[gcr]

The FCC doesn't have jurisdiction in India. Super simple. Facebook, or other foreign capitalistic entities, can do basically whatever they want.

This could change when:

- The country puts more regulations on Internet service providers like the FCC does here (maybe this is happening? maybe this isn't? I'm not familiar with India ISP regulation entities), or

- The people say "No" and choose not to use this service. But that would mean saying "No" to free Internet access. Your boss and your spouse are on Facebook, why wouldn't you want to be? Or

- The politicians say "No" to foreign capitalistic companies. We see something like this in the EU (see their privacy laws and recent government draft legislation about keeping personally identifiable data about Europeans on European servers), and we also saw something like this in China, where the government effectively gets control of who to blacklist via the firewall and censorship policies. And we all know how popular those are.

Looks like there aren't many good solutions here.

[jace]

TRAI is India's telecom regulator and is currently running a consultation on whether differential pricing of data should be allowed. Facebook has run a $44 million ad campaign in the country asking the public to lobby TRAI about something they're calling "digital equality". TRAI isn't amused at all and has thrown out their submissions as invalid, because they didn't answer the questions the regulator had asked.

http://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/trai-...

OP's post is Facebook's own submission to the regulator.

[lucozade]

> We see something like this in the EU

The EU net neutrality legislation has specific exemptions for precisely what Facebook wants to implement in India i.e. internet.org [0]

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/27/eu-net-neu...

[gcr]

What I'm curious is: how many Americans recognize this hypocrisy and take action (e.g. stop using Facebook or campaign against it?)

After all, we have the oversight of the FCC to prevent this from happening here (at least to some degree).

[allengeorge]

India is far away - why should I care what happens there?

Facetiousness aside, I suspect the statement above answers your question. As far as the average citizen is concerned it's "not my problem" (and honestly, they probably have more immediate problems with obvious impact).

Besides, net neutrality doesn't have the same emotional imagery or appeal as sweatshop labor or species extinction, though its long-term impact (deciding who gets to see what) has severe consequences for societal health.

[defective]

How many Americans are going to read this posting on an Indian regulator's website?