[rms_returns]

I'm from India and the conditions of many farmers is pathetic here, poverty isn't a word enough to describe their condition. They are illiterate, exploited by higher-ups in the society and struggle to get even basic necessities in life. Conditions are so gloomy that on average, one farmer commits suicide every thirty minutes in this country!

And these are the people whom Zuckerberg is targeting for the FreeBasics free internet program. Maybe, he thinks that socializing on FB or performing a quick google search on farming methods is going to help them, but that is far from reality and just fascinating thinking. All I know is that the millions that Mr. ZUckerberg spent on displaying FreeBasics ads in the Indian newspapers and TV channels would have been much better spent by actually donating that money to the farmers he intends to help.

[wavefunction]

No offense to you but when I hear "socialize" it raises my hackles. People at my relatively great employer use this term and for no reason. We can communicate with each other but to use a term like "socialize" is to insult both you and me, for I can find no positive association with its usage.

*and it has nothing to do with politics. I am about as Left as it gets.

[dclowd9901]

No offense to you, but "socializing" means a great deal more than simply "communicating with each other," including joking, touching, laughing, sending body language and simply being in the presence of. You'd do well to not trivialize the nuances of human connection.

[tim333]

> farmers...illiterate, exploited by higher-ups... millions ...would have been much better spent by actually donating that money to the farmers

One of the things you might hope for connecting them is they could educate themselves, organise and fight back against being exploited. Maybe their kids can go online if they are illiterate themselves. That kind of thing is more likely to improve conditions than a modest amount of cash.

[tobtoh]

Actually it doesn't. There has been quite a bit of research and the most effective form of charity to improve conditions is through direct cash transfers.

Basically, the recipient is the best positioned to identify what will help them improve, not some well meaning remote do-gooder.

Ref: 1. http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/cas... 2. http://www.who.int/alliance-hpsr/alliancehpsr_dfidevidencepa...

[Lawtonfogle]

Is there any measure of how advertising affects this?

For example, there are many in the US who are poor, but who often do not allocate the money in ways that serve their best interests, but this may largely be the result of advertisers manipulating what people think is in their best interest. But for the world's poorest, they don't have enough to be worth the investment to inundate with advertisements, so they may have better ability to decide what is in their own best interests.

[dingo_bat]

>donating that money to the farmers he intends to help.

Donating money directly almost never helps in the long run. I think Zuckerberg is doing what he thinks is good, and I don't think free internet to farmers will do any bad. It might help only a few and by a little amount, but that is still better than nothing. Who are we to decide how somebody else organizes their charity?

[thewhitetulip]

I fail to realize how facebook itself would be a "basic" service for poor people. Haven't seen a single person who has benefited from using facebook/whatsapp to uplift their social status, that being said, what India needs is a change at a fundamental level, NOT free Internet.

[sidthekid]

Free Basics has other services apart from just facebook. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org/examples

Change at a fundamental level is a good long-term goal, but do you want to make people wait 5-15 years for that, instead of getting help in the next week? Will getting free internet slow down the fundamental change?

[thewhitetulip]

At what cost my dear sir? The cost of FB having access to all the browsing data? and what can they possibly gain by accessing the Internet? Is the Internet going to give water in Drought? I think the people in the land of Gold are trying to solve the right problems using some weird scenario in their heads, honestly if Mr. Zuckerberg had donated the money he is wasting to trying to push free basics down the throats of Indians, then it would have had a larger impact on some of the things he is trying to attain.

I am not saying that donating money is always a good option, but it is better than giving free Internet least of all keeping whatsapp or facebook as a "basic" need.

[imakesnowflakes]

> I don't think free internet to farmers will do any bad..

Does it intend to serve ads? How does ads work? Isn't one aspect of ads involve creating needs where there were previously none? Does it involve injecting insecurities (Ex: You are a loser if you are not fair) into the minds of the gullible and make them buy buy buy...

So, what If the end result of this is that suddenly the teenage kids of these farmers starts to spend more amount of money on cosmetics (because of Ads or to make them look good in "selfies"). Will that do them good?

[RodericDay]

> Donating money directly almost never helps in the long run.

What? The debate about the benefits of direct cash-transfers vs. more managed forms of aid is alive and well in 2015.

[dingo_bat]

Do you think donating some money to farmers is going to help in any way? The government has been doing that for a long time (through subsidies and minimum purchase prices), at a much larger scale than any single person is capable of. And it hasn't improved anything much. I think it is clear that the only way to improve conditions is to enable farmers to convert their business into a sustainable one. And for that, cheap/free internet access could prove to be the turnaround factor.

[o0o0_ooo]

Stop calling it "free internet". That's absolutely not what Facebook is offering.

> Do you think donating some money to farmers is going to help in any way? The government has been doing that for a long time (through subsidies and minimum purchase prices)

You're talking about two different things. Subsidies are different than unconditional cash transfers, the latter of which there has been recent promising research on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_cash_transfer

https://www.princeton.edu/~joha/publications/Haushofer_Shapi...

[kbart]

"Do you think donating some money to farmers is going to help in any way?"

Of course it would. They could buy new, better equipment, tools, fertilizers, seeds, animals etc. My country (Lithuania) joined EU in 2004 and started direct payments to farmers via projects, that helped A LOT. Now we have big, modern cooperatives and companies that sell products worldwide instead of small, inefficient farms. What I don't understand, how could Facebook (and friends) help them? I doubt that even an unlimited Internet would be useful without an extensive education, as most older/uneducated people struggle to use even a simple cell phone.