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."

Comments

fuck off zuckerfuck

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:fuck off zuckerfuck

[Viol8]

Sadlhy a lot of people in the 1st world really have no idea what real poverty is and genuinely think that internet access is as important as food, water and sanitation. Their idea of hardship is not being able to tweet for a day.

Re:fuck off zuckerfuck

[TheRaven64]

No one should donate anything

Some donations are good, some are bad. Mother Teresa objected to foreign medical aid donations because they allowed the government to abrogate responsibility for helping its own citizens. Sometimes when you donate something, you end up reducing its local value to such a degree that you destroy the ability for anyone to produce it locally, which ends up just fostering dependence without doing anything to alleviate the underlying problems.

But that's irrelevant because we're not talking about donations here, we're talking about illegal cross subsidy. Facebook is not donating money to fund access to the Internet, they are subsidising the sale of devices to access Facebook so that they can sell eyeballs to advertisers. This kind of market distortion is exactly the sort of thing that antitrust laws exist to prevent.

The Facebook Pimp

[geekmux]

""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.

Fix it for zuck

[Maritz]

"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

Re:Wow, who is timothy?

[serviscope_minor]

"Indian government's disdain for free services..."

Oh the irony of reaming Timothy while you merrily misquote. It says disdain for "Free Basics", which is the name of the thing Zuckerburg is offering, not "disdain for free services".

It's not surprising there's disdain for Free Basics: it's not philanthropy, it's a cynical hardware subsidisation scheme by a for profit company for profit.