Slashdot Mirror
Internet.org: Altruistic, Or the Ultimate In Cynicism?
Nerval's Lobster writes with one take on an effort to "make Internet access available to the two-thirds of the world who are not yet connected": "In conjunction with a variety of partners (including Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung), Facebook is launching Internet.org, which will try to make Internet access more affordable to more people. The partnership will also work on ways to lower the amount of data necessary to power most apps and Internet experiences, which could help people in areas with poor connectivity access online services, and devise incentives for businesses and manufacturers to offer customers more affordable access. Why would Facebook and its partners want to connect another 5 billion people to the Internet? Sure, there are altruistic reasons — people online can access information that will improve or even save their lives. But for Facebook, more people online equals more ad revenue, which equals more profit. Social networking in the developed world is reaching a saturation point, with a significant percentage of the population already on one (or more) social networks; only by expanding into developing nations can Facebook and its ilk maintain the growth rates that Wall Street demands. In a similar vein, building devices and services accessible via weaker Internet connections would open up a whole new customer base for the app developers and manufacturers of the world. In theory, Internet.org plans on enlisting a variety of nonprofits and 'experts' to help in its effort; but the initial announcement only lists for-profit companies among its constituency. NGOs, academics and the aforementioned experts will apparently arrive 'over time.' So is this effort really charitable, or a cynical attempt to break into new markets?"
As much as I hate to admit it, for once Bill Gates is right. People who lack enough decent food or sanitation, and suffer from chronic diseases and lack of even the most rudimentary health care, have things they need more than the Internet.
Yours,
The NSA.
It's a common fallacy that anything a corporation does that is profitable is necessarily evil. Corporations have no sense of ethics - their actions can have good or bad results, but they don't act with the intention of being good or evil.
If Facebook starts providing free Internet access to Bumblefuck Nowhere and makes ad profit, but the Internet access is unrestricted and can be used for anything, that's a win-win situation.
Sure... the next market boom is going to come from the "has to have things given to them for free" demographic segment. Facebook is going to be all over that!
How about we actually think of a good anti-business slander before we publish articles... It's like you guys aren't even trying anymore...
I'm sorry, but if what Wall Street demands is steady, linear growth then our entire economic system is a big giant fucking ponzi scheme and is destined to fail.
Capitalism is so broken as to defy common sense. It's not possible to have these kinds of gains sustained indefinitely.
Sorry guys, but your money system is a fucking joke -- even more so since greedy asshole Americans managed to offload their junk debt onto the rest of the world.
What Wall Street wants isn't good for the rest of the world.
to whom and for how much did Facebook pay for Internet.org?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No one should have to choose between access to the internet and food or medicine.
It's hardly a choice, what braindead moron chooses food? Medicine? Psh, that stuff is useless.
The magic of capitalism is that it doesn't have to be to work.
It's like asking: "Does a company bringing cell phone service to an area that's never had it help people or increase profits?" The answer is: it does both.
Capitalism is not a zero-sum game.
If you teach a kid to fish, he can eat cholera infested fish for the day. If you teach a kid to program, he can get himself a sub-minimum wage outsourced job from the other side of the world and still make more than his entire village.
Really? So no more jQuery, no more Javascript libraries of which only 5% of the functions are used? No more 100KB+ JPEG photos and no more bloated HTML code?
Call me cynical but these days it's almost a miracle to find a web page which totals less than 100KB.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Just think of the possibilities if these folks had access to vast areas of human knowledge, including engineering, medicine, philosophy, resource management... but they'd probably watch cat videos.
I firmly believe that internet access is a human right, in many places sought out before running water. Its potential enable mass communication, and information sharing is unparallel.
The problems with mass internet in the last 5-7 years have been the efforts to restrict it. Blocking server traffic, locking down phone and tablet OSs, and strictly screening the software that one gets to use on a new computer platform. The attempt is to lock it into an infotainmaint platform strictly regulated by a handful of content producers, and keep people from producing their own messages, something that has the potential to be a game changer in social, economic, and political fields.(as the printing press has done).
It is essential for a free web, that with proflieration of the internet, and the bridge over the digital divide add two imporant measures:
1. Root Access. Everyone who "owns" or has exclusive use of a computer shall have root access, to mean administrator, and access over the entire operating system. There shall be nothing reserved that a manufacturer, technician, or operator to have more privledge than a machine owner. If computers are being held in common, everyone should have the right to root access on at least one general purpose computer.
2. Right to a general purpose computer/information system. For all intents and purposes, everyone has the right to a turring complete, general purpose computer access, with root access and internet capable. For this measure, no computer will be considered General Purpose, unless it is self-hosting, normally self hosted, and self-hosting development tools are reasonably available to the user.(Right to develop)
3. Net Neutrality will be observed. No port, nor content filtering will be done, peroid, and the right to run a server or client will be preserved across all links. No special treatment of any packets.
4. Speed. Herein year 2013, it is not unreasonable to set the minimum unit of speed at one unit of internet, 3 megabyte(long)/s in both dirrections. By 2030, this should be 30 MB/s
I'm not sure why we need to split the entire world into a series of false dichotomies. Couldn't they be altruistic and at the same time motivated by profit? What is the point of the constant adversarial split for every stupid little issue? Is Slashdot interested in news for nerds for the purpose of enlightening its user base or is it simply a money hungry capitalistic shill for the corporate powers that be?
Surely that's a joke?
Facebook is the web application that consumes the most bandwidth, CPU power and RAM ever devised.
Look at the populations without internet access - they're also in the population of the world that actually has to worry about starving to death, about persistent government corruption, filled with often violent superstitions and beliefs, lack of access to either medical supplies or trained medical care, completely unaware of farming or grazing techniques that were in use in the 15'th century or living literally, on piles of garbage.
You're really going to worry that these folks will potentially be uplifted in order to sell them a coke? You think they would feel taken advantage of because they can now buy a coke?
Frankly, the way in which we have treated those in the underdeveloped countries should have been made criminal. We should have focused on education with the end goal of a self-sustaining culture. Instead of education, we've provided bibles. Instead of medical training, we've taught them that condoms are evil and vaccines are just tricks by white men to infect them with aids. Instead of expert guidance, GMO crops, fertilizer and pesticides, and machinery to cultivate crops, we've given them food packets. Instead of training them to be doctors, surgeons, nurses, mechanics, lawyers, programmers, architects, - anything really - we have made sure that their death rates go down - especially childbirth, that their average age increases, and we do it all with supplies and techniques that they cannot replicate, and provide them no salable or productive skills in the meanwhile.
What we have done is vastly inflated the problem - by themselves, a poor balance was established, but now we have a massive dependent population that lacks the skills and resources required to support themselves in a reasonable way. In effect, we have traded a few thousand lives for a few million and multiplied the net total suffering in the world.
Outside of fantastic natural resources (like oil, that'd help a lot!), the only realistic way to fix this problem is with abundant education, and right now, the easiest way to do that is via the internet. You don't even need real guidance. Sugata Mitra has shown that just plugging in a computer into a wall of a rural village results in children teaching themselves english and learning all on their own., and it continued when he gave them internet access.
Henry Ford came up with the idea that by paying good wages and providing other benefits, his workers could become his customers. This idea is nothing new. It's impressive that with the myopic focus in the economy today on quarterly or less results, that anyone can assume that this is really capitalistic grab for customers 2 or 3 generations down the road - that's miles adrift in a sea of absurdity - but even if it is, so what? If that's a motivation that results in these people living longer, healthier, productive, HAPPIER lives, should it matter that someone down the line also wants to make a buck?
Before you think too much, realize that if you're reading this, YOU are probably already in that 'exploited' group, if that's what you want to envision it as.
You think FWD.us was made to help the average joe get a STEM degree?
that's bloody rich. facebook- the ajax page that is CONSTANTLY loading and sucking up all your bandwidth with useless cat pics, ads, and features, trying to REDUCE bandwidth consumption! ha. whos next, youtube?
IOW, they want a larger base of people who have fewer rights and who can't easily sue, upon which to experiment with more sophisticated tracking methods. Getting an identifying code from your phone shouldn't be too hard, after all - linking that to the facebook account logged into with the phone allows facebook to then link to what ever other sites you visit (again with your phone serial number). Notice the phone chip manufacturers on the list? Between Nokia, Qualcomm, and Samsung...what portion of the cell phone chip market is that? If the US gov would be interested in stopping a thing, they still couldn't - not when it's not happening here. But with the recent happenings here and in Europe, we know our "first world" governments are doing quite the opposite of such privacy and anti-tracking interests...
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
Wherein is the conflict between the two? This is basic Adam Smith economics. Businesses make money by providing goods and services that people want. There is no altruism involved - all businessmen are in business to make a profit. But by making a profit in a fair and open market, where all have a chance to compete, they make the comfortable rich world we live in.
Yes, Facebook makes money from us. If we have access to the internet, we can choose to use Facebook, with its advantages and disadvantages, or leave it. If we don't have internet access, we don't have that choice.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Interesting contrast between Facebook and Google here - Facebook wants to organize all these companies and NGOs (each of which will have an agenda), where Google says (with Project Loon, http://www.google.com/loon/), let's just get them access and not try to overprescribe how it evolves or what they do with it - continuing with their "a rising tide lifts all boats", abundance mentality.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
It is, it really is. If you ever have filled out forms for a security clearance you'd realize the information you have to provide, particularly about family and relationships, is pretty daunting. With Facebook, the average joe has already filled that all out without even knowing it.
"So is this effort really charitable, or a cynical attempt to break into new markets?"
Are the Salvation Army's thrift stores really charitable, or a cynical attempt to fund proselytizing of their particular version of Christianity?
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
Produce TVs instead of fridges. Who cares if they can eat, as long as we can tell them what to think!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is exactly how markets are supposed to work. Somebody needs something and someone else wants to supply it. As for those of you who don't think these people need the Internet, you need to get over your idea that you get to decide. Those people are as capable of deciding for themselves what they need as you are to decide for yourself.
My grandparents didn't get electricity until my lifetime, and they never did have a phone at the farm in Ohio. All of their children and most of their grandchildren got university degrees. The thing those 5 billion people need is for you to get out of their way.
People can do good for reasons of pure self interest. The goodness of the act is not diminished by the motivation.
would this be best done by a bunch of guys driving out and building a MESH or by flying a C-5 galaxy with a Mobile Com station (and a couple companies of "civilian contractors" to help guard the stuff) out to key locations??
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Providing cheaper internet access is helpful but there is a lot more to fixing the 3rd world that I don't really understand. The average person makes about $1/hr. I've reached out to a few people to see if I can teach them software QA. Everyone I've spoken to seems really excited about making 10+ times what they currently make. But so far no one I've approached has actually made an effort to learn and do the work. I am living here because I'm very curious to learn why it is so hard to convince someone who makes $1/hr to put in the effort to make $10+/hr. Especially when it requires them to work less than they currently do. The work week here is 6 days and 10hrs/day (only 8 hrs is paid, they get a 2 hour break). 25% of the worker's wages are typically spent getting to work. I get the impression that "thinking" is perceived to be harder than manual labor.
After he distributes the rings to nokia, qualcomm, samsung et al, he will keep the one that will make him invisible for the NSA.
No.
I think the government made Facebook in an attempt to make privacy uncool. Think about that. I think that's true 'cause they don't have to tap our phones or survey us when we just yield to them everything, just on our own free will. Home address? It's a little weird, OK. Phone number? Call me. Photos? Photos of everyone I know? Here, let me tag those for you.
~Pete Holmes
I realise that summaries, by definition, miss some information but why edit out two of the six partners? Mediatek has a market cap of c.$15bn and Ericsson $40bn. Not exactly small players in this space.
Bus error in your favour. Collect 200kB
Yes, people need to "get out of their way" so they can find their own way to make money, but that requires a few basics from society: a half-decent not totally corrupt government, an economy not entirely controlled by monopolistic rentiers, crime that isn't the dominant economic sector, some level of public health (e.g. screens on the outhouse), and some basic education and communication with other places. An infrastructure that allows reasonable transport of people and goods helps too.
Despite what we now see as the primitive living conditions of your grandparents, those are things that they and their descendants had.
Stop Nepalese soldiers from pooping in the rivers in Haiti first.
50% of all the deaths on the planet are attributable to dirty water. Fix that first.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
" By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it. "
What's next, free zynga credits to entice couples to have new users... err babies?
$ host -t AAAA internet.org
internet.org has no AAAA record
Disgraceful. How are all of these new Internet users supposed to use the Internet when they don't have addresses?
Because clearly the most remembered search engine provider has no vested interest in adding millions more people without extensive bookmark collections to the internet.
And I'm also certain that they have no expectation that new users would mistake their in-line advertisements for valid search results.
Gapminder.Org is a GREAT site for seeing how things have improved for the entire world's population over the past 200 years. Dozens if not hundreds of variables are available for plotting. If you let the default graph of life expectancy over income per person play out, you'll see that every country has seen vast improvements over that span.
The Sub-Saharan African countries in particular didn't really see much improvement until the end of WWII, but since then the average life expectancy has gone from around 30 to the mid 50s and lower 60s. Cape Verde is all the way up to 75 years.
Income per person has increased in some cases by more then a couple orders of magnitude. Even the poorest nations have seen at least some growth in income.
One of the best ways to affect increased income is to increase education. Higher literacy rates translates directly to the ability to learn new skills. Availability of educational resources that are available over the Internet therefore directly impact people's ability to earn more, which directly impacts their ability to feed their families.
While I'm not a devout Christian by any means, this whole debate boils down to that simple proverb: "Feed a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
Their gigantic video uses a significantly long (and well spoken) sound byte from a speech by John F. Kennedy. Normally when you do something like that you mention the name of the speaker somewhere—at the very least out of respect. WTF?!
You can trust that these companies have a profit motive to bring electricity & internet out there, so you can understand their path. It clearly has parallels to altruistic behavior for now, so lets enjoy those parallels while we know why they exist (because we understand their mindset).
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
Having self-serving motives is not cynical. Suspecting people of having self-serving motives is cynical.
Rural Hawaii has third-world conditions which include a near-complete lack of broadband. Does that count?
Yes; then and only then can the sale of Microsoft Office suites begin!
I kid (mostly), but even if for self-serving interests, he's done a helluva lot more for the world with his filthy lucre than Steve Jobs ever bothered with (thus his death at the just hands of Karma).
the nsa will use other government agencies, and the CFAA if people using facef*** are giving out false information when, or after they've registered, or even if they give out false statements/opinions/comments, however I do not see any benefit for them to work with the NSA and other agencies, unless they are given (um hmm awarded) government contracts, the money they would get pales in comparison to having a monopoly on internet connection and the revenue they make off ads, ect..
all fairness it is pretty easy to hack facef**, and or gain what they want from google, and some other social site
it is suspect that these open sites are trying to do anything to get users. compared to Lavabit and Groklaw being more about encryption, and being forced to shut down.
Maybe they should focus on fixing the extremely broke internet infrastructure we have here in the US, Both our internet speeds AND prices are much worse than many other countries. Add that to the fact there are still alot of people in the US who's only available internet is dial up, Basic DSL or satellite internet and that just shows how messed up our own infrastructure is. So before they go off and try to fix the rest of the worlds internet problems maybe they should tackle a smaller project, see if they can help provide both good AND affordable internet to more people in this country because if they cant even get their own counties overpriced internet sorted out how can they solve every one else's internet issues. I'm sorry but if your in a country that has people being charged $30 for crappy quality basic DSL I don't think you are in a position to try and help provide FREE internet for billions of people that have none.
Yeah right, because Europe and USA didn't developed without internet in the 1800s and 1900s.
I would like to add that actually the interweb now is doing a favor to the corrupt governments, because now we think that our wild rage in a blog and a couple of night in zuccotti park can change something, while the old way of doing things of, let say, the civil rights movement where far more effective because people were more resilient and less prone to stop the protest to update their bookface profile.
"When you help others, you can't help helping yourself!" -The Money Song, Avenue Q
Yes, Google benefits. The point is, they aren't worried about if others do as well - get people connected, FTW (and some of that win is Google's, sure). That's abundance thinking. FB, on the other hand, may very well be focusing on things that will specifically put more people on their social network, without driving general capability.(a lower-data format that they will dovetail with their development efforts for a low-bandwidth client).
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
"So I'm convinced it's actually more about security interests, not commercial ones."
Another option: It is more about commercial interests and not security ones, -and- commercial is the core interest of the NSA.
Why is it that in the case of the NSA people assume that there isn't the same corporatist/fascist quid-pro-quo of influence for future high-paid private industry placement, as in the wider government in general?
The NSA has vastly more storage capacity than can possibly be needed for "terrorist" communications. What the storage is properly scaled for, is enough Big Data to give the government's corporate "favorites" an overwhelming competitive advantage, to the point where "competitive" itself becomes a meaningless term. With billions of dollars to grab and no indication of the NSA being honest on any given point, why would we imagine the data would stay "private" by any meaning of that term?
Waiting to see Facebook in new markets as completely lacking pictures of people, bacon, colorful drinks and encouragements to wear black shoes. There would be a logo picture generator for making interesting geometric background images, and a section for presenting religious reasons why the science arguments in the beginning of the previous millennium were concluded in a way not respecting the will of the God.
If people spend more time on the Internet, there will be less time to make more children
and as a consequence might help solve the big demographic problems these countries
currently face.