Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Largely it's rich Indians trying to block poorer Indians from having access to shiny things on specious moral grounds.

Just who the hell are you to deny your poorer countrymen free access, based on your personal beliefs from a position of pure privilege?

Would you give up your internet access for the same cause? No, I didn't think so.




Actually rich Indians are pretty happy about Internet.org - internet access makes it much easier for them to get propaganda out to poor villagers, thereby solidifying their power base. I think that poster makes a solid point about the integrity of the internet itself, though.


In a country where ~25% of the population live on under $1.25 a day, it doesn't take very much to be comparatively rich.


That is an interesting characterization of the situation. I would be more inclined to agree with you about X denying something to Y if Y had asked for it in the first place. However, in this case, I have heard Zuck himself saying numerous times that one issue with poorer countries is that they don't really know what internet is and they don't feel the need to pay to use it in the first place. It is hard to portray that as denial of connectivity to a certain set of people. They never asked for it. This is probably a bad analogy, but I see it more like a drug dealer luring away users for free, and some public organizations trying to ban that behavior.


That analogy only works if you think that internet in the Facebook version is actively harmful.


Suggesting it's ok to deny someone access to the Internet because they don't know what it has roughly the same moral weight as denying someone access to antibiotics because they don't know what they are.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: