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Facebook's Free Basics Shuts Down in Egypt
- tdaltonc 11y agoIf Marks not careful, he's going to talk himself right in to being a utility. http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/free-basics-protects-net-neutrality/ http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/free-...
- hellbanner 11y agoGreat link. Something that really bothers me about "Facebook Basic (Free Basic, Facebook.. what a fucking insidious name!)" is the lack of competition..
- yalogin 11y agoI don't understand how Mark could propose this with a straight face when he himself is a proponent against Comcast and others trying to do a similar thing in the US. Does not matter if its free or not (there is no such thing as free btw). As long as he gets his own ad dollars he is fine with carving out a special "internet path" to his users. Bad. Worse still, he is doing this piggy backing on "helping the poor" story. Now I wonder how free and open his other internet through blimps idea was, that was floated a while ago.
- pbalau 11y agoLet me ask you a question: the Free Basics is targeted to people that can't afford another way to get internet. What will showing ads to these people accomplish?
- yalogin 11y agoAd dollars were the wrong choice of words, its more gaining mind share and users. So do you really believe FB did it for the good of the people and that this free basics thing is good? What do you think a poor guy without access to proper resources like food, education will gain by sharing likes on FB?
- samfisher83 11y agoObviously facebook is motivated by ad dollars, but people get some benefit out of it. Maybe that poor guy will see some image that makes him laugh.
- fucking_tragedy 11y agoI don't think access to cat pictures justifies shitting all over a country's chances of building out proper infrastructure just to provide a profitable but censored service we'd never accept ourselves. Net neutrality was the last bastion of freedom online, but it's somehow too high of a standard for societies with lower rates of internet access?
- mkagenius 11y ago> pictures justifies shitting all over a country's chances of building out proper infrastructure If you rely on government to build free internet access infrastructure for poor people, it could take long time. While on the other hand, fb has managed to build something and convinced telcos to give it for free to poor and promised that they will soon see those people converting into a full-internet user and will pay you the normal rate. So, actually the grand plan is to get them to use full internet, which is not bad for either parties I think.
- fucking_tragedy 11y agoWhere in FB business plan does it say that they'll invest all of that money to provide a locked-in service just to make it easier and cheaper for people to move from that service to one that doesn't prioritize FB content over their competitors'? I don't see that anywhere. It's almost as if there is a lot of money in getting a class of people to think FB is the internet by cutting off any real initiative for full internet access.
- hellbanner 11y agoSpeaking of shitting over a country's chances of building out proper infrastructure, have you read http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452287081 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452287081 Confessions of an Economic Hitman? It's all about the USA doing exactly that, by promising massive GDP gains. When they fail to net the profit required to pay the contractors, the contractors take over the infrastructure -- netting the USA dozens of corporate-owned electrical infrastructure all over the world, chiefly South America & the Middle East (!!)
- ProAm 11y agoindoctrination
- roymurdock 11y agoHow many people do you know that have ever purchased anything from a Facebook ad or clicked on one other than by accident? Ads are increasingly about product placement, brand presence and being top of mind. Especially when you can be sure that 80% of your clickthroughs on Facebook are from some bot network that Facebook doesn't bother to crack down on because it adds to their userbase metric, which is what the derive such a high valuation from. [1] I'm sure coke, nestle, and other branded basic commodities (food, drink, clothing) would love a way to show ads to this low-income segment. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag
- danohuiginn 11y agoNetwork effects. Even if these people don't have cash, their presence on facebook may encourage wealthier friends/relatives to participate more. [and even poor people may be advertising targets, for the right customer. Loan sharks? Political parties? Religious groups?]
- samfisher83 11y agoYou are free not to use it if you want. You can pay for the internet. I wonder what people who actually use the service think. I remember using netzero. You had to view ads for that.
- pkd 11y agoMost of the people who will actually end up using the service will be middle class people who can afford to pay for the internet and have been doing so but want to take it for a spin and see how it feels. The poorest who can't afford the internet don't even have the devices capable of displaying the modern web pages properly. The cost of internet comes secondary to the cost of the hardware necessary to access it.
- monort 11y agoEgypt’s mobile penetration is over 100%, poor have mobile phones that can access internet.
- pkd 11y agoHow does mobile penetration relate to the type of devices the people are using? India has almost 80% mobile penetration, but less than half of that is using smart/multimedia enabled phones. I'd estimate that Egypt's condition won't be vastly different considering the similarities between the economies.
- monort 11y agoNot only smartphones can access internet. http://www.opera.com/mobile/mini/other http://www.opera.com/mobile/mini/other
- hellbanner 11y agoDoes "over 100%" mean that on average every person has > 1 internet phone?
- quadrangle 11y ago
- quadrangle 11y agoMaybe Zuck is sociopathic? I don't know, but that can help with achieving straight-faced hypocrisy. Anyway, please don't spread the "no such thing as free" propaganda. It's good to be skeptical of anything free, but truly free can exist. In the same sense, people should be skeptical of all sorts of scammers and catches, people that may claim to be in love with you but are really scamming you, and yet sincere unconditional love does exist in the world.
- bduerst 11y agoI think the more sinister thing about it is that it will hinder any of the developing ISP markets in these nations, kind of like how Toms Shoes put shoe makers out of business. Throw in that this is Facebook, not internet, where Facebook is free but everything else is charged, and you're making an obvious monopsonic grab on these people.
- danpalmer 11y agoI tend to see the best in people, so I think Zuckerberg honestly believes Free Basics is a good idea, and not against net neutrality. I can see one way of this coming about... You start with an idea to give completely free, net-neutral internet to the poor. Next someone tells you that you need to pipe that through something so that the ISPs don't charge for the data, fine, it's now free, but goes through a pipe, and since you have a company with lots of resources, let's make it a Facebook pipe, as it's easier. You ask services to just register with you so that you can let them through the pipe. Then you realise that most people using this are going to be using it on devices that can't run Javascript and heavyweight CSS, so the content needs to be a little more basic. Facebook already does that, but you need other services to, so you run a few quick quality checks on their site when they sign up. Easy, better user experience, anyone can still do this, anyone can sign up to provide a service on free basics, so it's still neutral right? Finally, you find out that lots of these countries that you're providing free basics in have random obscure laws about what you can and can't do online, so you add in a clause that lets you deny approval to sites that don't conform to the laws, just to cover yourself legally, you don't want to be sued out of the country by the government, otherwise you wouldn't be able to provide your service! So that's it, you can now provide a net-neutral service to non-internet users.
- scope 11y agoAfrican here: I'm really really glad more and more counties are seeing behind the facade Facebook is putting. (Earlier post) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10816991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10816991
- thebenedict 11y agoHow would you prefer poor people in your country get access to the internet? Who should implement it and who would pay?
- ZenoArrow 11y agoThe infrastructure already exists. IIRC Free Basics uses the existing mobile internet infrastructure. I would suggest it'd be better for ISPs to offer a free, data capped tier, funded by whomever chooses to do so (governments, charities, etc...). If Facebook truly wanted to be philanthropic they could fund a scheme like this, rather than following a plan designed to directly benefit their core business.
- tdaltonc 11y agoMind if I ask how you usually access HN? Mobile? A mac you own? An internet cafe? Do you know anyone who would consider something like free basic? What's their story? I've heard basically nothing from anyone who might use facebook-basics (unless they are being used as a propaganda tool), and I'd love to.
- wsgeorge 11y agoSo I just created an HN account to answer this. I'm in Accra, Ghana. > Mind if I ask how you usually access HN? My PC, with WiFi at home. > Do you know anyone who would consider something like free basic? I would. Already, mobile networks have Facebook and Wikipedia (iirc) zero-rated. Meaning you pay nothing to use those services. My startup is trying to get zero-rating on Vodafone to encourage our customers to use our service. Having free access to some useful sites is a plus. Having my Internet restricted to those sites is a minus.
- gotchange 11y agoHere's the local perspective on the issue. They argue that Etisalat Egypt didn't apply to renew the license and thus it expired and the regulator body NTRA had to suspend it. Like I suspected, nothing about taking a stand on Net Neutrality or unrestricted internet access, just business as usual in Egypt. http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFL3N14J3OQ20151230 http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFL3N14J3OQ2015123...
- 13of40 11y agoMaybe someone figured out how to do TCP-over-newsfeed and broke their whole model?
- 13of40 11y agoActually, come to think about it, you could probably make a workable web proxy through a Facebook account, as long as they didn't throttle how many cat pictures you uploaded in a day. Have a server on the outside that will post stenographied pictures of cats to your timeline every time you ask "Hey that was an awesome cat picture, do you have any more LOL? WW8gZGF3ZyB0aGlzIGlzIGEgYmFzZS02NCBlbmNvZGVkIEhUVFAgR0VUIHJlcXVlc3Qh".
- chei0aiV 11y agoThere used to be IPv6 over Facebook
- dayon 11y agoThis is very conspiratorial, but it'd be interesting if Facebook intentionally shut this down to show its new user base how vital it is to their lives. By giving new users a service and then taking it away, it could drum up support for reinstatement. Wouldn't put it past Mark to pull something like that.
- knughit 11y agoOK, mark is going to something bad, then stop doing it to prove how good it is, to convince people to ask for it back. Because it is bad.
- memracom 11y agoA lot of people seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Internet is. It begins with telecommunications, namely wires and radio links that carry data. You cannot have an Internet without these. Normally these things are provided by carriers, also called phone companies. ISPs used to be a separate thing but nowadays, an ISP is just part of a wireline or wireless phone company. Once you have a carrier who supplies you with connectivity using the Internet protocols, you are on the Internet. Beyond that there are millions of services accessible via the Internet and Facebook is only one of millions. Many people never use Facebook because they don't need it, or because they use an alternative service. It costs money for carriers to provide Internet service and traditionally this has been paid for by subscribers, not by Internet service companies. People are creative, and in many countries, the billing plans for Internet services are very different from the way it is done in your country. But it works, because local carriers are motivated to understand their customers' needs. Facebook can add nothing positive to the relationship between carriers and their subscribers. It's that simple.