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> "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 G

> "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.
  - guelo 11y ago
    Whatever you call it it works really well and India is stupid to play by the colonialist's rules. Look at China, they banned or restricted all the western web companies now they're home to thriving new web giants. With all of India's world class programmers where is India's Baidu or Wechat or Weibo or Alibaba?
    - splintercell 11y ago
      Same place where France's Google, Germany's Amazon is at, they don't need it. China is wasting effort by creating things because they don't wanna use the things rest of the world uses, and the rest of the world doesn't wanna use their things because it would be giving power to a non-liberal democracy.
      - kamaal 11y ago
        >>Same place where France's Google, Germany's Amazon is at, they don't need it. Germany doesn't have their Amazon. They have their BMW's and Volkswagen's. That's their Amazon. >>China is wasting effort by creating things because they don't wanna use the things rest of the world uses So why did Ford have to create his company when Volkswagen existed? >>rest of the world doesn't wanna use their things because it would be giving power to a non-liberal democracy. Democracy doesn't mean two hoots in a world where economy dictates everything from domestic policy to international policy. Absolutely nothing wrong in being self sufficient. Being self sufficient has helped Asian economies more than we know. India and China both have nuclear programs, our own capabilities to run our space programs, and launch our satellite and take of ourselves and our economies. If anything we should be building our capabilities than depending on other nations.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        >Same place where France's Google, Germany's Amazon is at, they don't need it. Germany and France are 1/10 the population of India or smaller. India is 2x+ USA populations. >China is wasting effort by creating things because they don't wanna use the things rest of the world uses, and the rest of the world doesn't wanna use their things because it would be giving power to a non-liberal democracy. Then of course US citizens can have their cake and eat it too, both using what "the whole world uses" AND having control over them because its their services.
- splintercell 11y ago
  In India Nationalism is a good word, whereas in the rest of the world it's an awful word because the rest of the world saw what Nationalism eventually takes you to (WW2, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan). Nobody in US who opposes foreign labor in US would ever wanna be called a 'Nationalist', it is the same thing as being called a racist(actually, it might even be worse).
  - rohmish 11y ago
    Nationalism could be considered good thing if you are in early to mid 20th century. But today when we are this global, being this nationalist makes no sense. Yes I understand nationalism here is grounded in our freedom history but in todays world it makes no sense.
tmerr 11y ago
Interesting point but I'm not sure how it applies to the argument. If websites are low quality, is that justification for an ISP to block them?
- splintercell 11y ago
  Never said that. Also Net Neutrality regulation isn't the only thing preventing ISPs from blocking all the websites they want willy-nilly. What ISPs want is ability to charge more for priority services (which includes but not limited to 'express lanes'). What NN supporters think this would mean is that ISPs will block websites. Anyone has a right to block any content on their private property. Newspapers can censor articles. TV can only air what they wanna air. You can chose to listen to whichever radio station you wanna listen to. Until the ISPs promise you to not block any website, they have a right to block any website or deprioritize it for that matter. When ISPs sell you an internet package, a 'feature' in non-NN world they would wanna provide you is: 'No blocked sites' in addition to Fiber, fast speeds, low prices, etc. Any internet package which has blocked content on it, and blocking wouldn't be done proactively or blacklist-based, but rather like Free Basics was. Only a certain whitelisted sites were allowed. Any such package would be priced lower than a no-blocked sites package. Why? Because fewer people would want it. Discrimination of data also allows investment into the internet infrastructure. It's like Facebook ads are paying for the internet for the poor people. Imagine this, you find out that people in New York love Mangoes, but there is nobody supplying them with Mangoes(and only super rich people are able to afford Mangoes). You find out that the city of Chicago has a LOT of Mangoes and available for very cheap. So you take your savings, buy a truck, drive to Chicago and bring a truck full of Mangoes to NYC. The question arises, since everybody from rich to the poor want Mangoes, at what price do you sell them? If you auction the Mangoes to the highest bidder, then only the super rich will be able to afford it, if you sell it at a minimal profit(since lets say you're not in it for making profit) then while everybody will be able to afford it, only a few people will be able to acquire them until you bring back the next batch. If you want to be able to provide Mangoes to maximum number of people, the smartest strategy is to sell them to the highest bidder, and then use the extra money you're getting to buy more trucks and make frequent trips. This is exactly what Net Neutrality prevents from happening. When discriminatory services are provided, it allows for more services to everyone. You think that Microsoft will be able to pay to block GMail, where as what will happen will be more like UPS's regular mail vs overnight delivery. Amazon will not pay UPS to ship things through regular mail if UPS started accepting money from Walmart to slow down or block Amazon's packages.
sremani 11y ago
I love the Ghosts of East India Company are always invoked when a foreign company enters India with heft, this was said of Coke, Pepsi and now when referring to Facebook Basics and Amazon. Of course, the stone walling of Foreign Retailers like Walmart. Anybody who talks about EIC is a protectionist trying to play on Colonial insecurities. Having grown up in Socialist India, the demagogue who summons East India Company talk scares me more than East India Company itself.
- kamaal 11y ago
  People who opposed coke were a minority, who weren't taken seriously by their own political representatives. Slow adoption of technology had more to do with fear of automation and job losses, than anything.
  - splintercell 11y ago
    > People who opposed coke were a minority, who weren't taken seriously by their own political representatives. < Well then why Coca Cola and IBM were forced to leave the country? George Fernandes was Union minister when he ordered them to leave India. I don't think you can get any more high profile than that.
    - kamaal 11y ago
      I don't know where you are getting your information from. I can still buy Pepsi and Coca Cola in India. And I have friends who work for IBM. Coca Cola has been in bad news for other reasons. If you sell a pesticide poisoned drink, you must expect to be held accountable by the law someday.
      - splintercell 11y ago
        For someone who is a License Raj apologist, you clearly don't know enough the History. In 1977 Janata Party under the leadership of Morarji Desai kicked out Coca Cola and IBM (as the high profile companies). Both the companies came back in 1990s. Go do some research before you start defending economic policies.
singham 11y ago
Your is a very specific example. My mom can't do that. But father can.
unprepare 11y ago
>it's just that Hindi Wikipedia and Google suck And you think enabling tens of millions of people to access these resources will make them....worse? Wikipedia is a community encyclopedia, by its very nature it gets better the more people access and use it, the more editors there are translating articles from other languages, etc. You have not listed a single thing that would make it a net positive for a corporation to decide which sites millions of people should and should not be able to visit. This is to say nothing of the next whatsapp or facebook - this plan is obviously about preventing competition. You say they use the internet for communication first, is it any wonder Facebook/WhatsApp wants to ensure they control what mediums of communication are accessible throughout India? What do you say to the Indian coder who today is working on his WhatsApp competitor? tough shit, facebook already bought the internet in this country?
- splintercell 11y ago
  > And you think enabling tens of millions of people to access these resources will make them....worse? Nope, just saying that non-English Indian language internet sucks. Yes it gets better when more and more people are using it, but that still doesn't change the fact that millions of people currently don't have internet in a form which they can use to make their lives better. > What do you say to the Indian coder who today is working on his WhatsApp competitor? tough shit, facebook already bought the internet in this country? Same thing you're going to say to that 18 year old kid in the year 2030 whose life could have been different had he lived in a more connected India.
  - kamaal 11y ago
    >>Same thing you're going to say to that 18 year old kid in the year 2030 whose life could have been different had he lived in a more connected India. There is a patient suffering from a heart disease, medicine arrives in a few days. You seem to be suggesting that another drug, which can relieve the patient of some of the pains for the next hour, but is sure to kill the patient in the next few months be administered to the patient immediately.
    - 11y ago
Perixoog 11y ago
Does she use email?
- splintercell 11y ago
  I don't think she does. Never really thought of that. She's on WhatsApp like all the time, posting at least 20-200 messages a day. That's not just her, a lot of people in my family do the same thing with WhatsApp. And my mom is the smart one in the family (of her generation). She made everyone learn things like the app.
ignoramous 11y ago
The closed nature of the internet is dangerous for reasons far beyond "mom and pop can't use the rest of the internet anyway" argument: 1. Content Quality reduces due to lack of choice, and lack of exposure: Closed-groups are places where spam, false information, propaganda breed to a high degree. Other parts of internet help verify claims/suspicions/hypothesis. 2. Sets up a monopoly, vendor-lock-in, changes habits: Facebook would hold immeasurable power, once they've got people hooked onto thinking that there's nothing beyond their apps. The content they censor, never appears on their networks; the content they don't like die a bad death, the apps they don't interface with die a rather quick death, the business they don't bless die a death by the guillotine, the businesses they do business with die a death by a thousand paper cuts. 3. MBAs ride the wave with their business plans, corrupt official enact new laws, freedom is lost: Similar schemes by multiple powerful corporations crop-up everywhere. Internet gets fragment, and everyone is left to rue the freedom they gave up. 'Cause its a long battle up the hill, once the rules and laws are in place, they're very difficult to change because of the inherent momentum it affords to all those "rent-seekers" and "opportunistic" businesses that crop up around it. For a case study, refer how the Airline industry squeezed out every ounce of leg-room, and comfort, for more seats, and in hope to turn more profits... There's a lot of other things that might happen, or not happen at all... but, remember, when something's free, the product is usually the user.
- splintercell 11y ago
  > Sets up a monopoly, vendor-lock-in, changes habits: Facebook would hold immeasurable power, once they've got people hooked onto thinking that there's nothing beyond their apps. < I wanna deal with this monopoly argument I keep hearing everywhere in this thread. Can there be a monopoly of a web service? Facebook dethrowned MySpace, did myspace have a monopoly? MySpace dethrowned Friendster. If Google has a monopoly in Search and email then what use is it when it can't push Google Plus? Even with Youtube integration FORCED upon people, nobody used Google plus. Pretty much every single product other than social networks which Facebook has launched, has been a failure. It couldn't replace Gmail, Snapchat, Instagram. Microsoft couldn't compete with iPod, Apple couldn't compete on Maps. It just doesn't matter how much is your market share in a certain existing technology, people judge things based on the products (considering there is no 'price' to lure people away with).

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.
- guelo 11y ago
  Whatever you call it it works really well and India is stupid to play by the colonialist's rules. Look at China, they banned or restricted all the western web companies now they're home to thriving new web giants. With all of India's world class programmers where is India's Baidu or Wechat or Weibo or Alibaba?
  - splintercell 11y ago
    Same place where France's Google, Germany's Amazon is at, they don't need it. China is wasting effort by creating things because they don't wanna use the things rest of the world uses, and the rest of the world doesn't wanna use their things because it would be giving power to a non-liberal democracy.
    - kamaal 11y ago
      >>Same place where France's Google, Germany's Amazon is at, they don't need it. Germany doesn't have their Amazon. They have their BMW's and Volkswagen's. That's their Amazon. >>China is wasting effort by creating things because they don't wanna use the things rest of the world uses So why did Ford have to create his company when Volkswagen existed? >>rest of the world doesn't wanna use their things because it would be giving power to a non-liberal democracy. Democracy doesn't mean two hoots in a world where economy dictates everything from domestic policy to international policy. Absolutely nothing wrong in being self sufficient. Being self sufficient has helped Asian economies more than we know. India and China both have nuclear programs, our own capabilities to run our space programs, and launch our satellite and take of ourselves and our economies. If anything we should be building our capabilities than depending on other nations.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      >Same place where France's Google, Germany's Amazon is at, they don't need it. Germany and France are 1/10 the population of India or smaller. India is 2x+ USA populations. >China is wasting effort by creating things because they don't wanna use the things rest of the world uses, and the rest of the world doesn't wanna use their things because it would be giving power to a non-liberal democracy. Then of course US citizens can have their cake and eat it too, both using what "the whole world uses" AND having control over them because its their services.
splintercell 11y ago
In India Nationalism is a good word, whereas in the rest of the world it's an awful word because the rest of the world saw what Nationalism eventually takes you to (WW2, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan). Nobody in US who opposes foreign labor in US would ever wanna be called a 'Nationalist', it is the same thing as being called a racist(actually, it might even be worse).
- rohmish 11y ago
  Nationalism could be considered good thing if you are in early to mid 20th century. But today when we are this global, being this nationalist makes no sense. Yes I understand nationalism here is grounded in our freedom history but in todays world it makes no sense.

tmerr 11y ago

Interesting point but I'm not sure how it applies to the argument. If websites are low quality, is that justification for an ISP to block them?

splintercell 11y ago
Never said that. Also Net Neutrality regulation isn't the only thing preventing ISPs from blocking all the websites they want willy-nilly. What ISPs want is ability to charge more for priority services (which includes but not limited to 'express lanes'). What NN supporters think this would mean is that ISPs will block websites. Anyone has a right to block any content on their private property. Newspapers can censor articles. TV can only air what they wanna air. You can chose to listen to whichever radio station you wanna listen to. Until the ISPs promise you to not block any website, they have a right to block any website or deprioritize it for that matter. When ISPs sell you an internet package, a 'feature' in non-NN world they would wanna provide you is: 'No blocked sites' in addition to Fiber, fast speeds, low prices, etc. Any internet package which has blocked content on it, and blocking wouldn't be done proactively or blacklist-based, but rather like Free Basics was. Only a certain whitelisted sites were allowed. Any such package would be priced lower than a no-blocked sites package. Why? Because fewer people would want it. Discrimination of data also allows investment into the internet infrastructure. It's like Facebook ads are paying for the internet for the poor people. Imagine this, you find out that people in New York love Mangoes, but there is nobody supplying them with Mangoes(and only super rich people are able to afford Mangoes). You find out that the city of Chicago has a LOT of Mangoes and available for very cheap. So you take your savings, buy a truck, drive to Chicago and bring a truck full of Mangoes to NYC. The question arises, since everybody from rich to the poor want Mangoes, at what price do you sell them? If you auction the Mangoes to the highest bidder, then only the super rich will be able to afford it, if you sell it at a minimal profit(since lets say you're not in it for making profit) then while everybody will be able to afford it, only a few people will be able to acquire them until you bring back the next batch. If you want to be able to provide Mangoes to maximum number of people, the smartest strategy is to sell them to the highest bidder, and then use the extra money you're getting to buy more trucks and make frequent trips. This is exactly what Net Neutrality prevents from happening. When discriminatory services are provided, it allows for more services to everyone. You think that Microsoft will be able to pay to block GMail, where as what will happen will be more like UPS's regular mail vs overnight delivery. Amazon will not pay UPS to ship things through regular mail if UPS started accepting money from Walmart to slow down or block Amazon's packages.

sremani 11y ago

I love the Ghosts of East India Company are always invoked when a foreign company enters India with heft, this was said of Coke, Pepsi and now when referring to Facebook Basics and Amazon. Of course, the stone walling of Foreign Retailers like Walmart. Anybody who talks about EIC is a protectionist trying to play on Colonial insecurities. Having grown up in Socialist India, the demagogue who summons East India Company talk scares me more than East India Company itself.

kamaal 11y ago
People who opposed coke were a minority, who weren't taken seriously by their own political representatives. Slow adoption of technology had more to do with fear of automation and job losses, than anything.
- splintercell 11y ago
  > People who opposed coke were a minority, who weren't taken seriously by their own political representatives. < Well then why Coca Cola and IBM were forced to leave the country? George Fernandes was Union minister when he ordered them to leave India. I don't think you can get any more high profile than that.
  - kamaal 11y ago
    I don't know where you are getting your information from. I can still buy Pepsi and Coca Cola in India. And I have friends who work for IBM. Coca Cola has been in bad news for other reasons. If you sell a pesticide poisoned drink, you must expect to be held accountable by the law someday.
    - splintercell 11y ago
      For someone who is a License Raj apologist, you clearly don't know enough the History. In 1977 Janata Party under the leadership of Morarji Desai kicked out Coca Cola and IBM (as the high profile companies). Both the companies came back in 1990s. Go do some research before you start defending economic policies.

singham 11y ago

Your is a very specific example. My mom can't do that. But father can.

unprepare 11y ago

>it's just that Hindi Wikipedia and Google suck And you think enabling tens of millions of people to access these resources will make them....worse? Wikipedia is a community encyclopedia, by its very nature it gets better the more people access and use it, the more editors there are translating articles from other languages, etc. You have not listed a single thing that would make it a net positive for a corporation to decide which sites millions of people should and should not be able to visit. This is to say nothing of the next whatsapp or facebook - this plan is obviously about preventing competition. You say they use the internet for communication first, is it any wonder Facebook/WhatsApp wants to ensure they control what mediums of communication are accessible throughout India? What do you say to the Indian coder who today is working on his WhatsApp competitor? tough shit, facebook already bought the internet in this country?

splintercell 11y ago
> And you think enabling tens of millions of people to access these resources will make them....worse? Nope, just saying that non-English Indian language internet sucks. Yes it gets better when more and more people are using it, but that still doesn't change the fact that millions of people currently don't have internet in a form which they can use to make their lives better. > What do you say to the Indian coder who today is working on his WhatsApp competitor? tough shit, facebook already bought the internet in this country? Same thing you're going to say to that 18 year old kid in the year 2030 whose life could have been different had he lived in a more connected India.
- kamaal 11y ago
  >>Same thing you're going to say to that 18 year old kid in the year 2030 whose life could have been different had he lived in a more connected India. There is a patient suffering from a heart disease, medicine arrives in a few days. You seem to be suggesting that another drug, which can relieve the patient of some of the pains for the next hour, but is sure to kill the patient in the next few months be administered to the patient immediately.
  - 11y ago

Perixoog 11y ago

Does she use email?

splintercell 11y ago
I don't think she does. Never really thought of that. She's on WhatsApp like all the time, posting at least 20-200 messages a day. That's not just her, a lot of people in my family do the same thing with WhatsApp. And my mom is the smart one in the family (of her generation). She made everyone learn things like the app.

ignoramous 11y ago

The closed nature of the internet is dangerous for reasons far beyond "mom and pop can't use the rest of the internet anyway" argument: 1. Content Quality reduces due to lack of choice, and lack of exposure: Closed-groups are places where spam, false information, propaganda breed to a high degree. Other parts of internet help verify claims/suspicions/hypothesis. 2. Sets up a monopoly, vendor-lock-in, changes habits: Facebook would hold immeasurable power, once they've got people hooked onto thinking that there's nothing beyond their apps. The content they censor, never appears on their networks; the content they don't like die a bad death, the apps they don't interface with die a rather quick death, the business they don't bless die a death by the guillotine, the businesses they do business with die a death by a thousand paper cuts. 3. MBAs ride the wave with their business plans, corrupt official enact new laws, freedom is lost: Similar schemes by multiple powerful corporations crop-up everywhere. Internet gets fragment, and everyone is left to rue the freedom they gave up. 'Cause its a long battle up the hill, once the rules and laws are in place, they're very difficult to change because of the inherent momentum it affords to all those "rent-seekers" and "opportunistic" businesses that crop up around it. For a case study, refer how the Airline industry squeezed out every ounce of leg-room, and comfort, for more seats, and in hope to turn more profits... There's a lot of other things that might happen, or not happen at all... but, remember, when something's free, the product is usually the user.

splintercell 11y ago
> Sets up a monopoly, vendor-lock-in, changes habits: Facebook would hold immeasurable power, once they've got people hooked onto thinking that there's nothing beyond their apps. < I wanna deal with this monopoly argument I keep hearing everywhere in this thread. Can there be a monopoly of a web service? Facebook dethrowned MySpace, did myspace have a monopoly? MySpace dethrowned Friendster. If Google has a monopoly in Search and email then what use is it when it can't push Google Plus? Even with Youtube integration FORCED upon people, nobody used Google plus. Pretty much every single product other than social networks which Facebook has launched, has been a failure. It couldn't replace Gmail, Snapchat, Instagram. Microsoft couldn't compete with iPod, Apple couldn't compete on Maps. It just doesn't matter how much is your market share in a certain existing technology, people judge things based on the products (considering there is no 'price' to lure people away with).