more thorough discussion of these arguments. [0]: http://blog.savetheinternet.in/response-to-facebook-townhall/ http://blog.savetheinternet.in/response-to-facebook-townhall...
  - magic_man 11y ago
    Did you never use these free AOL CDs when you were a kid. Yes they did provide access to the entire internet, but it was designed to get people to use AOL. I am not going to complain about free internet even if it is walled.
    - Ar-Curunir 11y ago
      I'd rather not have Western companies filter what Indians can and cannot have under the assumption that India is too poor or backwards to get its shit done.
t3ra 11y ago
Crusaders of net neutrality you can help us by emailing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on this issue. See savetheinternet.in
dangerpowpow 11y ago
Fucking scum. How can any competition compete with free facebook? Free basics my ass
- icebraining 11y ago
  How can any competition compete with free facebook? By providing access to the rest of the web?
timwaagh 11y ago
And so we have a bunch of rich Americans yelling 'unfair!' about the poorest of the poor in india getting some small part of what they have. I like net neutrality <in principle>, but this is dogmatism.
- bank 11y ago
  More like facebook denying an enormous number of people the same opportunities that allowed their company to flourish, and then whining "not fair" when anyone points out the hegemonic extraction racket they're trying to set up. Why not help india set up their own services? They could easily contribute to infrastructure and compete with indian startups on the free market. But no, they want to abort the baby before it grows powerful. You're comment is an interesting inversion of reality though, good job Goebbels.
enitihas 11y ago
I don't think people crying for net neutrality understand how many people in India still do not have Internet access. Even free access to facebook changes people's lives in a better way. I belong to a small village in eastern UP, and the Internet penetration is still very less there. The Internet has huge potential to change people's lives for the better, and I have experienced it in my own life. Lots of people still can't afford to pay for the Internet, and for those people, as well as for their children, getting access to a subset of the Internet, however small, means a lot.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  A little good now at the expense of a significant amount of future opportunity. In established markets this is called "dumping" -- giving something away to destroy competition.
  - enitihas 11y ago
    I don't think there is any loss of significant future opportunity. When someone will be able to afford the Internet, they will start using whichever service they find fit. Till then for those people, I can't overstate how important free access to even this limited Internet is. Even free access to wikipedia and facebook helps a lot of people in a lot of ways. Fun Story: One day I was with the brother of a friend of mine. He said facebook helped him a lot in SSC preparations. I thought he was joking, but it turns out that there is an entire ecosystem of services on facebook which help several people in several ways and for those people, this free access matters a hell lot.
    - Flimm 11y ago
      What about the third and fourth and fifth alternatives that are never talked about? Why must India choose between Free Basics or nothing?
    - abhaga 11y ago
      You are assuming that the other services can just wait it out while people break out of FB ecosystem and discover them. Development of these kind of walled gardens significantly harm the development of independent services. That is one of the main problem. If everyone had free Orkut and no access to FB, how long would it have taken Facebook to catch on?
pandatigox 11y ago
I think what pissed me off the most was Facebook's reaction to net neutrality. Instead of attempting to reflect and revise their free Internet service so it can better serve the masses, it just attempts to slander and point fingers at net neutrality advocates. Like "ooooh no! We ain't the problem for your not having "free" Internet, it's those guys those over there arguing that free access to all of Internet is better than a free access to the websites we limit you to!" Seriously Facebook, you're not fooling anyone here. As if you haven't had enough fun screwing developed countries, now you have to go pick on the poor too?
- mattlutze 11y ago
  It's almost beautifully murky that the folks using the app would come to think that what is offered to them is the Internet. This is a distilled example of what heavy ISP control of the Internet could look like. Getting service to disadvantaged or destitute people is great. But it's so very important that Google, Facebook, Apple, Comcast, Verizon, TWC, whomever are constrained from wanton good-will Trojan horses. The tenor and breadth with which Facebook has entered their heavy-handed lot simply illustrates that sometimes, there's nothing new under the sun. TRAI taking a very thorough, critical look at Free Basics is a good thing for the people of India.
  - mtgx 11y ago
    Indeed. China would love it if they could start over and just offer a "Free Basics" version of the "Internet" to its billion citizens. It would make censorship easier by orders and orders of magnitude (basically as easy to censor as TV is over there).
  - x5n1 11y ago
    Facebook is already stealing hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars worth of revenue from content creators like video makers whose videos are stolen and posted on fb's walled garden for the benefit of facebook and content pirates. i guess fb is hoping to capitalize on this trend, steal all online content in the name of providing it for the masses, and put all that ad money into its coffers. that would be longer term game with "free basics". Captive market which you can sell ads to and force content creators and their thieves to post it all to facebook.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
l1feh4ck 11y ago
Keeping marketing or financial problems aside. What are the technical difficulties that Facebook would face when providing access to the whole web rather that some specific website? Data from Facebook or Wikipedia is same as the data from any other website. They will need the same infrastructure. What am I missing here?
- firasd 11y ago
  I think network operators around the world are receptive to ‘zero-rating’ certain websites (which is all Free Basics really is) whereas making free data available with a usage cap or speed cap would be something new. Facebook is not actually providing access or building infrastructure (under this program), they are teaming up with ISPs.
  - l1feh4ck 11y ago
    Some one have to pay the ISP for the service they are providing. Suppose that Facebook is providing access to all websites in free basics. Where is the business model in that. How can Facebook profit from that? May be what Facebook is saying is right: “We are not against net neutrality”, but there is no way on earth that they could provide such service for free. What are they suppose to do? Give people free access to whole web assuming that out of their good heart they will use Facebook? Note: I am not supporting Facebook.
    - firasd 11y ago
      If internet.org is about Free Facebook, they should at least drop the veneer of philanthropy. Argue in favor of zero-rating with everyone else who wants to cut these deals. In the end such exceptions will be a disaster for the tech industry: if Netflix is available without data charges why would you ever use a competitor? If you can do Bing searches for free why would you Google and pay more? Plus it's a regulatory issue (mobile networks are licensed to provide internet, not specific services) and potentially a consumer-protection/anti-trust issue.
zinghaboi 11y ago
Lets look at two extremes. ->India without net neutrality: Everyone has free Facebook. "Free basics" didn't help in advancing electrification of the country but it did provide free facebook/wikipedia to everyone. So 30% of the country is still in dark. But 50% of the rest of India doesn't pay for internet and it thinks there is no need to because that is ALL the internet has to offer. A young founder launches a new education app to teach reading/writing to poor villagers. But she first needs to get a 'license' from facebook. Facebook doesn't think it is a good idea for its users to 'waste' time on other services instead of watching ads on FB, so it declines. Startups don't receive as much funding because of the 'licensing' issues and there aren't as many Indian tech companies as there could've been. News is censored by Facebook and Facebook can now influence Indian politics. 100,000 fewer jobs were created because the Indian tech scene didn't take off. ->India with net neutrality: 50% of the country cannot pay for internet. They still don't have access to internet. They use other forms of communication to get their daily, unfiltered news. The startup scene in India is growing at its natural pace and the culture has become more innovative. In another 10-15 everyone will have internet. 100's of thousands of poor were lifted out of poverty due to tech jobs in India. One is a short term 'fix' which ruins the future. Another is a little bit harder but provides for a better future.
- l1feh4ck 11y ago
  The whole Business Model build up on the freebases cannot work if they provide free access to the whole internet. Considering that we are talking about Facebook here. Things could go very wrong once it is implemented. It should be killed without second thought.
devnonymous 11y ago
If Facebook really had good intentions they would use the money they spend on these 'marketing campaigns' towards actually providing free internet access. These guys are disgusting. For once I hope the quirky and unpredictable Indian legal system actually turns on the crazy full blast and summons Mark Zuckerberg himself to answer ... </venting>

63 points by potench 11y ago

Grue3 11y ago

Privileged people with Internet complaining that people without Internet access get free access to (some part of) the Internet. What are you doing to provide free Internet access to the poor?

shubhamjain 11y ago
Privileged people complain because a pure business move is being fed to the less-aware as a huge philanthropic effort. Having been to many villages, I can say without doubt that so called free-internet will hardly bring any improvement in people's lives. How do you except a person who hardly knows how to use a phone to use the internet productively? No doubt, information access is important for human development but sorry, I don't have a reason to believe people who can put Internet to a good purpose will have any trouble paying for it.
- Grue3 11y ago
  The most famous scientist in my country [1] had to travel 1000 km on foot from his home village to university to get decent education. He then proceeded to make a lot of important discoveries in many areas of science. Now imagine if we had Wikipedia in every village. Imagine how many more people could make use of their talents if they had access to the basic information to get them started. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lomonosov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Lomonosov

devnonymous 11y ago

This is going very quickly from > Nothing to worry about, I trust the people in charge > to do the right thing, after all they did show better > judgement in the past to > We hope the people in charge know what they are doing The worst part is this (Narendra Modi/BJP led) government is enjoying popular support these days due to the progressive steps that they have taken as far as public spending on development and infrastructure are concerned. These appear to be well thought out and are pro-development (albeit might also be involved in cronyism) However, in this one instance the government seems to think that Facebook's Free Basics thing is a 'Good Thing'. I hope better sense prevails !

lgp171188 11y ago
The original TRAI paper for this Net Neutrality discussion looked exactly like if it had been written by someone from the telcos. This repeated "call for feedback" attempts made by TRAI seems to be a ploy to ignore the 1.5 M+ responses supporting net neutrality that they had received during the April consultation. If Facebook can (ab)use their monopoly and userbase to trick people into supporting Free Basics, just imagine what they will do when they monopolize access to Internet in India for most of the people? Scary!

r3bl 11y ago

I used that message box to contact TRAI, but I don't think that my message is exactly what Facebook expected. > Hey TRAI, you're doing an awesome job! > Net neutrality is awesome! Don't let shithead companies like Facebook from stop you from your goal. You're doing a good job!

captn3m0 11y ago
FB won't be reporting each individual message to TRAI, I think. They'll just submit a few picks, and give out the aggregate number of people who submitted the form.
- r3bl 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure that nobody's going to read every message that gets submitted through that form (because there'll be thousands of them, if not millions), but still, I felt so outraged when I have read the text beneath the form that I had to type what I had in mind.

horsecaptin 11y ago

Facebook provides free access to Facebook / Wikipedia etc... then customers that have no access win because they get access and along with it, some pretty nifty tools to gain information and share news with their friends and family. On the other hand, if Facebook doesn't provide free internet, then all those people stay in the dark. What does net neutrality have to do with this? It's not those people are paying for an unequal service. It's FREE!

captn3m0 11y ago
This is the "some internet access is better than none" argument. However, the end result is - facebook controlling internet access for those people - Zero Rating creates an imbalance in the ecosystem, favoring websites and services that can get into the walled garden - facebook gets to mine your usage data. There are better ways of improving internet access, such as : - The Mozilla Foundation runs a program with Grameenphone, where users get free data in exchange for watching an advertisement. - The Mozilla Foundation also runs a program with Orange in Africa, where those who purchase a $37 handset get 500 MB of free data. - There are data cashback schemes such as Gigato offer data for free, for surfing some sites. Airtel has launched night plans, which give data as a cashback upon usage of the Internet between midnight and 6am, helping bring cost of access down. These things work, without breaking net neutrality. See [0] for a more thorough discussion of these arguments. [0]: http://blog.savetheinternet.in/response-to-facebook-townhall/ http://blog.savetheinternet.in/response-to-facebook-townhall...
- magic_man 11y ago
  Did you never use these free AOL CDs when you were a kid. Yes they did provide access to the entire internet, but it was designed to get people to use AOL. I am not going to complain about free internet even if it is walled.
  - Ar-Curunir 11y ago
    I'd rather not have Western companies filter what Indians can and cannot have under the assumption that India is too poor or backwards to get its shit done.

t3ra 11y ago

Crusaders of net neutrality you can help us by emailing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on this issue. See savetheinternet.in

dangerpowpow 11y ago

Fucking scum. How can any competition compete with free facebook? Free basics my ass

icebraining 11y ago
How can any competition compete with free facebook? By providing access to the rest of the web?

timwaagh 11y ago

And so we have a bunch of rich Americans yelling 'unfair!' about the poorest of the poor in india getting some small part of what they have. I like net neutrality <in principle>, but this is dogmatism.

bank 11y ago
More like facebook denying an enormous number of people the same opportunities that allowed their company to flourish, and then whining "not fair" when anyone points out the hegemonic extraction racket they're trying to set up. Why not help india set up their own services? They could easily contribute to infrastructure and compete with indian startups on the free market. But no, they want to abort the baby before it grows powerful. You're comment is an interesting inversion of reality though, good job Goebbels.

enitihas 11y ago

I don't think people crying for net neutrality understand how many people in India still do not have Internet access. Even free access to facebook changes people's lives in a better way. I belong to a small village in eastern UP, and the Internet penetration is still very less there. The Internet has huge potential to change people's lives for the better, and I have experienced it in my own life. Lots of people still can't afford to pay for the Internet, and for those people, as well as for their children, getting access to a subset of the Internet, however small, means a lot.

nitrogen 11y ago
A little good now at the expense of a significant amount of future opportunity. In established markets this is called "dumping" -- giving something away to destroy competition.
- enitihas 11y ago
  I don't think there is any loss of significant future opportunity. When someone will be able to afford the Internet, they will start using whichever service they find fit. Till then for those people, I can't overstate how important free access to even this limited Internet is. Even free access to wikipedia and facebook helps a lot of people in a lot of ways. Fun Story: One day I was with the brother of a friend of mine. He said facebook helped him a lot in SSC preparations. I thought he was joking, but it turns out that there is an entire ecosystem of services on facebook which help several people in several ways and for those people, this free access matters a hell lot.
  - Flimm 11y ago
    What about the third and fourth and fifth alternatives that are never talked about? Why must India choose between Free Basics or nothing?
  - abhaga 11y ago
    You are assuming that the other services can just wait it out while people break out of FB ecosystem and discover them. Development of these kind of walled gardens significantly harm the development of independent services. That is one of the main problem. If everyone had free Orkut and no access to FB, how long would it have taken Facebook to catch on?

pandatigox 11y ago

I think what pissed me off the most was Facebook's reaction to net neutrality. Instead of attempting to reflect and revise their free Internet service so it can better serve the masses, it just attempts to slander and point fingers at net neutrality advocates. Like "ooooh no! We ain't the problem for your not having "free" Internet, it's those guys those over there arguing that free access to all of Internet is better than a free access to the websites we limit you to!" Seriously Facebook, you're not fooling anyone here. As if you haven't had enough fun screwing developed countries, now you have to go pick on the poor too?

mattlutze 11y ago
It's almost beautifully murky that the folks using the app would come to think that what is offered to them is the Internet. This is a distilled example of what heavy ISP control of the Internet could look like. Getting service to disadvantaged or destitute people is great. But it's so very important that Google, Facebook, Apple, Comcast, Verizon, TWC, whomever are constrained from wanton good-will Trojan horses. The tenor and breadth with which Facebook has entered their heavy-handed lot simply illustrates that sometimes, there's nothing new under the sun. TRAI taking a very thorough, critical look at Free Basics is a good thing for the people of India.
- mtgx 11y ago
  Indeed. China would love it if they could start over and just offer a "Free Basics" version of the "Internet" to its billion citizens. It would make censorship easier by orders and orders of magnitude (basically as easy to censor as TV is over there).
- x5n1 11y ago
  Facebook is already stealing hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars worth of revenue from content creators like video makers whose videos are stolen and posted on fb's walled garden for the benefit of facebook and content pirates. i guess fb is hoping to capitalize on this trend, steal all online content in the name of providing it for the masses, and put all that ad money into its coffers. that would be longer term game with "free basics". Captive market which you can sell ads to and force content creators and their thieves to post it all to facebook.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

l1feh4ck 11y ago

Keeping marketing or financial problems aside. What are the technical difficulties that Facebook would face when providing access to the whole web rather that some specific website? Data from Facebook or Wikipedia is same as the data from any other website. They will need the same infrastructure. What am I missing here?

firasd 11y ago
I think network operators around the world are receptive to ‘zero-rating’ certain websites (which is all Free Basics really is) whereas making free data available with a usage cap or speed cap would be something new. Facebook is not actually providing access or building infrastructure (under this program), they are teaming up with ISPs.
- l1feh4ck 11y ago
  Some one have to pay the ISP for the service they are providing. Suppose that Facebook is providing access to all websites in free basics. Where is the business model in that. How can Facebook profit from that? May be what Facebook is saying is right: “We are not against net neutrality”, but there is no way on earth that they could provide such service for free. What are they suppose to do? Give people free access to whole web assuming that out of their good heart they will use Facebook? Note: I am not supporting Facebook.
  - firasd 11y ago
    If internet.org is about Free Facebook, they should at least drop the veneer of philanthropy. Argue in favor of zero-rating with everyone else who wants to cut these deals. In the end such exceptions will be a disaster for the tech industry: if Netflix is available without data charges why would you ever use a competitor? If you can do Bing searches for free why would you Google and pay more? Plus it's a regulatory issue (mobile networks are licensed to provide internet, not specific services) and potentially a consumer-protection/anti-trust issue.

zinghaboi 11y ago

Lets look at two extremes. ->India without net neutrality: Everyone has free Facebook. "Free basics" didn't help in advancing electrification of the country but it did provide free facebook/wikipedia to everyone. So 30% of the country is still in dark. But 50% of the rest of India doesn't pay for internet and it thinks there is no need to because that is ALL the internet has to offer. A young founder launches a new education app to teach reading/writing to poor villagers. But she first needs to get a 'license' from facebook. Facebook doesn't think it is a good idea for its users to 'waste' time on other services instead of watching ads on FB, so it declines. Startups don't receive as much funding because of the 'licensing' issues and there aren't as many Indian tech companies as there could've been. News is censored by Facebook and Facebook can now influence Indian politics. 100,000 fewer jobs were created because the Indian tech scene didn't take off. ->India with net neutrality: 50% of the country cannot pay for internet. They still don't have access to internet. They use other forms of communication to get their daily, unfiltered news. The startup scene in India is growing at its natural pace and the culture has become more innovative. In another 10-15 everyone will have internet. 100's of thousands of poor were lifted out of poverty due to tech jobs in India. One is a short term 'fix' which ruins the future. Another is a little bit harder but provides for a better future.

l1feh4ck 11y ago
The whole Business Model build up on the freebases cannot work if they provide free access to the whole internet. Considering that we are talking about Facebook here. Things could go very wrong once it is implemented. It should be killed without second thought.

devnonymous 11y ago

If Facebook really had good intentions they would use the money they spend on these 'marketing campaigns' towards actually providing free internet access. These guys are disgusting. For once I hope the quirky and unpredictable Indian legal system actually turns on the crazy full blast and summons Mark Zuckerberg himself to answer ... </venting>