Facebook is not being altruistic here, and there's no such as thing as free. Whenever a merchant offers "free shipping," they're just manipulating the customer

Facebook is not being altruistic here, and there's no such as thing as free. Whenever a merchant offers "free shipping," they're just manipulating the customer and the cost is built in elsewhere. When facebook offers "free internet," whatever benefits it provides, the cost is hidden and built in elsewhere in Facebook's business model. Which means such a free internet that facebook is supposedly altruistically providing is actually being paid for elsewhere, whether in higher ad costs for India or some other area of their business. This means facebook is essentially skirting net neutrality by indrectly paying for people to only have access to Facebook. This is on top of anticompetitiveness of the move. Giving anything away for free destroys natural competition in the ecosystem. See the case of TOM's shoes giving away free shoes and destroying local shoemakers.[1] Their tactics here makes it justifiable for a country like China to block Facebook. Imagine if Facebook took over China, and started blasting political messages with ulterior motives to 2+ billion people, trying to influence them for corporate gain. [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/10/economics-toms-shoes http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/10/economic...