same text, different site: http://static8.businessinsider.com/commenter?id=552adcb26da8115332c9eebf
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No, because itâs the same bandwidth whether youâre watching Netflix or reading Wikipedia. If your monthly cap is X GB, you can only download X GB, regardless of whether youâre streaming video or downloading text. After that, thereâs throttling, bandwidth cap, and other strategies to keep their costs to what the customer actually paid for.
Weâd be happy if, for example, they were offering this thing at speeds of say 256 or 512 KB/s - speeds we would have killed for a decade back - and/or with a bandwidth cap. As a non-profit (thatâs what Internet.org is supposed to be), surely they can do this?
EDIT: The good news is that weâve managed to shame at least some Indian companies that had originally signed on into getting off this thing. The biggest Indian online retailer (Flipkart), the biggest media group (Times of India), and one of the biggest travel sites (Cleartrip) have all gotten off it in the last few days. Thatâs positiveâŚ
The bad news is that we still have the fight at TRAI - theyâre our equivalent of the FCC. They released a 118 page consultation paper titled âConsultation Paper On Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTT) servicesâ, with a 1 month deadline for comments. The whole thing seems to be written by a bunch of telecom suits with the idea of squeezing every last possible penny out of the network by dispensing with net neutrality.
Thatâs what has the whole of the Indian online community up in arms right nowâŚ
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Come on. Singapore is, what, half the size of Manila? Internet services are expensive here in Australia too because of our low population density.
Personally, I dislike Internet.org because of the ads infesting the public transport around here.
Picture of a guy: âConnecting collectors of musicâ
Picture of a guy: âConnecting inventorsâ
etc etc
Picture of a girl: âConnecting the daughters of magiciansâ
Very Zuckerberg.
My analogy is quite relevant as Youtube itself (as just one example) would increase bandwidth costs per user on Internet.org, even if the videos are shown at their lowest quality.
Cost IS prohibitive in this matter.
FB is a $100 Billion company indeed, but offering Internet.org in every developing nation as they plan to do WILL become very expensive as more nations are added on, even with the limitations.
Also, if you want to get on your high horse about freebies for the poor, that is your prerogative. (kicks the moral soapbox from under euchronos). Letâs talk facts and figures.
This is reality and FB has shareholders to please. Like I said before, the expenses that this venture will face in developing nations will add up really quickly. Trust me, I LIVE in one.
Basic internet access in a developing nation is sporadic, unreliable and expensive. All of you who live in developed nations who believe that free, unlimited internet is the way to go for this project need a reality check.
And for the rest of you who are jumping on the fact that I just joined. Iâm a real person not affiliated with any of these sites, telcos or any other organization involved with Internet.org.
All of my accounts are publicly available on FB, twitter, Linked in, etc
And yes, I did copy and paste my response on several sites.
Makes sense to me. Same topic. Same confusion with what Internet.org is versus what an ISP is.
Not here to please you folks. My point is clearly made.
Free webhosting vs paid webhosting
Free advertising vs paid advertising
Free consulting vs paid consulting.
Paid services are defined much differently than paid ones.
Next time you sit down at a restaurant, ask them what they have for free.
Cory, with greatest respect (and I have a ton of it for you) this is a nonsensical argument. Facebook is making more of the Internet available FOR FREE to communities of users who are typically under restrictive usage caps. Theyâre not blocking anyone â theyâre ensuring that accessing specific things like Wikipedia are available to people without charge. Theyâre not blocking people from accessing anything. Dragging net neutrality into this is just dumb; itâs not remotely about that, and dragging the neutrality argument into the discussion weakens the position of those who advocate for a netural internet, because it looks tone-deaf and/or histrionic to rational observers.
Somehow Iâm guessing the people making a stink about this in India are those who already have internet - i.e. not the ones this is for. Iâm the first to say what a shithole facebook is, but this is the developed world judging things in the developing world through our own perspective, without any appreciation for the infrastructure and options we have for connectivity in the west.
Letâs talk about the actual facts of the situation, not the perception people seem to have or the misrepresentation the excerpted quartz paragraphs seems to set up. This is what users of the app in India get access to for free:
So - nice work net neutrality warriors - youâve managed to get rid of free access to wikihow, wikipedia, translator, weather, dictionary, blood donation info, health info and pregnancy/parenting information to possibly hundreds of millions of people. Just so you can feel good about making a principled stand for something you already have comparatively infinite access to.
Of course thereâs a legitimate debate to be had regarding why certain services and sites are not included, but getting all angry and having telcos/services pull out of these kinds of initiatives doesnât help anyone and is the definition of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Furthermore the belittling dismissiveness of suggesting that people in the developing world donât understand that the internet is bigger than facebook is pretty presumptuous and forgets that people in the west were or still are like that in many ways.
The idea of âzero-ratedâ services from non-neutral carriers isnât a new one. In countries like India, itâs long been normal for carriers to accept bribes to exempt certain services from data-caps. This phenomenon has been widely studied, and the conclusion is stark: zero-rated services do not contribute to poverty-eradication or other development goals.
This paragraph is just dishonest. The linked page doesnât say a fucking thing about poverty-eradication or development goals. Itâs got two anecdotes from researchers, one which contradicts the message of the article âzuckerberg is trying to fool people into thinking facebook is the internetâ by pointing out that people using free services in Indonesia explicity think facebook is not the internet. The second is not at all surprising. More people say they use Facebook than say they have internet connections? Yes itâs called device/connection sharing, Einstein.
Oh and just to reiterate before you all jump on me like you did Yorick, Iâve endlessly railed on the shitness of Facebook and what an asshole schmuckerberg is. How many people talk about how shit facebook is yet they still log in and participate on a regular basis?
What fails to make sense is why you are so passionate about this topic?
Care to elaborate?
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The press release from Indiaâs Aam Admi Party implicitly makes an interesting point:
The Aam Aadmi Party believes that the innovative youth of this country will give us the next Google, Facebook or Whatsapp.
The main point of Net Neutrality isnât about ensuring equal access to the existing Internet; itâs about providing equal opportunity to shape the Net of the future. Getting caught up in discussions about what access people should have now misses the long-term consequences of the choices made today. Will people in India and other developing countries have to just accept the Internet as it currently exists, or will they have the opportunity to contribute to its evolution?
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You guys at Boing should help fight back! End your partnership with Facebook for logging people in and encourage others to do likewise. Itâs an unspoken truth that with as many social media platforms as we have today, you donât need Facebook!
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Zuckerberg is the KING of Astroturfing. Everything he does is designed to look selfless but in reality benefits himself more than anyone else. Like when he took Facebook public under the guise of âspreading the wealthâ but really just managed to screw the first round of investors by getting it an overvalued IPO.
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Alas, poor Yorick⌠how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it.
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If you provide a cheap cut-down version of the Internet for people who cannot afford better, you get to run the Platoâs cave projector for a billion people. Why do they want to do this? This is a billion people without a lot of buying power, so it is not for the advertising. Is it a âhearts and mindsâ thing?
Creepy, or what?
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While they may not have much buying power per person, the total adds up - kinda the same reason Walmart is bigger than Costco.
Exactly. While it would be great to have reasonable access to the entire internet, itâs not immoral for Facebook to pay only for people to access Facebook. And the tone of this article is generally misleading, itâs not bribery itâs perfectly legal marketing. If the Indian government wants to change the situation ( which I think they should) itâs up to them to do it.
Please enlighten us with your results, if any.
Adding new technology to countries that arenât saddled with the sunk costs of old technology is actually a lot easier. Witness the boom in cell phones in countries which never had land lines.
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What particularly irks me is Facebookâs lobbying of the FCC for Net Neutrality in the US while pulling this off abroad. Is this actually one of those cases where buying stock and communicating through investor relations might make some impact?
