Reply to post: It's Still Not Free Internet

It's Still Not Free Internet

It's not access to the net. That would be a fantastic thing to deliver to people who can't afford it (although it's clearly a much lower fucking priority than food and sanitation). But what's being offered isn't that. It's a vastly cut-down choice which is designed purely to get people used to doing things Facebook's way. So that when the same people can afford to pay for fully unlimited net access, they'll probably stick with what's comfortable, because that's how people are. All people, because we're essentially the same animal and that's how we work.

It's nothing but funnelling people into Facebook's user db so they can keep claiming ever higher user counts and keep pushing up their stock price.

I've got an issue with more than a few specific points in this article, but mostly it's the entire tone that hacks me of. Framing this as a rich white vs poor brown issue is utter bullshit and I'm normally the first person to point out condescending first-world attitudes to racism and "poor foreigners". Accusing this of being race-based or cultural imperialism is like comparing it to the holocaust. It's just a headline grabber that only needs to be uttered without the argument itself making any sense.

A few things stick out though: Slating Google as farming people for data is all well and good, and spot on the mark. But for fuck's sake don't do it when defending Facebook, who are in the exact same game (or did they stop being data-mining, ad-slinging pricks while my back was turned and start charging for access?)

Using data from the Republican party to support your "argument". These are the same bell-ends who passionately hate free healthcare, right? Because it doesn't make enough money for their donors, right? But suddenly they support free internet access? Can you see where I'm going here?

Also, listing the income of the people against it and claiming they're an elite is pretty laughable. In the global scale they earn very nicely. Within the standards of their own country they're doing pretty good (I assume, I can't be bothered to work out what their yank earnings equate to in real money).

But they're up against someone who could lose their combined yearly earnings (pre-tax) down the side of the sofa and not even notice it's loss without a full forensic audit of his sprawling empire.

I think the author seriously needs to research his definition of elite. cf Republican party, above. Again, pretty odd seeing them touted as the staunch defenders of the world's poor against the terrible cultural imperialists.

I'd almost swear the entire article is some sort of prank but it reads as though the author actually believes this shite.