4 ms·

The lingo makes this sound a bit confusing to me. In the Philippines, you get prepaid promos. Nobody calls them "plans" here. Some of the promos are slim, like

by gexla 5y ago

The lingo makes this sound a bit confusing to me. In the Philippines, you get prepaid promos. Nobody calls them "plans" here. Some of the promos are slim, like you might get 100MB or less of data along with texting. Getting "charged" also sounds strange, because you don't get charges. You just use up your data and then you can no longer browse. But that's not quite true. If your data is gone, then you can still use Free Facebook. I always assumed that was the point of using Free Facebook. You don't use it when you have data, you only use it when your data is gone. But I guess there are people who are super conserving their data. Free Facebook sucks, because you can't see images. I guess it sucks worse when Facebook is unexpectedly using up your data. I LOVE it because it's far less distracting. Facebook isn't the only quirky service here. Many of the promos also give you a certain amount of data for YouTube. I found that the service I use just allows all Google data through. With YouTube data, I can still use Google and check Gmail. So, when I'm feeling cheap, I just proxy my connection through an instance on Google Compute, which I had already been using for other purposes.

tedivm 5y ago
You seem to be confusing these promos you mentioned with the low income plans offered in other countries. They are unrelated. These free plans don't have any data limits, they have site limits. You're only allowed to use certain sites otherwise you get charged. However, the phones themselves are supposed to identify this and keep you off those sites so you don't get a surprise bill. For some reason the free facebook app is leaking data from other IP address/Domains that aren't included in the free data plan. The ISPs are picking this up as non-free data usage and are charging customers. Facebook needs to fix their crappy free version to stop this "leakage".
- gexla 5y ago
  Maybe the terms are just confusing to me. In the Philippines, there are no plans. You buy a SIM and it's ready to go. You can get Free Facebook immediately. There is no Free "plan." If you don't buy load, then you aren't going to get "charged" for using free Facebook because you don't have load. And you're right, you get free Facebook for as long as you need to use it. Source: I live in the country and use free Facebook all the time because I'm always forgetful and run out of load. The main reason for using Facebook is to keep in touch with people while I'm on the run. The service is still very popular in the Philippines. EDIT: To clarify, there are no prepaid plans. They call them promos. The terms "plan" and "charges" seem to fit better with a postpaid setup. I believe the reason they would have "promos" is because at one time you could just buy load and it would "just work" without buying any sort of promo. The cost was relatively expensive, and about the same as you would pay for an internet cafe. It was a bit of a pain, because sometimes you would buy load and instantly lose part of that as soon as your phone connected to the internet. You could shut that off though. I don't know if they still have an option for doing that.
Phemist 5y ago
Interesting! Facebook mostly runs behind Akamai right? Maybe there is a method of setting up a VPN that proxies your traffic through Akamai servers, e.g. through their serverless computing offering, that would similarly work.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  I think they got rid of akamai years ago. At their scale it makes perfect sense to roll thier own CDN
  - Phemist 5y ago
    Oh, I thought akamai was actually a facebook spin-off or in some way related, considering it made perfect sense to roll their own CDN, but also to offer this to other parties.
    - KaiserPro 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure that Akamai were one of the survivors of the first dotcom bust.
- miyuru 5y ago
  They haven't not used Akamai for many years now. They have their own servers on carrier networks, similar to Netflix open connect.
- rootsudo 5y ago
  You should to be able to do this in the Philippines for unlimited data and to get around carrier induced "Fair Use Policies. ;)
rolph 5y ago
>>Free Facebook sucks, because you can't see images<< im not sure how free facebook thinks of it, but something like: https://github.com/TheZoraiz/ascii-image-converter https://github.com/TheZoraiz/ascii-image-converter , might help to share images in a text only situation.

by gexla 5y ago

tedivm 5y ago

You seem to be confusing these promos you mentioned with the low income plans offered in other countries. They are unrelated. These free plans don't have any data limits, they have site limits. You're only allowed to use certain sites otherwise you get charged. However, the phones themselves are supposed to identify this and keep you off those sites so you don't get a surprise bill. For some reason the free facebook app is leaking data from other IP address/Domains that aren't included in the free data plan. The ISPs are picking this up as non-free data usage and are charging customers. Facebook needs to fix their crappy free version to stop this "leakage".

gexla 5y ago
Maybe the terms are just confusing to me. In the Philippines, there are no plans. You buy a SIM and it's ready to go. You can get Free Facebook immediately. There is no Free "plan." If you don't buy load, then you aren't going to get "charged" for using free Facebook because you don't have load. And you're right, you get free Facebook for as long as you need to use it. Source: I live in the country and use free Facebook all the time because I'm always forgetful and run out of load. The main reason for using Facebook is to keep in touch with people while I'm on the run. The service is still very popular in the Philippines. EDIT: To clarify, there are no prepaid plans. They call them promos. The terms "plan" and "charges" seem to fit better with a postpaid setup. I believe the reason they would have "promos" is because at one time you could just buy load and it would "just work" without buying any sort of promo. The cost was relatively expensive, and about the same as you would pay for an internet cafe. It was a bit of a pain, because sometimes you would buy load and instantly lose part of that as soon as your phone connected to the internet. You could shut that off though. I don't know if they still have an option for doing that.

Phemist 5y ago

Interesting! Facebook mostly runs behind Akamai right? Maybe there is a method of setting up a VPN that proxies your traffic through Akamai servers, e.g. through their serverless computing offering, that would similarly work.

KaiserPro 5y ago
I think they got rid of akamai years ago. At their scale it makes perfect sense to roll thier own CDN
- Phemist 5y ago
  Oh, I thought akamai was actually a facebook spin-off or in some way related, considering it made perfect sense to roll their own CDN, but also to offer this to other parties.
  - KaiserPro 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure that Akamai were one of the survivors of the first dotcom bust.
miyuru 5y ago
They haven't not used Akamai for many years now. They have their own servers on carrier networks, similar to Netflix open connect.
rootsudo 5y ago
You should to be able to do this in the Philippines for unlimited data and to get around carrier induced "Fair Use Policies. ;)

rolph 5y ago

>>Free Facebook sucks, because you can't see images<< im not sure how free facebook thinks of it, but something like: https://github.com/TheZoraiz/ascii-image-converter https://github.com/TheZoraiz/ascii-image-converter , might help to share images in a text only situation.