[mwsherman]

There is a remarkable disconnect between the critics and the users here. Note that no users were cited in the article.

I understand not liking Facebook’s motives, that’s fine. Perhaps we can defer to the preferences of users here, who can choose to accept those motives or not, and to decide if the trade-off is an acceptable one. If we believe that they are unqualified to make this choice, one should explain that position.

Instead, the critics are imposing their preference on the users here, who are poor and (in this article) unheard. Can we please see an article where such people are quoted, and perhaps some numbers about usage, revealing their empirical preferences?

[kuschku]

Okay, let’s give the users of Facebook predecessors of Free Basic a voice.

Here am I, a German who used to use Facebook Zero (free access to Facebook via 3G) while I was in middle (and later high) school.

As soon as it became available, I – and some of my friends – stopped using SchuelerVZ, the social network most people used to use at the time – and instead actually tried to convince others to switch to Facebook, too.

"It’s free! You don’t need to pay anything!"

We tried to get as much content as possible inside the network, and never actually left it – because we had literally no money on our prepaid SIMs, and therefore couldn’t access other pages. Everything that wasn’t on Facebook didn’t exist for us.

In only a few months after Facebook Zero launched, the user numbers of SchuelerVZ and StudiVZ rapidly declined.

Today, we don’t have a choice for social networks anymore, Facebook has a monopoly.

    ----------------

Facebook Zero: http://0.facebook.com/

[chejazi]

Are you happy with the outcome? Would you make the same decision knowing what you know now?

[kuschku]

No, I’m not really happy. With the unability to turn the news feed to a normal setting, with the huge privacy issues with Facebook, etc I wouldn’t have done the same again.

But by now they have a next to monopoly, and a new competitor can’t fairly win on the market anymore, and would have to resort to the very same tricks.

[zanny]

How is a poor Indian citizen supposed to make a judgment on if having a locked down Internet where they can only use Facebook is better than this Internet they might not have even heard of with millions of websites? They only see one side of this argument if any at all. From their perspective they do not know alternatives even exist.

[asift]

It's not that they don't see other alternatives. This is true, but the reality is that other realistic alternatives don't even exist.

Their realistic option set is: (a) free access to an incredibly valuable set of resources, or (b) nothing.

I would take (a) over (b) any day. I would hope that broader alternatives would eventually come along (and history tells us it will), but the crowd that wants the Indian poor to have nothing until that day comes is, in my opinion, despicable. Heck, I might not even mind some gated internet in the US if I was free to opt-in/out of it and it reduced my internet costs.

[dkarapetyan]

It's not an either/or. You're drawing a false dichotomy and then choosing the lesser of two evils. There is a third possibility as others have pointed out which is to actually lobby for improving all the basic infrastructure so that the real internet and not some hobbled version of it is available and accessible to everyone.

[Pyxl101]

It's not a false dichotomy. No one is offering to improve the basic infrastructure, nor lobby for it. The actual choices are the ones he outlined above.

Do you ascribe to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics? http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethi...

[dkarapetyan]

Yes, but false dichotomy does not mean you can't make up a valid third option. I don't know about the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics.

[asift]

I'm talking about right at this immediate moment. You're correct they can lobby, but while they take the time to engage in that process, they will either have Zuckerburg's free internet or they will have nothing. The dichotomy is very real in the present.

[hackinthebochs]

Lobbying is not a legitimate option as it comes with an open ended timeframe for success.

[vaishaksuresh]

>Heck, I might not even mind some gated internet in the US if I was free to opt-in/out of it and it reduced my internet costs.

The key difference is you would still have choice in the US and people in India would not.

[asift]

I want people in India to have a choice. They can choose to accept Zuckerburg's free internet or they can wait for something else to come along.

It's Zuckerburg's critics that want to deny Indians their right to choose by taking away their free service and leaving them without internet in the present. As was noted earlier, the most vocal critics in this situation are not the poor people in India that are most directly impacted by this situation.

[vaishaksuresh]

This issue is not about having a particular choice or not having anything. Accepting this paves the way for facebook to control the internet that a majority of people are seeing for the first time. Also, it is not really a land-grab as the title says, it is grabbing an untapped market with millions of new users. Facebook most likely wants to mine data from a new potential market.

[labster]

It sounds like Indians are being forced to choose between two sides of a false dichotomy. Aren't cellular data networks realistic?

[josh2600]

"How is a poor American citizen supposed to make a judgment on if having a locked down Internet where they can only use AOL is better than this Internet they might not have even heard of with millions of websites? They only see one side of this argument if any at all. From their perspective they do not know alternatives even exist."

1999 called and wants it's keywords back...

[digbyloftus]

"Internet they might not have even heard of with millions of websites?"

If they haven't even heard of it then it doesn't sound like its a viable alternative does it?

[lunula]

It does seem that people in India are speaking up against this. Now you will quip that these activists must already have internet access, otherwise they would not even know to speak up. But the activists are at least from the same communities as the target market for this program. They are fighting for their families and friends. This seems very genuine and selfless in comparison to the motivations of the company and ego they are fighting against.

The alternative would be to ignore the activists and see if people like a free thing they have minimal understanding of. I think that they will, at least we both suspect they will. But I don't think this will make it right. That they will like the free thing does not make it good for the community. For instance, how many people would like free cigarettes or alcohol after their first few exposures? Many. Would their distribution be good for the community in the long run? No. But who would speak up? It won't be the uninitiated, and it won't be the company distributing the goods.

[Grue3]

>They are fighting for their families and friends.

The less charitable explanation is that they're fighting to keep their leg up on the less fortunate population. The gap between those with Internet access and without is absolutely enormous. If everyone has Internet access, this untaps incredible amount of people resources, which would drive down the demand for those who currently have Internet access. These "activists" have a lot to lose if the poor get allowed into the cool kids' treehouse.

[witty_username]

I really don't think the activists have any such motive.

[nileshtrivedi]

Especially because they laud and welcome steps like Aircel's free Internet, Airtel's cashback scheme, Google'e free wi-fi, Project Loon, Gigato, and even facebook's own cheap wi-fi installations.

[x5n1]

It's fine to go around saying we're offering free facebook to users who want it. That's the big mistake that Zuckerborg made. It should be free facebook.

Do you want free facebook? Many people would say yes.

"Free Basics by Facebook provides free access to basic internet services to a billion people all over the world. Your service can be part of it. "

The fb site makes it "free access to basic internet" which it is not. It's free access to facebook. Just say that, and maybe you won't get all the push back.

It's not the critics who made this distinction or picked this fight. It's Zuckerborg.

If you really want to offer free basic internet, then do that. I am sure fb could if it wanted to offer a limited amount of bandwidth to any user who wants it for free to do with as they choose. Then they might actually be doing something positive for the poor of India, rather than trying to corral them into fb in the name of free basic internet.

[ryandrake]

I know plenty of people who think Facebook is the Internet, and wouldn't even notice if their access to everything not-Facebook was blocked, let alone care. Facebook is today's AOL.

[hackinthebochs]

Exactly this. It is downright appalling every time I see someone from a place of privilege declare what's best for the unprivileged. All this vitriol against FreeBasics is exactly that. Until I see a mass of extremely poor indians with no internet access reject FreeBasics because they don't want facebook to have their "data", all this hate is just self-serving bluster in my eyes.

[abhaga]

You speak as if those not on the internet can not already joining it in hordes. And those opposed to FreeBasics are somehow holding the keys.

When looking at the two camps here, you seriously believe the motives of Facebook and Telecom companies that have clear business interest in having users locked up in their walled gardens but doubt the intentions of a motley group of activists including startup founders, university professors, policy experts among others who do not have any direct incentive to oppose people coming on to internet and also do not control that access in anyway?

[hackinthebochs]

>can not already joining it in hordes.

Sorry, I can't figure out what you meant here.

>you seriously believe the motives of Facebook and Telecom companies that have clear business interest

I'm absolutely 100% convinced FB is doing this to be in on the ground floor of the explosion of internet access in India. And I don't see that as a bad thing. AOL happened, and it helped get a lot of people online earlier than they would have otherwise (AOL was my first foray online). The free and open internet will survive. But getting poor people online ASAP is the far more important concern for them than ensuring that their access is completely open when they do.

Furthermore, I'm not questioning the motives of those that are loudly against this. Their motives are crystal clear. It's those very motives that are misplaced. The values of the privileged are entirely different from the unprivileged. The problem is that the privileged tend to have a tragically narrow perspective and assume that their values are universally correct.

I mean, how easy is it to say "free and open access or nothing (for them)!" when you're not personally giving up anything? It's absurd on its face.

[abhaga]

>> can not already joining it in hordes. > Sorry, I can't figure out what you meant here.

Yes, typos are hard to process, especially when you have context. I meant "are not already joining."

Are you defining privileged as those people who do not agree with you? Because in economic, social and other terms, I fail to see how those supporting FreeBasics are any less privileged. In fact, they are the top of the privilege pyramid.

And here's the thing. All these bleeding heart pro-poor telcos in fact want differential pricing so that they can charge more for VoIP services. How does that tie-in with this narrative of poor people?

Replace FreeBasics by a targeted scheme with measurable outcomes and provisions for how it will auto dismantle as it achieves its goals, and then let's talk. Otherwise it is all baloney.

[mrow84]

Do you think that there are no issues with information asymmetry between Facebook and the people who they are trying to co-opt into their programme?

You appear to believe that the motivations of the Internet-literate about the consequences of Facebook's programme are more nefarious than the motivations of Facebook itself, which is contractually bound to operate in the interests of its shareholders.

[hackinthebochs]

Not nefarious, but rather misguided. Those speaking out against freebasics are judging it based on their own value system, which is going to be entirely different than the people such a program is targeting. And so the conclusions they draw are not valid for the people they are project them on to.

I don't think any transaction with information asymmetry is inherently exploitative. But more generally, I think the concern about who is doing what with your "data" is the concern of the relatively privileged. No one is going to be concerned about behavioral profiling when they're concerned about where their next meal is coming from. These people are concerned with the latter, while the activists are valuing the former which has little to no value to someone in the latter condition (their condition may not be that bad, but its a poignant example).

[BlackFly]

So what you are saying is that this article is worthless because it doesn't contain anecdotal opinions of the people who would be served?

Going back in history, there were plenty of woman during the suffrage who stood up and proclaimed they should not be given the vote. Further back, there were plenty of abused wives who proclaimed they should not be allowed to divorce their husbands. Further back, there were plenty of slaves who proclaimed they should not be given freedom.

Now we have a class of highly exploited individuals and an organization that wants to give "internet" access to these individuals but only if their personal data can always be exploited over that highly manicured network. The government cannot shirk its duty to protect these individuals. They will need to monitor "Free Basics" for abuse. The service will not be free from the public perspective and their are better things the government could do for those people.

[hackinthebochs]

The critical difference is that those fighting for suffrage were fighting to increase women's choices. Any woman who thought women shouldn't vote was free to not vote. In this case, people are lobbying to prevent people from having the choice.