[ev1]

Think of it as more like Comcast shouldn't be allowed to charge you 100x per GB (in addition to being your only choice in internet) if your traffic is to/from any streaming provider while providing their own streaming service for free, or throttle your usage of "other streaming traffic" to sub-144p quality. [OK, in reality, every mobile carrier does this in the US]

In an international, developing country context, outside of some places like India with Jio's cheap plans, it is incredibly frequent that you are paying per MB or similar at rates that would be unaffordable otherwise. Facebook funds these things so that your usage of Facebook's apps, Whatsapp, Instagram do not count against quota and are free to use. Thus local competitors get no visits and don't run their own sites because users do not want to pay a day's wages to browse your menu when they could browse your menu for free on their FB page.

It has pros and cons, one thing being that they don't have to pay for data and they get access to some portions of the internet, which is good? But it also makes it completely impossible for a local player funded locally without the billions acquired elsewhere to start, because people quite literally cannot afford to use your service unless you can afford to pay for all of them to; you can't compete. And since it's their only choice, now they monopolize and capture an entire country's worth of communications from start to finish. You'll see whatsapp numbers in many countries in place of a phone number or website.