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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

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.
    - thecrazyone 9y ago
      I don't understand this line of reasoning usually expected of corporations. Why do they have to part with their profits which they have legitimately earned? They can but should not be required or expected to. Why would you not fund another person's internet from your salary? Are profits that much different from salaries?
      - parthdesai 9y ago
        Sure, so don't expect people to get pissed when you call the service you are going to provide "Internet" or "Basics". That is not Internet. And basics without having access to Google. Yeah sure.
  - thecrazyone 9y ago
    Wow! This would be so bad: 1) Govt will have to raise more taxes (this is a curb on freedom). Why should someone else pay for your services? 2) Bigger Govt will have political motives which will murk up the services it provides. Said another way, FB loses business if consumers don't like it, but a govt goes on because it's funded by tax dollars not customer revenue
- markyuckerberg 9y ago
  >> I'd really like to know why it's better for me to have no internet at all than some but not all? Because under the pretext of giving you internet, Facebook is creating shadow profiles about me. Now I would like to know why it is more important for you to get stuff for free than my privacy? All you need to do, of course, is get Facebook to promise me that it won't create these shadow profiles about non-users. At that moment, you should (hopefully) have a little bit of an "aha!". If that free internet were actually provided by the government, and was funded by taxation, "we the people" (however comical that notion is these days), actually have the legislative and ultimately the executive power to stop our government from doing shady things with that internet. What is your recourse if the same thing is decided behind closed doors inside a corporation? I will answer that question for you based on how these things usually turn out: whatever the corporation eventually agrees to will turn out to be better for them, because it will be worse for their competitors. Think: audit of all data collected, having onerous laws around financial reporting, having to agree with a million different compliance issues etc. At the end of it all, someone will look back on it and wring their hands: "If only the people had been a little wiser and stopped the giant corporation from having their way, things could have been so much better". Think, for a moment, about the farcical fines these megaliths are facing. If you were an executive at any of these companies, would you actually lose sleep over them? If the fines are not acting as a deterrent, why even bother with the fine? Again, where is your recourse? I am all for public shaming of FB employees, because if they were to stop counting their bank balance and just look themselves in the mirror for a little bit, they know they have completely earned this shaming.
  - dingaling 9y ago
    Free Basics puts no obligation on its users to visit or use Facebook at all. They can browse Accuweather, BBC News, Bing, Wikipedia and other localised websites all day long if they please. For free.
    - pvaldes 9y ago
      It seems that facebook saved information also about people without a facebook account each time they visit a web displaying a sort of 'like' buttons so even if you just browse those webs you may be watched and 'classified' by facebook (without agreing with any terms of contract document with facebook).
- xfer 9y ago
  Because browsing facebook selected sensored information is what poor people would like to do? I also grew with no internet for entirety of my childhood, but i never wished for free internet that could let me browse some social networking site.
  - thecrazyone 9y ago
    Wouldn't this then mean, to each his own. Why should one person's preferences be imposed on others?
    - xfer 9y ago
      Where is the personal preference when facebook is selecting what you should be looking at?
- peteretep 9y ago
  > I don't understand people's objections This will be my least popular comment for a while, but having read many many comments about it, it seems to be a combination of two pieces: * Massive and lingering anti-colonial sentiment * Disregard for those lower down on the social totem pole Dressed up in fancy sounding intellectual privacy concerns.
- dilemma 9y ago
  It's not free Internet.

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.
  - thecrazyone 9y ago
    I don't understand this line of reasoning usually expected of corporations. Why do they have to part with their profits which they have legitimately earned? They can but should not be required or expected to. Why would you not fund another person's internet from your salary? Are profits that much different from salaries?
    - parthdesai 9y ago
      Sure, so don't expect people to get pissed when you call the service you are going to provide "Internet" or "Basics". That is not Internet. And basics without having access to Google. Yeah sure.
- thecrazyone 9y ago
  Wow! This would be so bad: 1) Govt will have to raise more taxes (this is a curb on freedom). Why should someone else pay for your services? 2) Bigger Govt will have political motives which will murk up the services it provides. Said another way, FB loses business if consumers don't like it, but a govt goes on because it's funded by tax dollars not customer revenue
markyuckerberg 9y ago
>> I'd really like to know why it's better for me to have no internet at all than some but not all? Because under the pretext of giving you internet, Facebook is creating shadow profiles about me. Now I would like to know why it is more important for you to get stuff for free than my privacy? All you need to do, of course, is get Facebook to promise me that it won't create these shadow profiles about non-users. At that moment, you should (hopefully) have a little bit of an "aha!". If that free internet were actually provided by the government, and was funded by taxation, "we the people" (however comical that notion is these days), actually have the legislative and ultimately the executive power to stop our government from doing shady things with that internet. What is your recourse if the same thing is decided behind closed doors inside a corporation? I will answer that question for you based on how these things usually turn out: whatever the corporation eventually agrees to will turn out to be better for them, because it will be worse for their competitors. Think: audit of all data collected, having onerous laws around financial reporting, having to agree with a million different compliance issues etc. At the end of it all, someone will look back on it and wring their hands: "If only the people had been a little wiser and stopped the giant corporation from having their way, things could have been so much better". Think, for a moment, about the farcical fines these megaliths are facing. If you were an executive at any of these companies, would you actually lose sleep over them? If the fines are not acting as a deterrent, why even bother with the fine? Again, where is your recourse? I am all for public shaming of FB employees, because if they were to stop counting their bank balance and just look themselves in the mirror for a little bit, they know they have completely earned this shaming.
- dingaling 9y ago
  Free Basics puts no obligation on its users to visit or use Facebook at all. They can browse Accuweather, BBC News, Bing, Wikipedia and other localised websites all day long if they please. For free.
  - pvaldes 9y ago
    It seems that facebook saved information also about people without a facebook account each time they visit a web displaying a sort of 'like' buttons so even if you just browse those webs you may be watched and 'classified' by facebook (without agreing with any terms of contract document with facebook).
xfer 9y ago
Because browsing facebook selected sensored information is what poor people would like to do? I also grew with no internet for entirety of my childhood, but i never wished for free internet that could let me browse some social networking site.
- thecrazyone 9y ago
  Wouldn't this then mean, to each his own. Why should one person's preferences be imposed on others?
  - xfer 9y ago
    Where is the personal preference when facebook is selecting what you should be looking at?
peteretep 9y ago
> I don't understand people's objections This will be my least popular comment for a while, but having read many many comments about it, it seems to be a combination of two pieces: * Massive and lingering anti-colonial sentiment * Disregard for those lower down on the social totem pole Dressed up in fancy sounding intellectual privacy concerns.
dilemma 9y ago
It's not free Internet.