Sad to see a lot of people being cynical about this just because Facebook is taking the lead. Facebook may have personal interest in it but if the global good is greater, we must learn to be appreciative. Most discoveries and inventions, heck even the space race dint start out of the goodness of heart; but aren't we glad they did? I am all up for anything that brings people new source of information. Atleast its better than sitting in a corner and grunting how we don't have Google Fiber or how a 1px scroller disrupts the workflow while failing to realize that 2/3rds of the world has never visited a single webpage in their life.
tl;dr: Zuckerberg says "Screw net neutrality, I've got dibs on billions of people for my walled garden."<p>> Twitter ... has struck its own deals ... in more than 100 countries to offer some free Twitter access; ... it bundled free Facebook access with some of its Asha feature phones.; Globe Telecom, has used free Twitter, Facebook or Google access<p>> "if you can afford a phone, I think it would be really good for you to have access to the Internet."<p>Yet... it seems like they're equating Twitter, Facebook and Google to "The Internet".<p>> Cut the cost of providing mobile Internet services to 1 percent of its current level within five to 10 years by improving the efficiency of Internet networks and mobile phone software.<p>Now how that metric is measured, I'd like to know. In countries with $10 a month plans, does that mean a 10 cent a month plan instead? Somehow I don't think so. Or do they mean to say by that that Google, Twitter and Facebook will be quota-free?<p>> Facebook is already working on techniques to reduce the average amount of data used by its Android mobile app from the current 12 megabytes a day to 1 megabyte without users noticing.<p>That seems like more of an incentive on carriers to make Facebook quota free as much as anything else... I mean what good is that if you aren't going to:<p>> tackle some thorny infrastructure issues that are huge barriers in the developing world, particularly the long-distance transmission of data to far-flung places.<p>So, this is no Loon. What is this then?<p>> “We’re focused on it more because we think it’s something good for the world,” he said, “rather than something that is going to be really amazing for our profits.”<p>Being the founder of a publicly traded company that had a big IPO, I'm sure the emphasis is on "really amazing for our profits". Having access to Facebook, even at the detriment of other services, being something good for the world apparently is now uncontroversial enough that even the NY Times doesn't report critically.<p>This is how net neutrality dies, people. This is how the World Wide Web disappears into a rapidly diminishing sea of walled gardens. This is, unlike Loon, really more about ensuring that the next billions of people on the web never consider net neutrality as natural thing.
Those people probably dont have any internet, because:<p>1 - they dont have jobs and lack of money<p>2 - they are still strugling for food security<p>3 - their village or city have no energy<p>4 - they are maybe even without water<p>5 - they maybe have a low level education<p>so if they are so good and passionate about helping people all over the world, and they are insanelly wealthy people why they also dont make a bigger plan..<p>Thats one of the reasons i really admire bill gates right now.. he spend his fortune for a real common good..<p>while what facebook and others are doing is not bad at all, on the contrary can be a good thing.. what piss me off is that sort of marketing bullshit, like if we are stupid people that would buy that is "all for the common good, rainbows and unicorns"<p>Do it, show the good side of it, but also show the real reasoning behind it<p>A human being asking himself, about what he could do to help improve the life of others.. would get a lot of answers to start with but in none of those cases it would start with "extend the internet to the people that can barelly read so they can share their plate without any food in it for lunch time"
Quite a high percentage of the people in the world without internet access live under governments with poor human rights records. In this new age of massive unscrupulous spying and data mining by governments, bringing the internet to new populations without making sure they understand the risks makes them vulnerable to unprecedented levels of tyranny.<p>Any initiative that tries to expand internet access without addressing these basic moral issues is suspect, and we obviously aren't going to see responsible behavior on this front from the likes of Facebook.
Google seems to be conspicuously absent.<p>It's terrible to be cynical, but can't help feeling like this is just a reaction to project loon. Basically a banding together of companies who might see Loon as a threat, to offer some kind of alternative that they are in control of instead of Google.<p>However unlike Loon, reading the entire page I can't see anything solid they will actually do - develop better compression algorithms? Introduce "business models"? That's it? It sounds suspiciously weak.
These proposals look too vague / generic. There's already a lot of people who build mobile apps today and try to compress as much as possible, or limit how much they download.<p>It's like announcing you're leading an initiative to improve the health and nutrition of children, but you won't actually be distributing any vaccines or food, but laying down a set of principles to align local supplier incentives and politicians.<p>Bill Gates criticized Loon because, and probably rightly so, concentrating on health of children with easily preventable measures is the biggest bang for the buck. But this initiative seems even more like Vaporware.
New York Times article:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/technology/facebook-leads-an-effort-to-lower-barriers-to-internet-access.html?hp&_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/technology/facebook-leads-...</a>
2/3rds of the world does not have internet. It's easy for us to forget that. It's a serious issue, and Facebook is well-positioned to tackle it.
No thanks, Mark. Here's hoping that your plan to AOLify the rest of the word and violate the privacy of your future would-be users fails miserably.
A detailed plan by Zuckerberg: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/isconnectivityahumanright/isconnectivityahumanright.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/isconnectivityahumanright/isconnect...</a>
I'm sensing a new trend: short videos in the backgrounds. Other similar site with the same trend <a href="https://letshum.com/" rel="nofollow">https://letshum.com/</a>
How do you create a society where organizations would have a vested interest in leading efforts to lower barriers to electricity. Even in present conditions, electricity is after-all a prerequisite to better internet access. I wonder why there are fewer juggernauts looking into electricity than internet.
> <i>The companies intend to accomplish their goal in part by simplifying phone applications so they run more efficiently and by improving the components of phones and networks so that they transmit more data while using less battery power.</i><p>Isn't it already happening for a while (or forever, depending on the companies) ?
Companies who cared about performance and responsiveness already work on optimizing their apps. Because more usage means more revenue.<p>Mobile OS and hardware makers already care about battery life and efficiency, because these are strong competitive advantages.<p>The rest of the effort seems to be into getting carriers to make Facebook/other companies requests out of quota, witch is not new and belongs more to marketing/sales strategy than anything else.<p>This initiative feels like some generic PR move with nothing special to latch on.
Frankly, it sounds like he's just recharacterizing basic efficiency plans to make it seem like Facebook is on some sort of altruistic mission. There's little to no action called for, no commitments towards altrustic ends. It's just a "hey, we should get more people online" (which only helps Facebook's bottom line) and a "we're trying to make Facebook load faster" (again, bottom line).
I think this time, Facebook need not sell, it just need to propose the govt.,rest all will be a breeze as the Big boys want more data,more and more to churn, bubble and victimise each citizen possible every day.<p>Hail Facebook,Hail NSA and Other organised shit giving us false promise of security while churning our own data.
This is all just rubbish so that they can find more eyeballs to stick into the service. They've reached almost everyone, so the next logical step is to bring Internet to the only audience they can't yet reach.
Given the complete lack of security on the internet, it would seem that we want to extend this lack of security to everyone in the world. Hurrah!<p>Now can we fix the problems before we ship it?