[parennoob]

> I'm skeptical of this argument that poor people will be forever satisfied with just chatting and browsing Facebook and will never upgrade to full internet.

It's not just Facebook that's a part of Free Basics, it is Facebook, Wikipedia, and a bunch of other services that are "approved" by Facebook. So the chance is greater that people will become used to these free services (not just Facebook) being perceived as the Internet.

[peteretep]

Nobody has provided the tiniest shred of evidence for this being true. Unless Indians are dramatically different from other Facebook users, and don't post many external links, everyone in the free service will be bombarded with what they're missing.

[pmontra]

I checked my feed right now. First 20 posts: 8 are content created on FB (text, pictures snapped for uploading, etc), 12 are shares of external content. Hopefully you are right but don't underestimate a fact: the have not (the ones in the walled garden) won't see any of those content if they don't have friends on the open internet. And even if so, FB might choose not to show them content that they can't see anyway.