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There is a remarkable disconnect between the critics and the users here. Note that no users were cited in the article. I understand not liking Facebook’s motiv

There is a remarkable disconnect between the critics and the users here. Note that no users were cited in the article. I understand not liking Facebook’s motives, that’s fine. Perhaps we can defer to the preferences of users here, who can choose to accept those motives or not, and to decide if the trade-off is an acceptable one. If we believe that they are unqualified to make this choice, one should explain that position. Instead, the critics are imposing their preference on the users here, who are poor and (in this article) unheard. Can we please see an article where such people are quoted, and perhaps some numbers about usage, revealing their empirical preferences?

lunula 11y ago
It does seem that people in India are speaking up against this. Now you will quip that these activists must already have internet access, otherwise they would not even know to speak up. But the activists are at least from the same communities as the target market for this program. They are fighting for their families and friends. This seems very genuine and selfless in comparison to the motivations of the company and ego they are fighting against. The alternative would be to ignore the activists and see if people like a free thing they have minimal understanding of. I think that they will, at least we both suspect they will. But I don't think this will make it right. That they will like the free thing does not make it good for the community. For instance, how many people would like free cigarettes or alcohol after their first few exposures? Many. Would their distribution be good for the community in the long run? No. But who would speak up? It won't be the uninitiated, and it won't be the company distributing the goods.
- Grue3 11y ago
  >They are fighting for their families and friends. The less charitable explanation is that they're fighting to keep their leg up on the less fortunate population. The gap between those with Internet access and without is absolutely enormous. If everyone has Internet access, this untaps incredible amount of people resources, which would drive down the demand for those who currently have Internet access. These "activists" have a lot to lose if the poor get allowed into the cool kids' treehouse.
  - witty_username 11y ago
    I really don't think the activists have any such motive.
    - nileshtrivedi 11y ago
      Especially because they laud and welcome steps like Aircel's free Internet, Airtel's cashback scheme, Google'e free wi-fi, Project Loon, Gigato, and even facebook's own cheap wi-fi installations.
zanny 11y ago
How is a poor Indian citizen supposed to make a judgment on if having a locked down Internet where they can only use Facebook is better than this Internet they might not have even heard of with millions of websites? They only see one side of this argument if any at all. From their perspective they do not know alternatives even exist.
- asift 11y ago
  It's not that they don't see other alternatives. This is true, but the reality is that other realistic alternatives don't even exist. Their realistic option set is: (a) free access to an incredibly valuable set of resources, or (b) nothing. I would take (a) over (b) any day. I would hope that broader alternatives would eventually come along (and history tells us it will), but the crowd that wants the Indian poor to have nothing until that day comes is, in my opinion, despicable. Heck, I might not even mind some gated internet in the US if I was free to opt-in/out of it and it reduced my internet costs.
  - vaishaksuresh 11y ago
    >Heck, I might not even mind some gated internet in the US if I was free to opt-in/out of it and it reduced my internet costs. The key difference is you would still have choice in the US and people in India would not.
    - asift 11y ago
      I want people in India to have a choice. They can choose to accept Zuckerburg's free internet or they can wait for something else to come along. It's Zuckerburg's critics that want to deny Indians their right to choose by taking away their free service and leaving them without internet in the present. As was noted earlier, the most vocal critics in this situation are not the poor people in India that are most directly impacted by this situation.
      - vaishaksuresh 11y ago
        This issue is not about having a particular choice or not having anything. Accepting this paves the way for facebook to control the internet that a majority of people are seeing for the first time. Also, it is not really a land-grab as the title says, it is grabbing an untapped market with millions of new users. Facebook most likely wants to mine data from a new potential market.
x5n1 11y ago
It's fine to go around saying we're offering free facebook to users who want it. That's the big mistake that Zuckerborg made. It should be free facebook. Do you want free facebook? Many people would say yes. "Free Basics by Facebook provides free access to basic internet services to a billion people all over the world. Your service can be part of it. " The fb site makes it "free access to basic internet" which it is not. It's free access to facebook. Just say that, and maybe you won't get all the push back. It's not the critics who made this distinction or picked this fight. It's Zuckerborg. If you really want to offer free basic internet, then do that. I am sure fb could if it wanted to offer a limited amount of bandwidth to any user who wants it for free to do with as they choose. Then they might actually be doing something positive for the poor of India, rather than trying to corral them into fb in the name of free basic internet.
kuschku 11y ago
Okay, let’s give the users of Facebook predecessors of Free Basic a voice. Here am I, a German who used to use Facebook Zero (free access to Facebook via 3G) while I was in middle (and later high) school. As soon as it became available, I – and some of my friends – stopped using SchuelerVZ, the social network most people used to use at the time – and instead actually tried to convince others to switch to Facebook, too. "It’s free! You don’t need to pay anything!" We tried to get as much content as possible inside the network, and never actually left it – because we had literally no money on our prepaid SIMs, and therefore couldn’t access other pages. Everything that wasn’t on Facebook didn’t exist for us. In only a few months after Facebook Zero launched, the user numbers of SchuelerVZ and StudiVZ rapidly declined. Today, we don’t have a choice for social networks anymore, Facebook has a monopoly. ---------------- Facebook Zero: http://0.facebook.com/ http://0.facebook.com/
- chejazi 11y ago
  Are you happy with the outcome? Would you make the same decision knowing what you know now?
  - kuschku 11y ago
    No, I’m not really happy. With the unability to turn the news feed to a normal setting, with the huge privacy issues with Facebook, etc I wouldn’t have done the same again. But by now they have a next to monopoly, and a new competitor can’t fairly win on the market anymore, and would have to resort to the very same tricks.
ryandrake 11y ago
I know plenty of people who think Facebook is the Internet, and wouldn't even notice if their access to everything not-Facebook was blocked, let alone care. Facebook is today's AOL.
hackinthebochs 11y ago
Exactly this. It is downright appalling every time I see someone from a place of privilege declare what's best for the unprivileged. All this vitriol against FreeBasics is exactly that. Until I see a mass of extremely poor indians with no internet access reject FreeBasics because they don't want facebook to have their "data", all this hate is just self-serving bluster in my eyes.
- abhaga 11y ago
  You speak as if those not on the internet can not already joining it in hordes. And those opposed to FreeBasics are somehow holding the keys. When looking at the two camps here, you seriously believe the motives of Facebook and Telecom companies that have clear business interest in having users locked up in their walled gardens but doubt the intentions of a motley group of activists including startup founders, university professors, policy experts among others who do not have any direct incentive to oppose people coming on to internet and also do not control that access in anyway?
  - hackinthebochs 11y ago
    >can not already joining it in hordes. Sorry, I can't figure out what you meant here. >you seriously believe the motives of Facebook and Telecom companies that have clear business interest I'm absolutely 100% convinced FB is doing this to be in on the ground floor of the explosion of internet access in India. And I don't see that as a bad thing. AOL happened, and it helped get a lot of people online earlier than they would have otherwise (AOL was my first foray online). The free and open internet will survive. But getting poor people online ASAP is the far more important concern for them than ensuring that their access is completely open when they do. Furthermore, I'm not questioning the motives of those that are loudly against this. Their motives are crystal clear. It's those very motives that are misplaced. The values of the privileged are entirely different from the unprivileged. The problem is that the privileged tend to have a tragically narrow perspective and assume that their values are universally correct. I mean, how easy is it to say "free and open access or nothing (for them)!" when you're not personally giving up anything? It's absurd on its face.

lunula 11y ago

It does seem that people in India are speaking up against this. Now you will quip that these activists must already have internet access, otherwise they would not even know to speak up. But the activists are at least from the same communities as the target market for this program. They are fighting for their families and friends. This seems very genuine and selfless in comparison to the motivations of the company and ego they are fighting against. The alternative would be to ignore the activists and see if people like a free thing they have minimal understanding of. I think that they will, at least we both suspect they will. But I don't think this will make it right. That they will like the free thing does not make it good for the community. For instance, how many people would like free cigarettes or alcohol after their first few exposures? Many. Would their distribution be good for the community in the long run? No. But who would speak up? It won't be the uninitiated, and it won't be the company distributing the goods.

Grue3 11y ago
>They are fighting for their families and friends. The less charitable explanation is that they're fighting to keep their leg up on the less fortunate population. The gap between those with Internet access and without is absolutely enormous. If everyone has Internet access, this untaps incredible amount of people resources, which would drive down the demand for those who currently have Internet access. These "activists" have a lot to lose if the poor get allowed into the cool kids' treehouse.
- witty_username 11y ago
  I really don't think the activists have any such motive.
  - nileshtrivedi 11y ago
    Especially because they laud and welcome steps like Aircel's free Internet, Airtel's cashback scheme, Google'e free wi-fi, Project Loon, Gigato, and even facebook's own cheap wi-fi installations.

zanny 11y ago

How is a poor Indian citizen supposed to make a judgment on if having a locked down Internet where they can only use Facebook is better than this Internet they might not have even heard of with millions of websites? They only see one side of this argument if any at all. From their perspective they do not know alternatives even exist.

asift 11y ago
It's not that they don't see other alternatives. This is true, but the reality is that other realistic alternatives don't even exist. Their realistic option set is: (a) free access to an incredibly valuable set of resources, or (b) nothing. I would take (a) over (b) any day. I would hope that broader alternatives would eventually come along (and history tells us it will), but the crowd that wants the Indian poor to have nothing until that day comes is, in my opinion, despicable. Heck, I might not even mind some gated internet in the US if I was free to opt-in/out of it and it reduced my internet costs.
- vaishaksuresh 11y ago
  >Heck, I might not even mind some gated internet in the US if I was free to opt-in/out of it and it reduced my internet costs. The key difference is you would still have choice in the US and people in India would not.
  - asift 11y ago
    I want people in India to have a choice. They can choose to accept Zuckerburg's free internet or they can wait for something else to come along. It's Zuckerburg's critics that want to deny Indians their right to choose by taking away their free service and leaving them without internet in the present. As was noted earlier, the most vocal critics in this situation are not the poor people in India that are most directly impacted by this situation.
    - vaishaksuresh 11y ago
      This issue is not about having a particular choice or not having anything. Accepting this paves the way for facebook to control the internet that a majority of people are seeing for the first time. Also, it is not really a land-grab as the title says, it is grabbing an untapped market with millions of new users. Facebook most likely wants to mine data from a new potential market.

x5n1 11y ago

It's fine to go around saying we're offering free facebook to users who want it. That's the big mistake that Zuckerborg made. It should be free facebook. Do you want free facebook? Many people would say yes. "Free Basics by Facebook provides free access to basic internet services to a billion people all over the world. Your service can be part of it. " The fb site makes it "free access to basic internet" which it is not. It's free access to facebook. Just say that, and maybe you won't get all the push back. It's not the critics who made this distinction or picked this fight. It's Zuckerborg. If you really want to offer free basic internet, then do that. I am sure fb could if it wanted to offer a limited amount of bandwidth to any user who wants it for free to do with as they choose. Then they might actually be doing something positive for the poor of India, rather than trying to corral them into fb in the name of free basic internet.

kuschku 11y ago

Okay, let’s give the users of Facebook predecessors of Free Basic a voice. Here am I, a German who used to use Facebook Zero (free access to Facebook via 3G) while I was in middle (and later high) school. As soon as it became available, I – and some of my friends – stopped using SchuelerVZ, the social network most people used to use at the time – and instead actually tried to convince others to switch to Facebook, too. "It’s free! You don’t need to pay anything!" We tried to get as much content as possible inside the network, and never actually left it – because we had literally no money on our prepaid SIMs, and therefore couldn’t access other pages. Everything that wasn’t on Facebook didn’t exist for us. In only a few months after Facebook Zero launched, the user numbers of SchuelerVZ and StudiVZ rapidly declined. Today, we don’t have a choice for social networks anymore, Facebook has a monopoly. ---------------- Facebook Zero: http://0.facebook.com/ http://0.facebook.com/

chejazi 11y ago
Are you happy with the outcome? Would you make the same decision knowing what you know now?
- kuschku 11y ago
  No, I’m not really happy. With the unability to turn the news feed to a normal setting, with the huge privacy issues with Facebook, etc I wouldn’t have done the same again. But by now they have a next to monopoly, and a new competitor can’t fairly win on the market anymore, and would have to resort to the very same tricks.

ryandrake 11y ago

I know plenty of people who think Facebook is the Internet, and wouldn't even notice if their access to everything not-Facebook was blocked, let alone care. Facebook is today's AOL.

hackinthebochs 11y ago

Exactly this. It is downright appalling every time I see someone from a place of privilege declare what's best for the unprivileged. All this vitriol against FreeBasics is exactly that. Until I see a mass of extremely poor indians with no internet access reject FreeBasics because they don't want facebook to have their "data", all this hate is just self-serving bluster in my eyes.

abhaga 11y ago
You speak as if those not on the internet can not already joining it in hordes. And those opposed to FreeBasics are somehow holding the keys. When looking at the two camps here, you seriously believe the motives of Facebook and Telecom companies that have clear business interest in having users locked up in their walled gardens but doubt the intentions of a motley group of activists including startup founders, university professors, policy experts among others who do not have any direct incentive to oppose people coming on to internet and also do not control that access in anyway?
- hackinthebochs 11y ago
  >can not already joining it in hordes. Sorry, I can't figure out what you meant here. >you seriously believe the motives of Facebook and Telecom companies that have clear business interest I'm absolutely 100% convinced FB is doing this to be in on the ground floor of the explosion of internet access in India. And I don't see that as a bad thing. AOL happened, and it helped get a lot of people online earlier than they would have otherwise (AOL was my first foray online). The free and open internet will survive. But getting poor people online ASAP is the far more important concern for them than ensuring that their access is completely open when they do. Furthermore, I'm not questioning the motives of those that are loudly against this. Their motives are crystal clear. It's those very motives that are misplaced. The values of the privileged are entirely different from the unprivileged. The problem is that the privileged tend to have a tragically narrow perspective and assume that their values are universally correct. I mean, how easy is it to say "free and open access or nothing (for them)!" when you're not personally giving up anything? It's absurd on its face.