[seshagiric]

Agree with most but to be fair, although currently the program is limited to few 100 sites, the way the program works is if you own a website, you can register it with Freebasics and they will provide free access. And to this the sites cannot be encrypted. For information like e.g. what helps Farmers, encryption need not be a blocker.

[slaxman]

Two points to this argument:

1. what about farmer details. If you want to personalise info for farmers, you will need to register them and capture info. W/o encryption, fb has access to it and is likely to sell it to advertisers.

2. The argument that "Free basics" is essential for farmer is wrong. Reuters has a paid product for farmers (http://www.rmlglobal.com/) and is used by over 1.4 Million farmers in India.

[rodgerd]

So I can beg Facebook for permission to be on the Internet. Wow, wonderful!