back to article Zuck: Facebook won't retry Free Basics in India

Mark Zuckerberg says he'll find other ways to deliver connectivity to rural Indians, after his Free Basics program was rebuffed in India. But the program will press on in the other 37 countries. Free Basics was just one of Facebook's Internet.org initiatives, he stressed, which intended to bring the 4.1 billion unconnected …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Every country is different. There's America, then there's a homogeneous blob of not-America.

    I can point to not-America on a map. Probably.

  2. Pseu Donyme

    Facebook is an exploitative* parasitic** monopoly*** that should not exist in the first place, but unfortunately does due to the lack of data and consumer protection law in the US and inefficient enforcement thereof in the EU.

    *ads are commercial propaganda designed to manipulate and misinform; they are ultimately paid by their victim, the consumer as a higher price of products/services

    **akin to doping in sports advertising provides only a relative advantage: if you were the only one among competition to do it there would be a real advantage, assuming everyone else does it, it is just amounts to an extra cost, effectively a tax to paid the admen

    ***not in a strict dictionary sense, a more accurate term would be "controlling market position" (a synonym in colloquial use?)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Ads are the most dangerous propaganda. They can reshape society for the worst.

      Legalize no-win-no-fee ambulance chasers, and you get a US style compensation society within 5 years.

      Gambling, junkfood, smoking. These all need to be banned from advertising, least we become more like America. The yardstick of how not to run civilization.

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re "due to the lack of data and consumer protection law"

      I hate Facebook with a passion, but I cannot agree with your words there.

      Signing up to Facebook is voluntary, there is no coercion from Zuckerberg, nor is there any obligation from the law or the market.

      If you do decide to sign up, the onus is on you to read the conditions before accepting them. With all the hoopla around Facebook since it began to be a presence on the Internet, you cannot ignore the fact that Facebook is using whatever data you put on it, even if you might not realize how far it can go.

      So I fail to see what consumer protection laws could exist that would prevent Facebook from existing unless you think a law that would forbid "social networks" from advertising would ever have a chance to pass - but that would be restricting free enterprise, which is a constitutional guarantee in the US if I'm not mistaken (so is the right to privacy, but that little detail has been swept under the rug).

      1. Dan Wilkie

        Re: Re "due to the lack of data and consumer protection law"

        This. Currently it's not law to have a Facebook account. It makes some things easier for sure (logging into a bunch of sites and not having to remember birthdays) but it's far from a necessity.

        If it is a parasite, it's more like the Tok'Ra in SG1...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Every country is different"

    Quick, ring the Nobel people!

  4. caffeine addict

    I've only just realised that he actually owns internet.org and it's not just a stupid name. No idea why, but I assumed that internet.org was one of those protected domains like example.org. How much did old Zuck' have to pay for that one, I wonder?

    Actually visiting the site - the image choices aren't exactly helping the colonialism empire building accusations...

  5. dbayly

    The flying wing thing cruising at 90,000 feet is way cool. But the laser connection from the ground station to the plane would seem to be dodgier. I can't imagine that airline pilots will be too keen on them; they will need significant power to be detectable at 90K - more I suspect than the lasers that pen laser waving idiots around airports are using. And then there's the weather ...

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