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Can someone give me a good argument as to why no internet is better than free limited internet with facebook + google search + wikipedia? If Facebook will prov

by exacube 11y ago

Can someone give me a good argument as to why no internet is better than free limited internet with facebook + google search + wikipedia? If Facebook will provide free limited internet (and as always, you can pay regularly to get full internet access) for a lot of basic service, it only seems reasonable they will package their facebook and messenger apps as well. On the whole, do you think internet.org is a bad, negative effort?

ndesaulniers 11y ago
Because it's the opposite of net neutrality. It's picking winners and losers. If Facebook is free, but you have to pay for local home grown Indian social networking sites, well then how will those businesses ever compete? Personally, I'm torn. I'm all for free access to Wikipedia. The problem is, not all of the world's knowledge exists there, so you therefor are only giving people a taste of knowledge. With Facebook and Google, you are choosing the silos for people, and making it very very difficult for competitors. And without competition, localized monopolies tend to stagnate, which ultimately hurts consumers.
- exacube 11y ago
  I see the argument for competition, but I don't think that freedom is as important as the freedom of communication and education. Imagine someone in the slums of India (there are tens of millions in these conditions) wanting to learn more about irrigation. Is it more important that they have no limited internet for the sake for competition, or limited internet?
  - yellowapple 11y ago
    Neither is important if they have offline-cached copies of Wikipedia (all the content of which is readily available for download and made available under a CC-BY-SA / GNU GFDL dual-license), which can then be distributed on optical media, thumb drives, or some other relatively-inexpensive data distribution medium. This is something that's totally compatible with net neutrality while providing the same benefits you're advocating.
    - sumedh 11y ago
      Poor people in India have cheap smartphones but they dont have PCs so optical media, thumb drives are useless to them.
      - yellowapple 11y ago
        Old PCs are actually much cheaper nowadays than even the cheapest smartphones of equivalent computing power, and typically include more than enough storage space for the entirety of Wikipedia. One shared PC in a community would solve that problem right quick. Even without that, thumb drives are usable with smartphones via OTG cables.
  - nileshtrivedi 11y ago
    Fair enough. But consider the fact that there ARE alternative solutions and internet.org is not the most optimal. Why not give X megabytes/month data to the user for free and let HIM chose what the "essential internet services" for HIM are? Internet.org is a non-profit so it would be completely fine giving it for free. But even if they wanted to recover their costs, they could do it in a neutral manner - by ads. Even with your premise accepted, there are better solutions. Internet.org's current model makes sense only when you consider the ulterior motives as well.
  - ndesaulniers 11y ago
    See also: http://boingboing.net/2015/04/19/internet-org-delivering-poor.html http://boingboing.net/2015/04/19/internet-org-delivering-poo...
- e12e 11y ago
  Funny thing is, people could probably use Wikipedia to fulfil all the functions that Facebook fulfils for users (not the function it fulfils for Facebook/advertisers). I could see pages used as public group walls, profile pages as personal walls, "discuss"-pages as discussion. Only thing missing is "private" chat/pages -- but a browser-plugin with support for OTR/GPG (encrypt to many recipients...) could fix that, and be way more secure/private than Facebook...
andreyf 11y ago
> On the whole, do you think internet.org is a bad, negative effort? I don't know, but I can conceive of it as a possibility that Internet.org would hinder the propagation of NN "real internet" providers.
_anshulk 11y ago
If facebook is feeling so generous they can provide a few mb of usage free instead of free access to facebook.
kamaal 11y ago
>>why no internet is better than free limited internet with facebook + google search + wikipedia? Eventually these companies will work towards making internet difficult to access so their own sites can have the monopoly. Internet isn't impossible to provide eventually every one will have access. But to do it this way will create problems which takes decades to solve.
21millionbtc 11y ago
Internet.org can push an agenda and silence other voices. There is a word for that, and it's propaganda. No propaganda is better than free limited propaganda (even if it does come packaged with google seach and wikipedia).
chaosmonkey 11y ago
They can change the model to give a fixed amount of data for free, instead of picking a bunch of sites, breaking NN. I doubt it will happen.
thetruthseeker1 11y ago
This is not a black and white scenario as you have characterized or how Mark Z has characterized. As more and more people come out of poverty, they will be able to access basic services such as water, electricity and data plans. There is no reason why data plans is the only service among the three services that needs to be free. If it is free, it is the government that should provide it rather than private corporations whose single interest is profit. Now, people who are super poor may not be able to pay for electricity let alone will access free internet. Either way, FB and bunch of other companies want to profit out of the people who are uninformed and these people may end up buying only services and products from those limited free websites that they get from free internet. It also looks like the telecom services might take advantage of this and partner with some companies provide selective access to some websites and the biggest losers of this kind of partnership could be companies that dont have enough capital to pay each of the telecom providers to be in their "basic package"
dhruvbird 11y ago
FYI google isn't on that list: http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/facebook-and-reliance-communcations-bring-internet-org-to-india-253885.html http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/facebook-and-relianc...
jfoster 11y ago
Actually, if they only provide Facebook services, one might argue that they are not providing Internet connectivity at all; they're providing Facebook.

by exacube 11y ago

ndesaulniers 11y ago

Because it's the opposite of net neutrality. It's picking winners and losers. If Facebook is free, but you have to pay for local home grown Indian social networking sites, well then how will those businesses ever compete? Personally, I'm torn. I'm all for free access to Wikipedia. The problem is, not all of the world's knowledge exists there, so you therefor are only giving people a taste of knowledge. With Facebook and Google, you are choosing the silos for people, and making it very very difficult for competitors. And without competition, localized monopolies tend to stagnate, which ultimately hurts consumers.

exacube 11y ago
I see the argument for competition, but I don't think that freedom is as important as the freedom of communication and education. Imagine someone in the slums of India (there are tens of millions in these conditions) wanting to learn more about irrigation. Is it more important that they have no limited internet for the sake for competition, or limited internet?
- yellowapple 11y ago
  Neither is important if they have offline-cached copies of Wikipedia (all the content of which is readily available for download and made available under a CC-BY-SA / GNU GFDL dual-license), which can then be distributed on optical media, thumb drives, or some other relatively-inexpensive data distribution medium. This is something that's totally compatible with net neutrality while providing the same benefits you're advocating.
  - sumedh 11y ago
    Poor people in India have cheap smartphones but they dont have PCs so optical media, thumb drives are useless to them.
    - yellowapple 11y ago
      Old PCs are actually much cheaper nowadays than even the cheapest smartphones of equivalent computing power, and typically include more than enough storage space for the entirety of Wikipedia. One shared PC in a community would solve that problem right quick. Even without that, thumb drives are usable with smartphones via OTG cables.
- nileshtrivedi 11y ago
  Fair enough. But consider the fact that there ARE alternative solutions and internet.org is not the most optimal. Why not give X megabytes/month data to the user for free and let HIM chose what the "essential internet services" for HIM are? Internet.org is a non-profit so it would be completely fine giving it for free. But even if they wanted to recover their costs, they could do it in a neutral manner - by ads. Even with your premise accepted, there are better solutions. Internet.org's current model makes sense only when you consider the ulterior motives as well.
- ndesaulniers 11y ago
  See also: http://boingboing.net/2015/04/19/internet-org-delivering-poor.html http://boingboing.net/2015/04/19/internet-org-delivering-poo...
e12e 11y ago
Funny thing is, people could probably use Wikipedia to fulfil all the functions that Facebook fulfils for users (not the function it fulfils for Facebook/advertisers). I could see pages used as public group walls, profile pages as personal walls, "discuss"-pages as discussion. Only thing missing is "private" chat/pages -- but a browser-plugin with support for OTR/GPG (encrypt to many recipients...) could fix that, and be way more secure/private than Facebook...

andreyf 11y ago

> On the whole, do you think internet.org is a bad, negative effort? I don't know, but I can conceive of it as a possibility that Internet.org would hinder the propagation of NN "real internet" providers.

_anshulk 11y ago

If facebook is feeling so generous they can provide a few mb of usage free instead of free access to facebook.

kamaal 11y ago

>>why no internet is better than free limited internet with facebook + google search + wikipedia? Eventually these companies will work towards making internet difficult to access so their own sites can have the monopoly. Internet isn't impossible to provide eventually every one will have access. But to do it this way will create problems which takes decades to solve.

21millionbtc 11y ago

Internet.org can push an agenda and silence other voices. There is a word for that, and it's propaganda. No propaganda is better than free limited propaganda (even if it does come packaged with google seach and wikipedia).

chaosmonkey 11y ago

They can change the model to give a fixed amount of data for free, instead of picking a bunch of sites, breaking NN. I doubt it will happen.

thetruthseeker1 11y ago

This is not a black and white scenario as you have characterized or how Mark Z has characterized. As more and more people come out of poverty, they will be able to access basic services such as water, electricity and data plans. There is no reason why data plans is the only service among the three services that needs to be free. If it is free, it is the government that should provide it rather than private corporations whose single interest is profit. Now, people who are super poor may not be able to pay for electricity let alone will access free internet. Either way, FB and bunch of other companies want to profit out of the people who are uninformed and these people may end up buying only services and products from those limited free websites that they get from free internet. It also looks like the telecom services might take advantage of this and partner with some companies provide selective access to some websites and the biggest losers of this kind of partnership could be companies that dont have enough capital to pay each of the telecom providers to be in their "basic package"

dhruvbird 11y ago

FYI google isn't on that list: http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/facebook-and-reliance-communcations-bring-internet-org-to-india-253885.html http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/facebook-and-relianc...

jfoster 11y ago

Actually, if they only provide Facebook services, one might argue that they are not providing Internet connectivity at all; they're providing Facebook.