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Mark Zuckerberg Issues Call For Universal Internet Access
An anonymous reader writes: During the 70th annual U.N. General Assembly session, Zuckerberg discussed the "importance of connectivity in achieving the U.N.'s sustainable development goals. Connecting the world is one of the fundamental challenges of our generation. More than 4 billion people don't have a voice online." Zuckerberg said. Reuters reports: "The connectivity campaign calls on governments, businesses and innovators to bring the Internet to the some 4 billion people who now do not have access, organizers said. Signing on to the connectivity campaign were U2 star Bono, co-founder of One, a group that fights extreme poverty; actress Charlize Theron, founder of Africa Outreach Project; philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates; British entrepreneur Richard Branson; Huffington Post editor Arianna Huffington; Colombian singer Shakira, actor and activist George Takei and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales."
So who is going to pay for internet connection on Pluto and Charon
or even Neptune
(jokes about the next planet in the solar system will follow)
"Signing on to the connectivity campaign were U2 star Bono, co-founder of One, a group that fights extreme poverty; actress Charlize Theron, founder of Africa Outreach Project; philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates; British entrepreneur Richard Branson; Huffington Post editor Arianna Huffington; Colombian singer Shakira, actor and activist George Takei and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales"
Laughable.
I guess he cant make any money of those things....
He just wants those billions of people on line so he can sell more Advertizing.
Clean water and decent food is more of a concern and connectivity with the required hardware is hardly a priority.
These tech billionaires are just clueless.
Then why doesn't Mr Billionaire pay for it?
Your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
He only wants EVERYBODY to have access to the Internet just so EVERYBODY has access to Facebook.com
...let them eat cake?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
"Man with Internet company want more people to have Internet access"
Yes, I'm being snarky and haven't actually RTFAs.
"more than 4 billion people can't be tracked, have their metrics analysed, and be advertised to in a personal manner that increases uptake of product."
In poor and developing countries the energy production is the priority. Even before food, clean water, etc. Once you have affordable energy, you can efficiently grow food, clean water or at least produce something you can sell to buy food and water. How will you connect to the internet without energy? How will you run a computer, tablet or cellphone on which you can connect to the internet without energy? How do you plan to connect the remote tribes in Papua New Guinea?
Achille Talon
Hop!
Monitizing the world is one of the fundamental challenges for Facebook. More than 4 billion people don't have a voice online, and therefore can't be one of Facebook's products.
All you need is to have a culture that respects people's private property. Then let's the capital stock naturally grow and people become more productive and wealthier. It's so simple but human greed of wanting to take from others by force has led to so many cultures inability to get past a subsistence level economy.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
...literally!
I used to be a "internet-optimist" also believing universal internet access is a good thing, and maybe it is in the longer run.
But right now, the web is badly broken. Most of these new users Mr. Zuckerberg wants to get online have no clue about the dangers, both cultural and technical. There are efforts by various foundations (eg: Mozilla) to educate new users, but they are hilariously mismatched to the big internet giants who want to siphon of people's privacy for $$$. On top of that you have the Snowden revelations
I work with many rural communities in India, and often the question of providing internet access comes up. Unlike before, where I would say an unqualified yes, I do not support providing internet unless there is a deep discussion held with the stakeholders. What is (pleasantly) surprising though is that usually the elders in a Village are quite concerned and want to discuss these issues.
Does Mr. Zuckerberg have it in him to have those discussions?
LOL! That's so funny! You took their wording and misinterpreted it! LOL! LOL! LOL! That's hilarious! LOL! All the kindergarteners are laughing! LOL! LOL! LOL! You made a funny! LOL!
He's asking for more idiots to buy FB adds. Nothing more, nothing less.
Fuck you Zuckerberg!
Plagues like facebook, tumblr and twitter have brought some of the least desirable elements to the internet: censorship, data collection by big corps and the extremist SJW fad.
Pay for it, bitch!
Nobody keeps you from giving everyone free internet. But it's the usual "socialize cost, privatize revenue", isn't it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You're probably going to get modded down, but you're absolutely right.
However, it isn't just Africa that needs to be focused on.
Just look at the disaster that Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghanis are causing in Europe at the moment.
There should not be any children among this group.
Given that Afghanistan and Iraq have been under war or war-like conditions for over a decade now, and Syria for at least half a decade, there is no reason for anyone in those regions to have reproduced over the last 5 to 10 years.
A warzone is the last kind of environment that any sensible, caring, conscientious parent would dare bring a child into!
Yet we see some young children among the groups of people trespassing in Europe, including some born during while on the move.
Not having children while living in a warzone is the only responsible option available.
Having children while living in a warzone is a supremely irresponsible, disgusting, idiotic thing to be doing to the children.
Yeah, just what we want.
An arrogant, asshole punk with data from 90% of US/European population.
No thanks Suckmydickerberg. Now fuck off.
Bono. C. Theron. Shakira. Branson.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
the guy who makes money from people giving his website all their personal information, wants everyone to have internet access? color me surprised.
lose != loose
it worked for the insurance industry.
"More than 4 billion people don't have a voice online."
He really means "More than 4 billion people don't have access to Facebook, its tracking icons, and its ads." And he wants the gov't to pay for it.
... and I need more people to use Facebook so my advertisers give me more money to ensure my stock doesn't go down.
...on basic human needs such as clean water, a sustainable food production, a better and cleaner environment, and equal rights for all, and also industrialisation that doesn't end up using the poorer people of the world as de-facto slave labor, as they do on spreading the internet to harvest people's private information, then the world would be a better place.
Also, the UN is cultivating its own irrelevance just by listening to this bullcrap.
credibility. does money begat that?
All these celebrities have their Public Relations advisers who tell them which are the politically correct causes of the moment. Diseases, for instance, should draw sympathy but not too much repulsion; thus you will not see oozing ebola corpses or other rotting flesh in their promotional advertisements. Yes, a hungry child or crutch-using victim of Glaubner's disease can make an interesting poster ad. Fashions come and go among charitable promoters and unfortunately few currently support malaria and other major killers because other causes make more headlines.
Celebrities have to strike a delicate balance between playing toward your sympathy, making them look heroic, and avoiding the impression of pandering and making them look arrogant. It's safe for them to promote puppies, breast cancer and internet-for-all.
...omphaloskepsis often...
"More than 4 billion people don't have a voice online."
@ortholattice: 'He really means "More than 4 billion people don't have access to Facebook, its tracking icons, and its ads." And he wants the gov't to pay for it.' ref
Millions of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the internet
Give a man an Internet, he'll watch porn all day and forget to eat. Teach a man to Internet, and he'll start setting up porn sites with AdSense and eat for a lifetime.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
That singer of a popular music group has many followers, and in a Democracy, those with the most followers control all, even you.
So you wouldn't want to insult the masses by suggesting their leaders have nothing worth listening to.
Just sit quiet and nod in agreement if you want to avoid being a target of the mob.
Makes sense. How else are they going to push their crappy music to 4 billion more unwilling victims.
Anonymous Coward issues call for Mark Zuckerburg to suck deez nuts!
I guess Internet access is more important than food?
Hmm. Who could this gaggle of statists having mind to fund their schemes? Wouldn't be US taxpayers would it? Naaw. They would never treat the US Federal Budget like a bottomless well of do-gooder funding. What's wrong with me for thinking that??
We don't need your stinkin' Facebook profilin' B.S.
Zuckerberg said:
Pretty damn ironic, coming from a guy whose company intentionally silences people's voices, or censors them.
We know what he's really saying: "I want more ad views"
Screw clean water, sanitation, food, health etc who need that as long as you can splash your selfie on the FB.
Little jonny is starving to death in africa. Lets see if he can eat internet. Stupid Starbucks drinking 1st world problem fuckheads never stopped to think that there are larger more basic human needs that most people should think about before worrying how far the nearest wifi point is.
food would be better, but if you advertise it well they'll be convinced that internet is more important.
Of course not. If Zuckerberg had started a company like Blue Apron, Toll Brothers, or Blue Cross I am sure he would be asking for universal food, shelter, or healthcare.
Unfortunately, Facebook's profits are tied to the number of subscribers---and they all need access to the internet.
And, of course, we alse need more temporary workers to help service those 4 billion new accounts....
nothing to see here, move along....
The Huffington Post is lucky people are crazy enough to read it in the first place, but I think we might find it is the LAST thing people want to come along with unlimited internet.
Why has nobody hacked his pics like other celebs?
A world where Facebook is the only website accessible would be a nightmare.
Say hello to data plans where some social networks aren't counted toward the limited monthly data usage. (e.g.: WhatsApp isn't counted on data usage for several european phone providers).
It probably makes sense from an engineering point of view (i suspect that Facebook (=WA owners) have put WhatsApp servers locally at the service providers and thus communicate directly between the service provider and whatsapp, without get counted on the service provider interconnection to the local backbone. the same logic that pushes netflix to install local caches at ISP data centers. maybe I'm wrong, but that seems realistic) (also WhatsApp is a ridiculously small amount of data anyway, so it's not like there's much risk taken by the service provider) but in the long term, it's easy to see the dangers to where it might be going.
You can bet that Facebook might attempt the same in developing nations (put Facebook servers at the phone company's data centers, to minimize their outband cost). Then you can bet that their main information accessible would be the few websites that are not counted in the data plan.
Why try to use Wikipedia when you need to subscribe to a dataplan that's equivalent a whole day's worth of food with your bying power, when you could get Facebook for free ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This is idiotic. Developing nations don't need internet. They need electricity, health care, government reform, reliable access to food, protection from terroists.... I could go on, but internet? seriously? I am starting to think I am one of the only people who doesn't have a fb account. and guess what, my world didn't implode folks.
Zuckerberg: "All your face belong to us"
See e.g. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... and http://www.zdnet.com/article/y...
People are (at last) getting tired of facebook. That means: less growth, a user-base that isn't rejuvenating at the same rate as it could, and the spectre of *gasp* declining numbers of acebook users.
Bad news for a company that just supplies a fashionable fad (as opposed to something that people actually need) and which derives revenues from advertising and resale of its users'(private) information for marketing purposes don't you think?
So it's time for a little executive involvement in keeping those warm bods signing up.
"We're getting a smaller slice of the cake? Well then .. let's make the cake bigger!"
Aha! We need more Internet users!
Cue Zuckerberg's public appeal to the UN: "more Internet users please, it's practically a Human Right!"
Besides, it's the easiest way to get more Facebook users and it doesn't cost Facebook a dime (it's supposed to be tax money that pays for increased Internet access you see).
Seen this way it's the most natural thing for mr. Zuckerberg to do. And food, shelter and healthcare? Meh. He's not active in those markets, is he?