Zuckerberg Defends 'Free Basics' App With Comparison To Hospitals, Education (indiatimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has been under heavy criticism for distributing its "Free Basics" app in areas of the world that have less-developed communications infrastructure. The app essentially provides free access to a limited selection of internet sites. Free Basics was recently banned in India over net neutrality concerns. Mark Zuckerberg has now published a response in the Times of India.

He says, "We have collections of free basic books. They're called libraries. They don't contain every book, but they still provide a world of good. We have free basic healthcare. Public hospitals don't offer every treatment, but they still save lives. We have free basic education. Every child deserves to go to school. And in the 21st century, everyone also deserves access to the tools and information that can help them to achieve all those other public services, and all their fundamental social and economic rights. That's why everyone also deserves access to free basic internet services."

Facebook and Internet.org are also fighting the bad publicity elsewhere online, and even in local newspapers. "In essence, Facebook is claiming that since people quickly move on from Free Basics, it's less of a threat as a restricted replacement to the neutral Internet, and is more of a stepping stone to it."

Comments

Dishonest comparing it to a library

[vux984]

"He says, "We have collections of free basic books. They're called libraries. They don't contain every book, but they still provide a world of good.

The library isn't restricted in what books it carries. Not having all of them is primarily a physical space and economic limitation -- if they could carry all of them they would.

And the books they choose to carry is determined by criteria that is not simply a short list made by their corporate sponsors.

In contrast the restrictions with his internet access are entirely arbitrary and self serving. There is no valid comparison to be made.

Re:Dishonest comparing it to a library

[Lunix Nutcase]

Plus libraries and hospitals aren't selling private info to advertisers.

Re:Dishonest comparing it to a library

[sphealey]

Public libraries too are generally run by people with a professional and personal dedication to providing the widest possible selection of information and viewpoints possible within their budgets, not the narrowest.

sPh

Re:Dishonest comparing it to a library

[TheRaven64]

And libraries will also buy books if people who go to the libraries want them, without requiring the publisher to do anything. This is exactly the opposite of the 'Free Basics' stuff, where the consumer only gets things where the producer has explicitly opted in. His views on what public schools and hospitals provide is more a depressing commentary on how backwards the USA is than anything else.

Re:Dishonest comparing it to a library

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If he wanted the 'library' comparison, he'd need better evidence that there is a "librarian" involved.

Libraries are, ultimately, beholden to the desires of their funding organizations; but 'librarian' is one of those funny jobs, like 'teacher', 'doctor', and 'flight crew where they are supposed to serve "the customer"; but sometimes serving the customer means telling them to GTFO and let us do our job.

A given library can't drift too far from the objectives it was set up to fill(a K-12 collection is going to be expected to have some research materials aligned with the district's curriculum; plus a selection of child and young-adult literature deemed to fall within the intersection of 'likely to be popular' and 'worth having kids read'; a university library had better have the relevant journals and materials to support the work of the students and faculty, a public library needs to cater to a mixture of popular taste and availability of material deemed particularly worthwhile); but within the scope of the mission, the librarians are generally accorded broad leeway to exercise their professional judgement; and challenges to their decisions are supposed to be made in terms of accusations that they aren't upholding the library's objectives properly; not simple demands that the library cater to somebody's whim. "Circulation records indicate that this 'popular fiction' was last checked out in 1992; is it really the best use of limited shelf space?" is a perfectly valid question. Sounds like the librarian hasn't been keeping up with the collection properly. "Concerned Citizens For Decency want this obscenity away from the children!" not so much.

I don't think that there is much doubt that Facebook is doing this because it is good for Facebook, or they suspect that it is; but if they want to latch on to the highflown ideals of 'library' there are some concrete things they can do, even if the project remains their pet. Who are the 'librarians' of this library? What criteria do they use when deciding what does and doesn't go on the shelves? If I want to argue that X should be included, according to the criteria they claim to uphold, who do I talk to?

Then there is the more fundamental question: a library is, necessarily, a 'curated' sort of operation because it has finite resources, finite space, and staff expertise concerning the collection is considered a valuable feature. You can 'curate' down a selection of the internet if you want, just as you can the universe of books that are published; but why are you doing so? Obviously data transmission costs money, and more/faster transmission costs more money, so you can't expect people with approximately zero money to get screaming 4GLTE-and-special-sauce unlimited connections at prices they can afford; but if this "Free Basics" stuff is economically tenable; why is it access to a limited subset of the internet; rather than the entire internet, at whatever speed is low enough to be affordable?

Sure, Facebook isn't about to subsidize some random peasant's youtube habit; but if their "Free Basics" were 'whatever you want, at a crawl', rather than 'stuff we pick for you', that would both provide an incentive for users of "Free Basics" to stick to the basics, since sites not designed to cater to their network and hardware limitations are just going to suck; but also dodge a whole lot of unpleasant questions about the motives, selection process, etc. of the "basics" provided.

If they are willing to be honest about this being a straightforward grab for the developing world's eyeballs, in cooperation with local telco monopolies that would prefer that the cost of commodity bandwidth stay nice and high, then they can do whatever they can get past the local regulatory entities. If they want to pretend that this is some kind of humanitarian project, though, there are some pretty obvious steps they could take, but haven't, to clear things up.

Re:Dishonest comparing it to a library

[thegarbz]

And the books they choose to carry is determined by criteria that is not simply a short list made by their corporate sponsors.

Even corporate sponsored results can be better than providing nothing at all.

I'm always reminded of my grandpa's stories from the war. There was no choice, there was oppression. People were not free to do what they want, obtain reading materials they want, and even learn what they want. Heck jobs in general were bad. So what did he do? Joined the Hitler Youth. Once he did their life was in his control and 70 years later he proclaimed it as the best decision he ever made, and under the oppression of someone telling him exactly what to learn and what to think he learned skills that served him throughout the remainder of his life, flying and fixing air-planes, something that he never thought would have been open to him otherwise.

So if my choices were sit in the mud or surface the Internet According to Facebook then sign me up to the latter.

Re:Dishonest comparing it to a library

[Jawnn]

The library isn't restricted in what books it carries. Not having all of them is primarily a physical space and economic limitation -- if they could carry all of them they would.

And the books they choose to carry is determined by criteria that is not simply a short list made by their corporate sponsors.

This! Zuckerberg's comparison is at best, naive. More likely, it is deliberately disingenuous, attempting to obscure the glaring truth that Facebook aims to make money off of the thing. If you want to make a buck, that's fine. Just don't try to sell it with transparent bullshit like this, Mark.

Re:Dishonest comparing it to a library

[jedidiah]

Also, more sophisticated libraries SHARE books. Certainly with the college level libraries Inter Library Loans are very common. You quite literally CAN have ANY book you want.

Zuckerburg is quite obviously talking self-serving bullshit. It doesn't matter if he's ever been in a real library or not. He will simply act like it because it suits his agenda.

Trying to compare his little walled garden to a hospital just makes him look like a giant robber baron jackass.

Re:Dishonest comparing it to a library

[mysidia]

Plus libraries and hospitals aren't selling private info to advertisers.

And they're not in the business of selling anything. You can't go to a library and ask for a LIBRARY PREMIUM membership, that includes access to the entire collection.

There's no such thing as library non-members or BASIC members having access to browser only a portion of the works available.

Restrictions only exist in special libraries, such as those of research institutions or research archives that don't allow non-approved members any access at all.

And on special works unique to the library itself, so called restricted collections that contain items restricted to either protect confidential or potentially injurious information, or ensure research access, or prevent damage or theft of high-value materials.

Re:Dishonest comparing it to a library

[Sparowl]

Wanna Bet???

Sure do!

In the library system I work for, which serves roughly 240k patrons, we keep almost no information about a patron's activity, so that we can't hand it over. Their checkout history only keeps information on the last item they borrowed, and item records only keep anonymous information, i.e. how many times it has been checked out.

We also offer computer usage. We do not record any information regarding what websites patrons go to, and once a session is ended, the computer is reset to a previous save state (we use a program called Deep Freeze to manage it all). In fact, on a few occasions we have had relevant police requests for search history on patron usage (things like child porn do get searched for), and we've been unable to comply, because we don't have the information in order to give it to them. Sometimes they'll take the hard drive to try and recover information, but so far I haven't heard of them managing to do anything with it.

With all that in place, we certainly aren't selling information to advertisers.

(If we are, our budget certainly isn't reflecting it. Trust me, you don't go into the library system to make money.)

So, what did you want to bet?

"everyone...deserves"

[turkeydance]

resembles a car dealer's tag line in an advertisement. "get the car you deserve..."

When you control internet you control information

[Joe_Dragon]

When you control the internet you control information.

Sure, free basics

[buchner.johannes]

Just do something that is company-independent. For example provide free internet for everyone at 56k speed. Or provide web-only (not internet).

But preference of one companies' service (Wikipedia, I am also looking at you) is destroying equal opportunity for the next Google/Wikipedia/Facebook.

Bad comparison

[dpidcoe]

We have collections of free basic books. They're called libraries. They don't contain every book, but they still provide a world of good.

What Zuckerberg apparently fails to realize is that libraries don't see their users as a product, and generally don't have a vested interest in keeping their users away from the local bookstore and other non-library sanctioned locations. Because users are facebooks product, it creates a massive conflict of interest.

Re:Bad comparison

[AthanasiusKircher]

What Zuckerberg apparently fails to realize is that libraries don't see their users as a product, and generally don't have a vested interest in keeping their users away from the local bookstore and other non-library sanctioned locations.

"...fails to realize..."? No, he's just failing to acknowledge such differences, because they would be detrimental to Facebook's business model if too many people thought too much about what he's really doing.

Next thing you'll be claiming that a used-car salesman doesn't actually " realize" that he's making a major profit off some clunker if you buy it at his price, or that the diet pill guy doesn't "realize" that the pills don't really work, or that the TV evangelist doesn't "realize" that by sending him money for "prayers" that you're really just paying for the TV preacher's private jet.

Free what?

[fahrbot-bot]

We have free basic healthcare.

Uh, in the US? Since when? Unless you mean being poor/uninsured and having hospital ERs pass the cost along to others. Perhaps rich white dudes, like Zuckerberg, and I have different definitions of the word "free".

Easy way to convince them

[cerberusti]

If his motivations are entirely philanthropic in nature, there is an easy solution to their concerns:

Remove Facebook from the free list, and let the government decide what qualifies for the plan.

Re:FB not a charity. Economics apply to both

[Holi]

How useful is Google search when you don't have access to any of the pages it is linking to?

Re:FB not a charity. Economics apply to both

[vux984]

Exactly the same constraint applies to Facebook or a mobile carrier paying for internet access - it has costs, and it doesn't make sense for FB to pay for everyone to stream porn videos from Xvideos.com.

See... this is a fallacy. The issue here isn't that facebook isn't paying to stream videos... porn or otherwise. If they had a 'no video' policy, nobody would blink.

If they don't want to subsidize streaming porn videos that's fine; but its a strawman -- that's not even the issue.

The issue is that it blocks access to:

mathoverflow.net, linux.org, project gutenberg, ietf.org, slashdot.org, cancerforums.net, woodworkingtalk.com, and literally a million other sources of news, information, ideas, support, and so forth that is all primarily text.

Independent board

[fluffernutter]

What Zuckerberg needs to do is appoint an independent board to determine who gets into this. The board should have the mandate to provide access to as much balanced and impartial information as possible, period. The only economic interest in this mandate should be to stay within the budget they are granted.

Aligning a service like tihs with the goals and agenda of any private organization is dangerous indeed. Then it is no longer altruistic and I fail to see how it can ever be good for the people.

What alternatives are being offered?

[XxtraLarGe]

So Facebook is offering FREE, limited internet to poor people in third world countries. What are the critics of this plan offering to poor people in third world countries? Nothing. Some people like to complain for the sake of complaining.

Re:FB not a charity. Economics apply to both

[whoever57]

s/Wikipedia/Facebook/ Duh!

Re:I don't understand the problem.

[buchner.johannes]

No, because at that point he becomes a telecom provider, and has to follow rules and regulations of telecom companies, which include net neutrality, i.e. not preferring your & your buddies' companies.