Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Will Still Back Internet.org Despite Indian Gov't Disdain For Free Basics
Mickeycaskill writes: Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will continue its Internet.org efforts in India, despite one of the initiative's programs – Free Basics – being banned by the country last month. Internet.org hopes to give more people access to the Internet, but India ruled 'Free Basics,' which offers free access to Facebook and selected apps and services violated net neutrality ethics. Speaking at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Zuckberg said the ban was "disappointing" for Internet.org's mission but hoped other programs such as satellite Internet and drones would be more successful. "It's crazy we're sitting here in 2016 and still, four billion people in the world don't have access to the Internet," he said. "In India we'll focus on different programs. We want to work with all the operators there."
get your citizens to believe Facebook is the Internet?
And why do you like killing puppies?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
"It's crazy we're sitting here in 2016 and still, four billion people in the world don't have access to the Internet," he said.
But hes not helping them get access to the internet. He's only getting them access to facebook and facebook sanctioned sites. So the Indian govt is right.
Also one thing that developing countries dispise is it's citizens getting enslaved to a overseas companies services. So fuck off zuckerfuck. If you really meant what you say about internet access then you would be giving them unrestricted internet to any website including your competitor's.
Is as bad as using adblocker.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
"Disdain"... astroturf much, /.?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
It has nothing to do with Internet. Yes, I know it's supposed to be called "Free Basics", but why the internet.org domain? This is highly disingenuous.
Smack water jack!
""It's crazy we're sitting here in 2016 and still, four billion people in the world don't have access to the Internet,"
So Free Basics, eh?
Mark, I know this is "crazy", but perhaps if you stopped pimping fucking Facebook as "the Internet" , people might be more open to your damn flavor of philanthropy.
Pisses me off when a billionaire can't afford common sense.
How is Free Basics going to be implimented?
In Australia, I believe most ISPs have mirrored data for faster access, and sometimes not charging for the data that they can provide. I remember dial-up services that gave free internet (cost of a local call) for an amount of data per day, and when the data was used up, you could only access their pages. Revene was raised from displaying advertisments in the window you had to keep open to have internet access. An important point is that browsing their sites was not defined as internet access, and when you did have internet access, it was full internet access.This did not strike me as being against net neutrality.
I see an idea of paying providers to preload an app and request data between facebooks servers to be provided for free (server at ISP?), where people can use facebook for free (and some other sites) at no personal cost. It cannot be called internet access however, and people would need to be able to buy and use normal internet access data on top of the free basics.This plan seems like it could cost facebook a large amount of money, with users in return.
Going the next step, facebook could be selling the same idea to other (local?) sites, saying that facebook will become their provider, and in return, users will be able to see their pages "without internet access" - i.e. if you don't go through us, you wont be seen/known/popular.
This seems more like a business ethics issue than net neutrality. Am I missing much?
Zuckerberg is a hypocrite and the Indian government is right on this one.
The gall of those Indians to not want a significant part of their population stuck in an American Internet Company Town. How dare they, don't they know that Zuckerberg knows what's good for them?
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
This sense of entitlement is revolting.
"Indian government's disdain for free services..."
Wow. Just wow. Who is timothy and why does he have seemingly untrammelled access to posting slanted stories on Slashdot? Is he the new owner's nome de plume? Got a Facebook connection, or what?
The facts of matter are internet.org would provide India witha free walled garden Facebook-limited, Facebook-defined, Facebook-mined, Facebook-exploited subset of the real internet. It was nothing but digital colonialism, a new different of reservation for a different kind of indian (and that is most likely how it was joked about within Facebook itself).
Well, as many have observed lately Slashdot is going down hill. I think *timothy* and his posts pretty well sum up what's wrong with slashdot. It's turned into a tool, aimed at nerds and nerd-influencers, blantantly serving corporate interests, pushing corporate agendas.
So that's it for me. I can't in good conscience continue to contribute my energy, attention and effort making Slashdot profitable if it's just a tool for Facebook and its ilk to push their propoganda. The internet's a big place (no thanks toFacebook) and I'll find another home.
As a parting shot and look back to what Slashdot used to be, Stalman gave a great speech less than a month ago about the red hot, immediate danger the so called "unitary patent" being pushed by the corporate coke snorters is posing to software developers all over the globe; basically itspassage means American-style software patents for all nations in the EU. Thought you won that fight? Think again.
http://techrights.org/2016/01/...
The action you need to take is to call your representative and tell them this issue is important to you and you are watching it.
Bye Slashdot.
"It's crazy we're sitting here in 2016 and still, four billion people in the world don't have access to my creepy data-mining advertisers' database
ftfy
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
What do you mean, "net neutrality came too late to make any real difference"? The net was born neutral from the time it was opened to public and commercial interests. And neutrality is the natural state of any communication network. You have to intentionally and continuously work to tilt the internet to special interests. It is being re-claimed in the US even as we speak. Why would India start it's citizens off in a distorted world/
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Free basics? Is that a joke? No offense, but from outside India I think the concept `basics' does not include internet. They have true basic things to worry about...
"It's crazy we're sitting here in 2016 and still, four billion people in the world don't have access to the Internet," he said.
Translation: There's 4 billion products sitting there ripe for the taking and those damn governments and those damn people won't let me have them. (Damn, I hate people, but I love when they are products!)
I'm so glad 'products' are starting to see through this sham.
Why not bring "free internet" here to the USA? Plenty of poor people here without access.
Nope. It must be India only.
Answer that question and you will see why Zuck is doing this.
This is not about philanthropy.
Will the Indians be able to run their own eg. FTP, IRC, WWW, SMTP or Gopher server? If not, then your are not giving access to the Internet.
like any other cancer, spread of Facebook is very bad. Zuckerberg is a cunt and I have absolutely no respect for this little piece of shit.
Think of it this way. There are still some good IT jobs held by Americans. How can we appropriately prepare the next generation of Indians to take those jobs without this?
If facebook and other big corporations have to keep paying insane American wages to Americans instead of dirt cheap H1Bs, how will Zukerberg manage to buy a bigger Hawaiian island than Ellison?
While he is doing this, can he also take the 60K$/yr H1B wage cap and get it reduced to 20-30K?
If he can just get all American IT jobs sent to India this will allow former American IT workers to spend their days on Facebook and then everyone wins.
Or we could say "fuck Zuckerberg" write our senators/reps and explain that since H1Bs are such a huge commodity, that only take jobs that cannot be filled by Americans, then we must remove their wage cap, and require them to be paid 25% more than their American counterparts.
What is crazy is 'the Big Z' is worrying about 4 billion people not having internet access when there still a 'few' people out there that do not have food, clean water, medicine, etc. If he would take some of his and FaceBooks 'net worth' and use it to address some of those problems first, he might gain a little credibility. I believe you should be allowed to make all the money you can (even with something with as little true value as FaceBook, IMO), but if you want to earn some respect, put a little of it too good use, at home and abroad.
Hey Mark, how about paying a data connection to everybody and let everybody access any site they like? Then I'll believe you.
Before they start worrying about what kind of internet their populace uses, perhaps the Indian government should do something about modern plumbing in their country. No other country on earth has DESIGNATED SHITTING STREETS in their capital.