Facebook Free Basics and the downsides of zero-rating platforms

So internet.org is now Free Basics by Facebook, a service that will ostensibly realise, for billions of poor people, what Zuckerberg believes is a basic human right--the right to internet connectivity.

In India, this initiative has recently met with significant criticism and opposition. Critics argue that the platform will leave the burgeoning Indian digital market vulnerable to anti-competitive shenanigans and other risks that aren't outweighed by any benefit that may arise from giving many Indian smartphone owners free access to a small number of online services and sites.

There's no doubt that the service is a walled garden of sorts, in which bandwidth is free when accessing partner sites and charged when accessing non-partners. The process for vetting partners isn't publicly known and there are some choices that are at least a little surprising or irritating, eg. free Bing but no Google, free Facebook videos but not Youtube, free access to a bad job-search site but not to the market-leading one etc. Many users--but far from all--apparently go on to pay for a subscription within a month, according to Facebook.

Now, criticism of things that undermine net neutrality generally tends to focus on the concerns of comparatively wealthy and typically western users, most of whom are addicted to porn and netflix and sworn enemies of Comcast and their ilk. But are there also net-neutrality concerns worthy of consideration even in a scenario that involves giving limited free access to virtuous, poor and unconnected users in India?

I am a little torn here. On the one hand, I can see how Free Basics can benefit a number of Indian users, and in extension benefit Indian society. On the other hand, I can't help but worry about the potential downsides of letting so much of such an important market be captured at such a critical stage in its development, by actors that will not hesitate to leverage their control to undermine competitors. I'm unsure about whether or not the advantages (of letting some people use Facebook and a handful of other sites for free today rather than at a small cost tomorrow) outweigh the disadvantages (eg. of giving a single entity essentially unlimited power to influence the consumption of a billion people by limiting or guiding access).

Putting aside matters of regulation, what do you believe? Is Free Basics the best way forwards for India? What do we currently know about the advantages and disadvantages of zero-rating platforms in various businesses?

Its not free internet, its free facebook's version of the internet. Theres a huge difference and thats the problem. How much FUD and bullshit already floats around on facebook? How much of it has Lewk tried to bring into this board? Can you imagine wikipedia access, but not being allowed to follow the sources? Good god the abuse...
It isn't really needed either. Mobile data plans are relatively cheap in India, even for their standards, the problem usually is infrastructure/coverage. Facebook also wasn't increasing coverage. They planned to just partner with the existing ISPs and use the existing infrastructure. Do we really want so large a population to grow up thinking facebook = the internet? Didn't we have enough trouble with our parents thinking AOL = internet?

You want "free" internet, lets try improving on Google fiber's free plan. Free internet access isn't a new thing either, I grew up with Netzero. Free adsupported dial-up, no website restrictions.

First off, OG is spot on with his assertion of the issues with this, if anything lack of net-neutrality hurts poor and unconnected users more than educated western users (who have, and know of ways around it).

But, the more insidious side of the issue arises when you consider how the technology behind internet works. The internet is just a series of interconnected computers communicating with each-other, even if we limit ourselves to "the web" as a subset of the internet it's still a collection of servers and users. And because of the way routing works it doesn't matter if the content is on a LAN, or a machine in the same country, or one around the world; accessing it works the same way [from the POV of the client]. So why wouldn't a user on these so called "free basics" be able to access content stored in these various ways? It's not a question of Facebook providing access to a subset of what is available, but rather of them *restricting* access to a much larger subset. It takes effort to do this restriction, not the other way around.

None of what Facebook is doing has anything to do with providing free or affordable internet, because what's being "provided" is not the internet, plain and simple. It's as-if I sent a handful of films I had chosen to you and then claimed I gave you free cable TV.

And that's not even to mention the question of how the fuck hyper-links would operate in this bizzaro-internet.

LOL tl;dr so far so not read this thread yet but I clicked on the article from the homepage with my Banhammer ready thinking from the title that it was ad-spam.

I find this difficult from a different perspective. I am anti-net-neutrality for the most part, and my instinct is this Facebook program shouldn't be shut-down by regulatory fiat. That's totally self-defeating for India's poor and less-connected.

However, I don't like the idea of Facebook taking it's mostly US-based profits to subsidize exclusive infrastructure in India to make them the next Yahoo of India.

But, coming full circle, I have to imagine there will eventually be enough infrastructure in India to eventually compete with this bastardized Internet. And trying to become a portal-esque Yahoo in India via zero rating...sounds about as attractive as Yahoo's stock.

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