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Facebook tried to pull a similar gimmick in India called "Free Basics". It was dealt with criticism and the regulatory authority in India was smart enough to re

• aaron-lebo 9y ago
  It makes me weirdly happy as an American to see it happen. What happens when instead of massive, boring, soulless, mediocre corporations like Facebook serving 2 billion sharecroppers, we've got multiple or even dozens of smaller networks serving regions and niches? That has the potential for innovation we can't begin to understand. Facebook is akin to McDonald's not only spreading internationally but also replacing all other restaurants once it gets in a country. Who likes Big Macs that much? It's why we should criticize the actions of any power (whether the Us, China, the EU, Russia) to control citizens and eliminate smaller cultures. Maybe melodramatic but it's exciting. The growth of Chinese networks is interesting, wonder how they would develop under a democratic government? Further innovation or do they only exist because of that environment as you suggest?
  • dqpb 9y ago
    What happens when ... we've got multiple or even dozens of smaller networks serving regions and niches? I think there are already more than two dozen smaller niche social networks.
    • dreamfactored 9y ago
      What we need is p2p social networks. Huge potential in the tech and it 'just' needs polishing. Salmon protocol for comment threads for example is way more powerful than what we use today (it publishes comments across subscriber networks so you could have a conversation being pieced together across separate social networks). Maybe if some big users with a lot of early adopters like reddit and HN got behind that as a movement and started adopting the tech we would see some traction.
  • wil421 9y ago
    >Facebook is akin to McDonald's not only spreading internationally but also replacing all other restaurants once it gets in a country. Sources for McDonlads replacing all other restaurants. Maybe you haven't traveled as much but for me I always check out local McDonalds, hardly actually eating there. One of the reason they have been successful is adopting local tastes. Costa Rica has Gallo Pinto in addition to fries as options. Serbia has this crazy Crispy meat thing. With McDonalds I know what the product is and I pay for it. With Facebook it's a little less clear what they are doing. One certainty with FB, we are the product. With FB they are a little nefarious, especially the Free Basics thing. Google is doing similar things with Google Fiber and the defunct ballon idea.
    • hellofunk 9y ago
      You misunderstood OP's use of the word "akin."
    • thecrazyone 9y ago
      I concur with your McD thinking. I think you've got FB and Google wrong. I'm not saying they're saints, but in their self interest, they serve their customers. So they've their customers' interests in mind If people cared about privacy that much, they should use some other network. People weigh the trade-offs of benefits vs costs and still choose to use FB and Google.
  • mahyarm 9y ago
    Don't worry, Tencent is just as much souless and bigcorp than facebook. I would say even more comparing what my friends have said about working at tencent vs facebook.
    • dilemma 9y ago
      what do your friend say about Tencent vs Facebook?
      • mahyarm 9y ago
        Tencent is a pretty bad place to work at, how they constantly discarded their work projects, have typical chinese work hours where people sleep under their desk despite being huge co and said other friends who worked there had a bad time. They did like their immediate co-workers although. While friends and coworkers who work(ed) at facebook have had a much better time, with far more perks, interesting projects work not thrown away and a much better work life balance.
  • thecrazyone 9y ago
    I don't get this excitement we have to control other people's lives. We should not interfere with voluntary transactions. Free markets serve niches not Govts
• serhei 9y ago
  To paint a less rosy picture, many countries are good at keeping out US based tracking / social media monopolies because they want to support their own tracking / social media monopolies. It's kind of a "well, duh" moment that China is going to support its own Internet services rather than let that data be collected by people in the United States. Russia has a similar government-backed Internet services ecosystem going on, although they dropped the ball on blogging and wound up having to do a complex operation to buy Livejournal (where all the Russians were) and move the servers to Russian territory.
  • Joe-Z 9y ago
    >To paint a less rosy picture... I think different companies, although they may be monopolies in their own right, spread out over multiple countries is still preferable to a global monopoly. Not just because of data collection, also regarding keeping tech know-how locally for example.
    • wbl 9y ago
      It really isn't. Competition globally is better for consumers. Imagine if you had to drive only US cars to keep automotive knowledge local.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • hodgesrm 9y ago
        Cars are not really a valid analogy here because we're talking about services with network effects that impose behavioral norms for all users regardless of location. To use your driving example it would be like saying that to use a car everyone has to drive on the same side of the road or accept identical pollution control standards. That's obviously not the case. Cars are adapted--sometimes quite substantially--to local jurisdictions.
        • drawnwren 9y ago
• skybrian 9y ago
  I'm guessing WeChat would be considered a monopoly in China, if they cared about such things. Smaller companies do scary things too. Consider Equifax, the zillion adtech companies out there injecting Javascript everywhere, and all the no-name Android vendors that never put out security updates. At least some of the big names invest in improving security and do some policing of the smaller ones. The Internet's feudal structure comes from specialization due to outsourcing security, often from smaller to larger companies. Cloudflare is largely in the business of providing protection to smaller companies. Or take the whole cloud thing; this makes security much easier than running your own data center. Even at the individual level, we don't want to run our own spam filters and moderate our own comments. We want a trusted source of security updates. Someone needs to keep the bad guys out so we give others the power to do it for us.
  • pc2g4d 9y ago
    Yes, this is the way to understand it. Internet is feudal. Because law hasn't kept up with the transition to a new source of power (data + information flows) the familiar forms of feudalism are emerging. So how does the Internet transition to constitutional monarchy and democracy?
    • rublev 9y ago
      >So how does the Internet transition to constitutional monarchy and democracy? What does this mean? How you envision this happening?
      • pc2g4d 9y ago
        No idea. Right now, the digital world exists at the behest and mercy of the physical world. But eventually the digital world becomes more important---political structures there determine the fate of the physical world, rather than the other way around. Of course, this is a false distinction. The digital and the physical world are actually one and the same, viewed through different lenses. But eventually the network and services and content and algorithms of the digital realm will become central. Perhaps this is how it happens: Facebook, Google, Amazon are proto-states. They are centers of power which dispense favors upon their "citizens" (users) in exchange for power over the users (data). At present they're primarily constrained by an environment of competition fostered by government. But over time they assume more and more functions of government. You can already "vote" in these corporations (as shareholders). Suppose the government that currently constrains the corporations weakens, fractures. The U.S. splits up, for example. Then the boundary-crossing multinational corporations become the unified power centers. Now they are constrained only by each other. A great power struggle occurs in which the digital powers strive for dominance. There is a physical element---cutting fiber connections, etc.---but mostly it's about algorithms. Eventually the virtual space is partitioned into states just as the physical world. In time, the "users" in each virtual state become discontented. They revolt and demand greater say in their governance. They live in virtual realities governed by the virtual states. Thus they have a great incentive to gain power over the governments. Thus democracy arises. Anyway, this is all really far-out, weird thinking, and maybe it doesn't hold up. But something like this seems roughly plausible.
• parthdesai 9y ago
  Free Basics and Internet.org were two of the most disgusting moves i have seen from fb. I wonder if any of Indian workers working at fb questioned zuck about it at one of the his town-hall meetings ( if it is possible to do so).
  • freyir 9y ago
    > Free Basics and Internet.org were two of the most disgusting moves They're still disgusting moves. India prohibited Internet.org, but Facebook is actively pushing it in many other countries (Nigeria, Indonesia, South Africa, Bolivia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Guatemala, etc.).
    • parthdesai 9y ago
      I agree, but i'm Indian and i could relate more to what happened in India.
  • donatj 9y ago
    I don't understand people's objections. Can you clarify? As someone who was too poor to afford internet for years, I would have adored such a deal. It would have greatly improved my standard of living, and to me I feel like the objections come from people with no understanding of what poverty is like. It really feels like looking a gift horse in the mouth; I feel like the benefits of free internet for the poor far outweigh the self righteousness. I'd really like to know why it's better for me to have no internet at all than some but not all?
    • justlearning123 9y ago
      A better alternative will be for the government to provide free internet to the poor (like they do with food) than companies creating walled spaces.
      • parthdesai 9y ago
        Or, you know if facebook really cared, they should have provided 1gb for free or something like that.
• ReverseCold 9y ago
  More context for Jio, they offered free cell phone coverage for anyone in India for a few months (LTE, great coverage everywhere, very fast) and now are offering it very cheap. I'll leave it to you to figure out how/why. :)
  • thecrazyone 9y ago
    What's your point? Is it that they're good, bad? What is that you're claiming. You might think it's obvious, but unfortunately, your claims are not obvious from your post
• Iv 9y ago
  Do you remember the people pasting a paragraph saying things like "I do not consent to be tracked and my informations to be sold"? It was met with snark by a lot but I really wonder if it would not be legally valid in several countries.
  • aceofspades19 9y ago
    Maybe if you didn't already agree to the EULA. While it's true that some EULAs are of dubious legality, I doubt a court would say that the facebook EULA is totally invalid, but a random post on facebook is legally binding.
    • Iv 9y ago
      The EULA says "Accept these conditions and if you fail to meet them, we termninate the service". The post says "I refuse these specific conditions (that were probably invalid to begin with) and if you disagree, just terminate my account."
      • thecrazyone 9y ago
        Yeah whatever you say on your post is not considered a legal communication. The statements you post on your wall are akin to randomly shouting out statements on the street. Other parties are not expected to listening to that and taking that seriously (FB included). It's like leaving an email in your drafts folder expecting google to read it. Or typing something into Google Search box and expecting that to be legal communication. More info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDHDM7PfyYs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDHDM7PfyYs The above video makes good points even though it's been posted by college humor (not particularly meant to get your legal advice from)
• john2x 9y ago
  Meanwhile, in the Philippines, we embraced this 'Free Basics' concept (or almost like it). All mobile data providers here provide free access to Facebook. <rant> I personally blame this as a big part of why our country's government is in its current state. With unrestricted free access to Facebook, it was exceedingly easy to spread memes/fake news about how "bad-ass and cool" Duterte is and how hilariously incompetent the opposition is. And it's still going on today. It is now used as a propaganda machine, up to the point where one particular Facebook page owner spreading memes/fake news now holds an official position in the government, thanks to their 'services'. </rant>
  • t1o5 9y ago
    In India we got lucky this time that the TRAI ( Regulatory Authority ) rejected the proposal even though Mr Z personally visited PM Modi to get his support including a town hall in IIT. Facebook even employed questionable tactics to get support for this. Eventually it did not work out. Now Google, with its Indian origin CEO is trying his hand by providing free wifi at Indian Railway stations. Everyone now wants a chunk of a growing economy like India to convert its people to "products". Indian authorities should be smart enough to differentiate between the good & bad things that giants like Facebook & Google can do to the country, its economy and nowadays even its stability.
• minusSeven 9y ago
  In other words there should be crystal clear regulations that says what Monopolies(and even normal companies) can and cannot do. The problem is having those regulations in most countries can become a bureaucratic nightmare.
  • thecrazyone 9y ago
    1) There is no incentive for the Govt to get this right. 2) Besides, govt bureaucrats don't have the ability now (IMHO) to think rationally and get to the best decision 3) Govt has no business to get in the way of voluntary transactions between two adults
• jm6 9y ago
  Ignorance at it's finest. Unlike the US the Indian telecom sector has cut throat competition, which is why data and call rates are at global lows. Even so they don't have the resources to connect all of India. The math doesn't add up. Facebook Basics would have provided said resources. A robotic bunch of Indians influenced by the Net Neutrality hoopla developed and targeted at Monopoly Telecom in the US blindly applied these arguments to the Indian context. The result - rural India is and will remain unconnected. Telcos have no great new ideas on how to connect rural india (and therefore no great avenues to grow) so they are starting to merge. Soon we will have 1-2 giant Telcos monopolies. The clueless herd driven by social media reinforcement and validation strikes again.
  • viola11 9y ago
    So in other words rural India was saved from becoming the robot slaves of social media activists by those very same activists?
  • markyuckerberg 9y ago
    So you are simultaneously saying that the cut throat competition of the telco sector is keeping the data and call rates at global lows (a good thing), and saying that we need not have the same competition when the infrastructure for rural India is built out? If competition acts the way it normally does, someone is certainly going to figure out how to connect rural India in an economically viable way and profit immensely. Or the mathematics won't pan out, and the company dies. And the government will probably step in to fill the breach. And it will probably do an awful job (remember the mathematics never panned out?) Both of these are good outcomes. Compare this to handing over the control of such vital infrastructure to a megacorp which has a consistent track record of violating the trust of everyone - the users (random privacy rule changes), the advertisers (fake video views), those they acquire (e.g. the comedy show called WhatsApp ads), the jurisdictions they operate in (arbitrary censorship of content to make sure they kowtow to the public flavor du jour) and last but not least the legal system (claiming that they cannot/will not infer a WhatsApp user profile based on FB user profile knowing the pitifully tiny effect of the punitive damages). With such a track record, it is a surprise that they even have the temerity to still approach governments around the world to propose FreeBasics.