11 ms·

Great quote on a different article covering the same story: http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/08/technology/india-facebook-free-basics-internet/index.html http://mon

Great quote on a different article covering the same story: http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/08/technology/india-facebook-free-basics-internet/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/08/technology/india-facebook-fr... ---------- Mahesh Murthy, a prominent Indian venture capitalist, last year described the program as "imperialism and the East India Company all over again," carried out under the guise of "digital equality." "What Facebook wants is our less fortunate brothers and sisters should be able to poke each other and play Candy Crush, but not be able to look up a fact on Google, or learn something on Khan Academy or sell their produce on a commodity market or even search for a job," he said.

NoPiece 11y ago
Can a quote be great if it is also completely factually inaccurate?
- gnaddel 11y ago
  Could you elaborate why it is inaccurate?
  - NoPiece 11y ago
    For example Facebook explicitly does want to support job searches. (Babajob)
    - anon1385 11y ago
      Facebook has a list of all current and future job search sites that anybody in India might want to use? What about job adverts that are just posted on the employers own website? Unless you meant "Facebook wants to monopolise the entire Indian job search market with their own job search site while preventing people from accessing any competitors". That's more believable but hardly undermines the original quote.
      - NoPiece 11y ago
        The quote says Facebook doesn't want poor people to be able to search for jobs. That is obviously wrong or else they wouldn't provide job search. You may believe they want to monopolize job search, but that is not what the guy said. And show me an example of a job site that want allowed on their platform.
        bduerst 11y ago
        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?
        ec109685 11y ago
        How could Facebook give everyone unfettered access? Wouldn't that involve paying for everyone's data plan?
        rohmish 11y ago
        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
        bduerst 11y ago
        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?
      - tzs 11y ago
        Babajob is not Facebook's job search site (nor is the other job search site I just noticed on the list, Times Jobs). Only a couple things on the list of sites included in the program are Facebook's. Here is the list (as of a few months ago): Aaj Tak AccuWeather Amarujala.com AP Speaks Babajob BabyCenter & MAMA BBC News Bing Search Cleartrip Daily Bhaskar Dictionary.com ESPN Cricinfo Facebook Facebook Messenger Facts for life Girl Effect HungamaPlay IBNLive iLearn India Today Internet Basics Jagran Jagran Josh Maalai Malar Maharastra Times Malaria No More manoramanews.com NDTV News Hunt OLX Reliance Astrology Reuters Market Lite Socialblood Times Jobs Times of India Translator wikiHow Wikipedia
splintercell 11y ago
> "What Facebook wants is our less fortunate brothers and sisters should be able to poke each other and play Candy Crush, but not be able to look up a fact on Google, or learn something on Khan Academy or sell their produce on a commodity market or even search for a job," he said.< Indians use connectivity very differently than the rest of the world(or at least different from the developed countries). To Indians, phone/internet is a mode of communication first. It was the thing which has been missing from their lives the most. This is especially true for the demographics Facebook was targeting. The reason is the language barrier. A lot more Indians can read and write English needed for directions, news headlines, legal documents, store names etc, than those who can truly express themselves in English. My mom is a great example of this, she can read and write English, but will have trouble understanding a conversation going on purely in English. This is the reason her smartphone usage is almost all reliant upon content created and generated by others. WhatsApp and Facebook are the two most used apps on her phone. It isn't that she wouldn't like to read up facts about politicians and world events from Wikipedia, it's just that Hindi Wikipedia and Google suck. However, if someone were to forward her a news article, a recipe or just make posts on their facebook, she's a lot more comfortable doing that. It's been less than 5 years since she got WhatsApp and Facebook, but the social network she has created around the two facilitates her family in ways it was not imaginable 10 years ago. BTW "It's East India Company all over again" is a cliche at this point and should be considered racist in India (because it's almost exclusively used against any non-Indian entrepreneurship in India).
- senthil_rajasek 11y ago
  "... 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]
  - sremani 11y ago
    Nationalism ? No Sir, this is protectionism and dare I say, Xenophobia.
edge17 11y ago
The problem with this sort of nationalism is that it's all talk. No one offers an alternative solution, so the poor continue to be poor. This attitude is what creates trade barriers and protectionist policies, and India won't solve their problems until they can compete with other nations on manufacturing and prices. The reality is that, unless you are able to keep up with modern tooling you're just going to keep falling farther and farther behind on quality and competitiveness. If India wants to improve the futures of a billion people, bold macro-economic changes have to be taken.
- zenincognito 11y ago
  I think for all meaningful solutions discussion and "talk" is critical. What would happen if India did not take offence to the free basics program as is ? It is crystal clear that FB was trying to muscle its power around as this meant a large demographics for them. Its a win for India. Win for the free market.
  - edge17 11y ago
    I had a good deal of insight into how this played out at the very top. Behind closed doors there's actually support in a lot of good places, but there is quite a lot of political posturing from people that have a stake in the nationalistic angles. It gets votes.
- bottled_poe 11y ago
  Talk is an important part of progress. Implementing a half-assed solution to such a massive problem will have lasting implications for decades. I realise this goes against the modern hacker groupthink, but in this case requirements analysis is actually an important part of ensuring that billions of people don't get fucked by a US corporation.
  - edge17 11y ago
    The issue there is, in the process of not getting f--ed by a US corporation are they not getting f--ed by their own government? There are a whole lot of people making judgements based purely on numbers, but poverty when you see it isn't just numbers. Even analytical folks like Bill Gates will admit to their stark ignorance toward what poverty actually is until having seen it first hand. There's no substitute for seeing what is actually happening. I agree talk is important and having this dialog isn't meaningless, but there is quite a lot of pseudo-intellectualism and general disconnectedness where people with power are more concerned with the next step in their career rather than the roles of the office they're actually occupying. Or some notion that the ideas of protecting the ideas of net-neutrality in the west are some sort of modern day "white man's burden." If I needed to fix my roof today and you told you I couldn't have just a hammer and screwdriver because they can't separated from the whole toolbox, I would be heartbroken. While openly violating net-neutrality isn't going to benefit any politician looking for votes for their next seat in public office, the reality is that net-neutrality has been violated all over the world to the tremendous benefit of the people. It's important to note that, while net-neutrality is mostly upheld in the US, the US suffers plenty of blind spots that result from the biases in general news media, social media, and reporting. Also, to address your original point, implementing nothing will also have massive issues for decades. Your commentary falls under the same heading as the people intellectualizing the problems without having a stake in it. I don't know where you live or anything about you, but go check out rural India some time and find out what real poverty is. If you've never seen it with your own eyes, you honestly have no idea what it is.

NoPiece 11y ago

Can a quote be great if it is also completely factually inaccurate?

gnaddel 11y ago
Could you elaborate why it is inaccurate?
- NoPiece 11y ago
  For example Facebook explicitly does want to support job searches. (Babajob)
  - anon1385 11y ago
    Facebook has a list of all current and future job search sites that anybody in India might want to use? What about job adverts that are just posted on the employers own website? Unless you meant "Facebook wants to monopolise the entire Indian job search market with their own job search site while preventing people from accessing any competitors". That's more believable but hardly undermines the original quote.
    - NoPiece 11y ago
      The quote says Facebook doesn't want poor people to be able to search for jobs. That is obviously wrong or else they wouldn't provide job search. You may believe they want to monopolize job search, but that is not what the guy said. And show me an example of a job site that want allowed on their platform.
      - bduerst 11y ago
        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?
        ec109685 11y ago
        How could Facebook give everyone unfettered access? Wouldn't that involve paying for everyone's data plan?
        rohmish 11y ago
        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
        bduerst 11y ago
        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?
    - tzs 11y ago
      Babajob is not Facebook's job search site (nor is the other job search site I just noticed on the list, Times Jobs). Only a couple things on the list of sites included in the program are Facebook's. Here is the list (as of a few months ago): Aaj Tak AccuWeather Amarujala.com AP Speaks Babajob BabyCenter & MAMA BBC News Bing Search Cleartrip Daily Bhaskar Dictionary.com ESPN Cricinfo Facebook Facebook Messenger Facts for life Girl Effect HungamaPlay IBNLive iLearn India Today Internet Basics Jagran Jagran Josh Maalai Malar Maharastra Times Malaria No More manoramanews.com NDTV News Hunt OLX Reliance Astrology Reuters Market Lite Socialblood Times Jobs Times of India Translator wikiHow Wikipedia

splintercell 11y ago

> "What Facebook wants is our less fortunate brothers and sisters should be able to poke each other and play Candy Crush, but not be able to look up a fact on Google, or learn something on Khan Academy or sell their produce on a commodity market or even search for a job," he said.< Indians use connectivity very differently than the rest of the world(or at least different from the developed countries). To Indians, phone/internet is a mode of communication first. It was the thing which has been missing from their lives the most. This is especially true for the demographics Facebook was targeting. The reason is the language barrier. A lot more Indians can read and write English needed for directions, news headlines, legal documents, store names etc, than those who can truly express themselves in English. My mom is a great example of this, she can read and write English, but will have trouble understanding a conversation going on purely in English. This is the reason her smartphone usage is almost all reliant upon content created and generated by others. WhatsApp and Facebook are the two most used apps on her phone. It isn't that she wouldn't like to read up facts about politicians and world events from Wikipedia, it's just that Hindi Wikipedia and Google suck. However, if someone were to forward her a news article, a recipe or just make posts on their facebook, she's a lot more comfortable doing that. It's been less than 5 years since she got WhatsApp and Facebook, but the social network she has created around the two facilitates her family in ways it was not imaginable 10 years ago. BTW "It's East India Company all over again" is a cliche at this point and should be considered racist in India (because it's almost exclusively used against any non-Indian entrepreneurship in India).

senthil_rajasek 11y ago
"... 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]
- sremani 11y ago
  Nationalism ? No Sir, this is protectionism and dare I say, Xenophobia.

edge17 11y ago

The problem with this sort of nationalism is that it's all talk. No one offers an alternative solution, so the poor continue to be poor. This attitude is what creates trade barriers and protectionist policies, and India won't solve their problems until they can compete with other nations on manufacturing and prices. The reality is that, unless you are able to keep up with modern tooling you're just going to keep falling farther and farther behind on quality and competitiveness. If India wants to improve the futures of a billion people, bold macro-economic changes have to be taken.

zenincognito 11y ago
I think for all meaningful solutions discussion and "talk" is critical. What would happen if India did not take offence to the free basics program as is ? It is crystal clear that FB was trying to muscle its power around as this meant a large demographics for them. Its a win for India. Win for the free market.
- edge17 11y ago
  I had a good deal of insight into how this played out at the very top. Behind closed doors there's actually support in a lot of good places, but there is quite a lot of political posturing from people that have a stake in the nationalistic angles. It gets votes.
bottled_poe 11y ago
Talk is an important part of progress. Implementing a half-assed solution to such a massive problem will have lasting implications for decades. I realise this goes against the modern hacker groupthink, but in this case requirements analysis is actually an important part of ensuring that billions of people don't get fucked by a US corporation.
- edge17 11y ago
  The issue there is, in the process of not getting f--ed by a US corporation are they not getting f--ed by their own government? There are a whole lot of people making judgements based purely on numbers, but poverty when you see it isn't just numbers. Even analytical folks like Bill Gates will admit to their stark ignorance toward what poverty actually is until having seen it first hand. There's no substitute for seeing what is actually happening. I agree talk is important and having this dialog isn't meaningless, but there is quite a lot of pseudo-intellectualism and general disconnectedness where people with power are more concerned with the next step in their career rather than the roles of the office they're actually occupying. Or some notion that the ideas of protecting the ideas of net-neutrality in the west are some sort of modern day "white man's burden." If I needed to fix my roof today and you told you I couldn't have just a hammer and screwdriver because they can't separated from the whole toolbox, I would be heartbroken. While openly violating net-neutrality isn't going to benefit any politician looking for votes for their next seat in public office, the reality is that net-neutrality has been violated all over the world to the tremendous benefit of the people. It's important to note that, while net-neutrality is mostly upheld in the US, the US suffers plenty of blind spots that result from the biases in general news media, social media, and reporting. Also, to address your original point, implementing nothing will also have massive issues for decades. Your commentary falls under the same heading as the people intellectualizing the problems without having a stake in it. I don't know where you live or anything about you, but go check out rural India some time and find out what real poverty is. If you've never seen it with your own eyes, you honestly have no idea what it is.