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Internet.org: Altruistic, Or the Ultimate In Cynicism?

Posted by Unknown on from the something-like-that dept.

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?"

22 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. For once Bill Gates is right by ebno-10db · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The difference is the motivation to provide 'aid'. Gates want to help people stay alive and facebook wants more users.

    2. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      Except those basics are often unavailable because of a lack of good government, and good government almost never happens without an informed population.

    3. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by jones_supa · · Score: 2

      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.

      They can both exist. Bill Gates can push the bare essentials and, Facebook and Google will try to get the folk connected.

    4. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by jythie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Advertisers often will pay big bucks to get into emerging markets. Companies will sometimes take a decade of loss in order to ingrain themselves with some new population, or even better make that population dependent on their product while it is still cheap/free (example: free baby formula)

    5. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by alexander_686 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Because they will be worth more than you think.

      The least develop countries are growing really fast and they are on the cusp of a breakout. Sadly, they have been in this position 2, 3 times during the 20th century and have failed, but maybe this time is different. On top of that a lot of their population is immigrating to the first world, repatriating money back. If these people join, the sticky network effect comes into play.

      And for all the cynicism out there, corporations just don’t look to next quarter’s results. Most have long term plans where the report progress on a quarterly basis.

    6. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by jythie · · Score: 2

      Yeah, people tend to forget that this is not a zero sum game, and multiple problems can be worked on at once.

      I also suspect that in the first world we find it easier to relate to 'no food' then to 'no communication', so many people latch onto that problem. We have all been hungry off and on, we have all been sick off and on, and we can picture more extreme versions. However mass communication is so utterly embedded in our culture that we do not even think about it, and we pretty much never exist without it being at least one or two degrees away. We take it for granted that knowledge and news will reach us, and that if we want to find something it is pretty much at our fingertips... we can look it up online, we can go to a library, we can ask someone else in our community, it does not even occur to us (for most things we want to know) that there will be no way to find out by virtue of no local person or institution being connected either.

      While it is a bit more abstract, lack of access to information is also a huge problem in the 3rd world and figuring out how to propagate medical (and other) data to disconnected populations is as difficult too. Starving kills, sickness kills, but so does ignorance. Just think about how many problems in an average life go through a 'something seemed wrong, so I asked someone and they showed me how to not make it more serious' stage, and how many ailments and situations get worse if you do not know how to handle them.

    7. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by tnk1 · · Score: 2

      Perhaps that is the overall effect of what his strategy is, but I would have a hard time believing that it is his goal to give away billions of dollars just to feel superior to third world countries. He could already do that AND hold on to billions of dollars.

      Generally with the people like Gates, the more realistic charge is they are trying to buy their way into heaven or posterity.

      In any case, I do think that Gates is actually trying to do his best, but Gates is/was a businessman. He works his deals with the people he knows, and those guys are still wanting to make their billions. So, he gets his deals, and they insert their little conditions and situations that come with the aid. I think it would be fair to scrutinize those deals in relation to what he is trying to achieve, but I would stop far short of assuming he's just trying to be colossally smug.

    8. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by 1s44c · · Score: 2

      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.

      Where do you start to improve things? All the aid given to Africa has achieved alarmingly little. If these people have access to information they are much more capable of improving their situation long term than if they had a bag of rice instead.

    9. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by 1s44c · · Score: 4, Interesting

      no gates wants people to stay dependant on bill gates and his charity.

      No. Bill Gates is trying to buy a name as a good guy. He wants to be remembered for doing good, not for shady but successful business practices.

    10. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 2

      No he isn't. As an economist in one African country said: the mobile phone companies have had a bigger positive impact on the economy and well-being of the people than any governmental or NGO-led programme. Mobile phones are not the same thing as Internet, I know, but in the end they both offer what those people need: information and a means of communicating. This has helped them with things like emergency response, information and education (for example: on basic sanitation and issues around drinking water), but it also helps them to get better prices for their produce, arrange payment and transportation for goods sold and received, thus freeing up time for other things. It can calso help them find and procure services essential to the community (like getting a water pump, generator or farming tools fixed). Communication makes all of these activities easier (or possible), and enables people to help themselves better as well.

      Gates might be right if we were talking about fly-ridden hunger victims scrabbling in the dirt for a few bits to eat, but you may be surprised to learn that many, many poor people do not live like that.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    11. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      Why was this modded flamebait? It's an opinion.

      Because it is demonstrably false, and only posted to elicit a reaction. Thus it is flamebait.

      BG's charity is NOT set up to produce dependency. He is not giving away food, he is trying to cure diseases, improve literacy, etc. If polio or malaria is eradicated, it is gone, and there is no ongoing dependency. Improved literacy makes people less dependent on charity. Etc.

      The dependency cycle is a big problem with government-to-government aid (mostly food handouts and military aid). It is rarely a problem with the type of bottom-up aid that BG is doing.

    12. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by ebno-10db · · Score: 2

      Because it is demonstrably false

      The way to deal with a post that is demonstrably false is to post a rebuttal that demonstrates the original post is false.

    13. Re:For once Bill Gates is right by Jharish · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've never really 'liked' Bill Gates, but I have admired the fact that he's a tycoon who got to where he is by not exploiting third world non-white people as most other billionaires do.

      If you think about it, the 'shady but successful business practices' really only screwed other rich white people and didn't enslave entire third world countries and rape their resources like most other non-tech billionaires. For that, I see BG as an evolutionary step forward in the ecosystem of greedy business men.

  2. Evil Corporations! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. Effects of Globalization by stewsters · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Effects of Globalization by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Then he can buy the infested fish for the day.

      Problem solved?

  5. They could do so much with it.... by Drewdad · · Score: 2

    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.

  6. Facebook, guidelines on how to lower bandwidth by loufoque · · Score: 2

    Surely that's a joke?
    Facebook is the web application that consumes the most bandwidth, CPU power and RAM ever devised.

  7. Interesting contrast between FB/Google approaches by daboochmeister · · Score: 2

    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 ... never mind." Dave Bucci
  8. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2

    Comment removed based on user account deletion