Facebook’s “Save Free Basics in India” Campaign Provokes Controversy

I think what pissed me off the most was Facebook's reaction to net neutrality. Instead of attempting to reflect and revise their free Internet service so it can better serve the masses, it just attempts to slander and point fingers at net neutrality advocates. Like "ooooh no! We ain't the problem for your not having "free" Internet, it's those guys those over there arguing that free access to all of Internet is better than a free access to the websites we limit you to!" Seriously Facebook, you're not fooling anyone here. As if you haven't had enough fun screwing developed countries, now you have to go pick on the poor too?

Lets look at two extremes.<p>-&gt;India without net neutrality: Everyone has free Facebook. &quot;Free basics&quot; didn&#x27;t help in advancing electrification of the country but it did provide free facebook&#x2F;wikipedia to everyone. So 30% of the country is still in dark. But 50% of the rest of India doesn&#x27;t pay for internet and it thinks there is no need to because that is ALL the internet has to offer. A young founder launches a new education app to teach reading&#x2F;writing to poor villagers. But she first needs to get a &#x27;license&#x27; from facebook. Facebook doesn&#x27;t think it is a good idea for its users to &#x27;waste&#x27; time on other services instead of watching ads on FB, so it declines. Startups don&#x27;t receive as much funding because of the &#x27;licensing&#x27; issues and there aren&#x27;t as many Indian tech companies as there could&#x27;ve been. News is censored by Facebook and Facebook can now influence Indian politics. 100,000 fewer jobs were created because the Indian tech scene didn&#x27;t take off.<p>-&gt;India with net neutrality: 50% of the country cannot pay for internet. They still don&#x27;t have access to internet. They use other forms of communication to get their daily, unfiltered news. The startup scene in India is growing at its natural pace and the culture has become more innovative. In another 10-15 everyone will have internet. 100&#x27;s of thousands of poor were lifted out of poverty due to tech jobs in India.<p>One is a short term &#x27;fix&#x27; which ruins the future. Another is a little bit harder but provides for a better future.

This is going very quickly from<p><pre><code> &gt; Nothing to worry about, I trust the people in charge &gt; to do the right thing, after all they did show better &gt; judgement in the past </code></pre> to<p><pre><code> &gt; We hope the people in charge know what they are doing </code></pre> The worst part is this (Narendra Modi&#x2F;BJP led) government is enjoying popular support these days due to the progressive steps that they have taken as far as public spending on development and infrastructure are concerned. These appear to be well thought out and are pro-development (albeit might also be involved in cronyism)<p>However, in this one instance the government seems to think that Facebook&#x27;s Free Basics thing is a &#x27;Good Thing&#x27;. I hope better sense prevails !

Crusaders of net neutrality you can help us by emailing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on this issue. See savetheinternet.in

Keeping marketing or financial problems aside. What are the technical difficulties that Facebook would face when providing access to the whole web rather that some specific website?<p>Data from Facebook or Wikipedia is same as the data from any other website. They will need the same infrastructure. What am I missing here?

Facebook provides free access to Facebook &#x2F; Wikipedia etc... then customers that have no access win because they get access and along with it, some pretty nifty tools to gain information and share news with their friends and family.<p>On the other hand, if Facebook doesn&#x27;t provide free internet, then all those people stay in the dark.<p>What does net neutrality have to do with this? It&#x27;s not those people are paying for an unequal service. It&#x27;s FREE!

Fucking scum. How can any competition compete with free facebook? Free basics my ass

If Facebook really had good intentions they would use the money they spend on these &#x27;marketing campaigns&#x27; towards actually providing free internet access. These guys are disgusting. For once I hope the quirky and unpredictable Indian legal system actually turns on the crazy full blast and summons Mark Zuckerberg himself to answer ...<p>&lt;&#x2F;venting&gt;

I used that message box to contact TRAI, but I don&#x27;t think that my message is exactly what Facebook expected.<p>&gt; Hey TRAI, you&#x27;re doing an awesome job!<p>&gt; Net neutrality is awesome! Don&#x27;t let shithead companies like Facebook from stop you from your goal. You&#x27;re doing a good job!

Privileged people with Internet complaining that people without Internet access get free access to (some part of) the Internet. What are <i>you</i> doing to provide free Internet access to the poor?

I don&#x27;t think people crying for net neutrality understand how many people in India still do not have Internet access. Even free access to facebook changes people&#x27;s lives in a better way. I belong to a small village in eastern UP, and the Internet penetration is still very less there. The Internet has huge potential to change people&#x27;s lives for the better, and I have experienced it in my own life. Lots of people still can&#x27;t afford to pay for the Internet, and for those people, as well as for their children, getting access to a subset of the Internet, however small, means a lot.

And so we have a bunch of rich Americans yelling &#x27;unfair!&#x27; about the poorest of the poor in india getting some small part of what they have. I like net neutrality &lt;in principle&gt;, but this is dogmatism.