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by dingo_bat 3823 days ago
>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?
3 comments
thewhitetulip 3823 days ago
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.
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sidthekid 3823 days ago
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?

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thewhitetulip 3822 days ago
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.

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imakesnowflakes 3823 days ago
> 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?

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RodericDay 3823 days ago
> 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.

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dingo_bat 3823 days ago
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.
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o0o0_ooo 3823 days ago
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...

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kbart 3823 days ago
"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.

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