What's mind boggling is the amount of money FB is spending on advertisements & lobbying so that they can be allowed to be "charitable". What's funny is that Mark's getting upset that people don't want "disingenuous charity".
There are a thousand effective ways in which you can help the underprivileged. Partnering with ISPs to decide what's "basic" internet is not one of them.
P.S. Many professors from India's top tech institutes, startups, entrepreneurs & other eminent people have spoken against "Free Basics".
This one point alone is enough for me to reject Free Basics:
"HTTPS support:
We encrypt information for Free Basics wherever possible."
Huh? As a service provider, why would I want YOU to encrypt traffic between my customer and me? I mean, it defeats the purpose of HTTPS. Its literally saying "I'm going to be a Man in the Middle and for a change, I'll also have the keys to decrypt the traffic". Yeah, right.
"When people use the Free Basics mobile website, information is temporarily decrypted on our secure servers to ensure proper functionality of the services and to avoid unexpected charges to people."
Facebook servers will be saying, "Hold on, so you want to buy a Camera, noted down(I've recommendations for you by the way). We're good now and I can send you to your destination. All for performance reasons of course."
I had respect for Zuckerberg, have lost it completely.
> I had respect for Zuckerberg, have lost it completely.
Do you mind if I ask why? Zuckerberg is perhaps alone among tech figures in that I've never really had any respect for. Hell, Steve Jobs was a pretty scummy guy, to users/competitors/partners/everyone, and yet I still have more respect for him. Zuckerberg's attitude towards the user has been pretty consistently shitty going all the way back to the very beginning of the "thefacebook" service ("they trust me -- dumb fucks"). The guy's as cynical as they come.
Do they have to be? They can be smart enough to rationally weigh the pros and cons here.
Really, there aren't any pros of Free Basics when you take into account the fact that a similar, net neutral business model can and has been implemented (by Aircel). The details are different (data cap or speed cap instead of walled garden), but the business model is the same -- get people to start using the internet for free in a limited way, and some of them will come to the non-free services. But net neutral. You can basically take Facebook and the walled garden completely out of the picture and it would probably have similar efficacy.
Why can Facebook and Zuckerberg support free basics -- when they're not even from India, but these smart Indians cannot oppose it because they're not the target audience?
It is one thing to say that such an offering is not in the poor's best long term interest. It is another to oppose it in such a way that hurts the poor's chance of even having a choice.
If is the difference between saying that smoking at 18 is bad and pushing a ban on selling cigarettes to adults who are considered too young. By all means, inform me. But do not take my freedom from me, even if it is in my best interest. For example, I strongly oppose bans on selling cigarettes to young adults even though I have never smoked and I hate smoking. I love the advice of how it is bad for you, but I love having the freedom to choose not to smoke instead of having it forced upon me.
But, I also realize it isn't this simple, as you have the other side using very underhanded if not outright illegal means to push what is in their best benefit. Personally this leads to me being at a moral impasse, because while I love the freedom to choose things that are less than beneficial for me, I realize that applied at large this causes major problems and I personally cannot hand wave it all away by saying they are adults responsible for their own choices (I honestly don't draw a major distinction between adults and children in this regard).
I dislike Zuckerberg for being deceitful as to the goals of this 'charity'. But I also dislike those who want to remove choices, even those that are not in my favor.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, Free Basics isn't the only offering that solves the problem. There are other options, and other models which have worked which Free Basics could adopt instead.
From that point of view, there are things which are strictly better than free basics which address these concerns (and net neutrality affects everyone, it's not just the "choice" of the people using Free Basics).
If these other models didn't exist there would probably be a weaker opposition to Free Basics. I'd mostly be on the fence -- preferring that net neutrality wasn't affected, but still supporting (or, not opposing) Free Basics since it's an IMO net gain. But these other options do exist.
What if there was a way to get the stress relief and other effects of smoking in a perfectly healthy and otherwise equivalent way? Would you ban cigarette smoking then? This "safe smoke" is not inferior to regular smoking according to smokers. It feels the exact same and has the exact same effect. If this exists, why allow cigarettes to exist? Okay, maybe you still want that choice. What if secondhand smoke was a much larger danger than it is now, and if a sizeable chunk of people start smoking, a lot of other people may get cancer just by sharing the same streets? In that case, would you allow it?
Well, I just think its a little classist to have these elite Indians decide what free service should or should not be allowed to be provided to poor Indians. They're essentially deciding the sacrifice that the poor will make (by forgoing this service) to serve their ideal (net neutrality). Their words and beliefs bare no cost but will be involuntarily paid for by others.
The pros are that its a service that people have a choice to use so if a customer freely chooses to do so, that person is obviously off. If you, or Aircel, want to provide a more competitive service you are free to do so. A different model that you feel is more effective is not an argument to restrict another competing model.
> elite Indians decide what free service should or should not be allowed to be provided to poor Indians
What's you definition of elite ? There's a very diverse background of people who have spoken against "Free Basics". Also keep in mind, that your average Joe won't even bother to read the fine print about the pros/cons of "Free Basics". So in a way, you have to depend on someone with a keen interest to voice an opinion.
I didn't mean "elite" as a slight, but rather as a generalization of those that are speaking out against a service that they will likely never use. It's as though I find something distasteful and I don't personally benefit from it so I favor banning it. It is no cost to me since I don't personally benefit from the product or service. This type of attitude leads to the social acceptance of a lot of censorship (e.g. vulgar material, I have nothing to hide, etc).
I believe the keen interest lies with those that are going to potentially use the service. These "elites" don't know the people that could potentially use this service. They don't know their values, their circumstances, or anything about them. It is presumptuous to think that those outside groups somehow know whats best and can choose for those being forced to forgo the service what sacrifice they should make for their ideals
If someone is willing to agree to a contract without fully understanding it, why should we be concerned unless they are clearly mentally disabled and being taken advantage of?
If someone wants to smoke tobacco or pot, why should I get any say in the matter?
I'll tell you how it'll go. You would probably as a way of casual conversation(in What's App or FB messenger) , mention that it would be nice if you bought an Air Conditioner. Now, normally FB won't(hopefully) read those messages because of its privacy policy.
Take free basics now, they're explicitly static that they can decrypt traffic. So now that you've mentioned an Air Conditioner, FB will start showing ads the next day saying "Air Conditioners at a discounted price". You get influenced and buy it(remember, you did not impulsively go to a shop and seek to buy one, you just mentioned it as a way of casual conversation). Do you see where its going?
That's one part of the problem. The rest is already summarized nicely by IIT professors.
When people are desperate for something they don't have they'll accept any deal to get it, no matter how bad. It's not classist, it's necessary to have as many people as possible consider this deal for them since if it's as bad a deal as everyone who isn't facebook is saying it is, then it's just Facebook exploiting the desperation of a huge poor population for profit which obviously shouldn't be allowed to happen.
Elites in our country have decided slavery should be banned, no matter what. Who are they to say a starving poor man can't sell himself into slavery in exchange for food for his family? How classist.
> Well, I just think its a little classist to have these elite Indians decide what free service should or should not be allowed to be provided to poor Indians.
And it's not internet colonialism for Facebook to swoop down, decide what Indians need, and take over their internet?
In fact, I've seen many well informed arguments from the so-called "elites" with numbers about internet adoption and _why_ the Internet isn't used much in India. I've seen none of this from Facebook; which has just assumed that India is full of clueless poor people.
For example, if you look at the costs of mobile data in India, the cost of a smartphone that supports the modern web (enough for sites like, say, Facebook to be usable) is more than the cost of data for a year or two. Most of the people Free Basics "helped" already were able to get internet. Folks are jumping onto it because it's free (and "free" has its own charm "If it's free, why not?"). There may also be people who already had internet switching to the free thing since they mostly use Facebook/Whatsapp/etc.
And given that Facebook isn't even paying for the data, what's it's role here? Some infrastructure (which is unnecessary in the alternate net neutral free internet models -- the infrastructure is only to make "internet.org" work), and some outreach.
You see a bunch of elites pushing back a philanthrophic company trying to help the poor. We see a company deviously inserting itself in the midst of something our telecom operators could have made work on their own, and structuring it in a dangerous way so that it is highly benefited.
(On a side note, a lot of students who came from poverty are on the side of the "elites", but this is anecdotal)
> the sacrifice that the poor will make (by forgoing this service) to serve their ideal (net neutrality)
I already said that there are net neutral ways of doing the same thing. It's not a sacrifice. You're making the same non sequitur the article says that Zuckerberg is -- saying no to Free Basics is not the same as saying no to.
net neutrality isn't even the only ideal involved here. Privacy is. You know, that thing the West is so crazy about right now? Free Basics is structured as a massive MITM. Facebook is in the business of data, and we can't trust them to not exploit the MITM.
Are you going to tell us to ignore this -- the same thing the West is so crazy about -- because it helps the poor? Even though, I reiterate, there are multiple models which have worked which provide internet to the poor without any of this crap? You're asking us to roll over and accept whatever we get because poor people. If you're from the West (many of the folks making this kind of argument are), that's way more elitist.
> want to provide a more competitive service you are free to do so
The internet, as Zuck himself is saying, is a public good and need. You don't unleash full market forces on those; capitalism can be harsh on them. An example is what's happened to the cost of higher education in the US.
>. Folks are jumping onto it because it's free (and "free" has its own charm "If it's free, why not?")
The whole tone of this is very condescending. You (presumably) don't know these people that will be the market for this product. I don't think you should look down on them and deny them autonomy as to the service that they use.
> And given that Facebook isn't even paying for the data, what's it's role here? Some infrastructure (which is unnecessary in the alternate net neutral free internet models -- the infrastructure is only to make "internet.org" work), and some outreach.
I don't see your point. Who cares what Facebook is paying for or their involvement. You're arguing that a free service that could help out many people be banned by fiat. I think the bar should be set pretty high.
> We see a company deviously inserting itself in the midst of something our telecom operators could have made work on their own, and structuring it in a dangerous way so that it is highly benefited.
By all means, if you and others think there is a better model, implement it as a competitor and allow people chose. Partner with the telecom operators, get them to do it. Preventing competition will not achieve your hypothetical ideal.
> Are you going to tell us to ignore this -- the same thing the West is so crazy about -- because it helps the poor?
I'm not asking you to do anything. Let those choosing to use the service or not choose what to consider when deciding whether to use this product or not.
>You don't unleash full market forces on those; capitalism can be harsh on them.
Capitalism has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other system in human history. Extreme poverty has fallen to below 10% for the first time [0].
> You (presumably) don't know these people that will be the market for this product.
I do know many of them. I don't think it's condescending to say folks will have a "It's free, why not?" attitude because many people (including me) has that attitude -- it wasn't a statement of the attitude of the poor, it was a statement of the attitude of people.
> I don't see your point. Who cares what Facebook is paying for or their involvement.
The point is that Facebook's involvement is an addon to an existing system that could have worked on its own. This point was to support the next bit about "deviously inserting itself".
> Capitalism has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other system in human history.
Another non sequitur. I wasn't saying capitalism can't/won't help poverty. I was saying full capitalism on basic needs is a bad idea. Even in the US these services are government controlled or highly regulated. Market forces aren't magic fix-everything solutions.
> I'm not asking you to do anything.
The "you" here was a general thing directed at Free Basics supporters and Mark.
> By all means, if you and others think there is a better model, implement it as a competitor and allow people chose.
It's been implemented partially (Aircel, Gigato, Grameenphone, not all in India). My point about full capitalism and market forces remains.
Note that Facebook's model requires a sacrifice of net neutrality from the get-go. Even if the market forces decide against Free Basics, net neutrality is long gone by then.
> Note that Facebook's model requires a sacrifice of net neutrality from the get-go. Even if the market forces decide against Free Basics, net neutrality is long gone by then.
This is the heart of your argument. You believe that this undermining net neutrality, and it probably is. I don't see why there should be a different set of rules of paid services and those with a different model that doesn't involve direct payment from the user. As you can probably guess, I am not in support of net neutrality, so this is where we differ. I respect your resolve on the issue especially when faced with what seems like a hypothetical. I could see someone arguing against net neutrality by asking "hypothetically, under net neutrality I would be unable to offer free internet with limited functionality to the poorest people in the world...".
I believe this is a better argument to make and the rest is really an unnecessary distraction and can often be interpreted as condescension of the poor.
> "hypothetically, under net neutrality I would be unable to offer free internet with limited functionality to the poorest people in the world...".
Yes, and this is the argument Zuck is trying to make (well, he's sort of skirting it but it's a similar core argument), and this is the argument I've been refuting here -- like I said there are models (Aircel, Gigato, Grameenphone) which have worked which solve the free internet thing without impacting net neutrality or privacy. This is not a hypothetical.
I see that you don't care about net neutrality -- a valid opinion to have. But here we have multiple solutions to the same problem, one of which impacts net neutrality -- something which a lot of people care about (and others, like you, don't). All other things being equal (they aren't, but there aren't any other compelling arguments for facebook's solution), shouldn't we choose the neutral solution? If you don't care about net neutrality, the solution picked won't matter. But this is a solution agreeable with the people who care about net neutrality. So everyone's happy, except Facebook.
Sometimes the right person to ask is the third party. The "target market" here consists mostly of people who, as a group, have no understanding whatsoever of what is being offered. They can't make an informed choice because they have no information but what marketers tells them, and we all know that sales and marketing are paragon of honesty and truthfulness...
Mind you, that so far none of the "India's top tech institutes, startups, entrepreneurs & other eminent people" are forcing general population to reject the offer. They're just explaining what the costs and the long-term consequences are. Who, if not them, is supposed to do that?
Welcome to XXI century. We're making the world so complicated that you often can't trust an ordinary person to make a good decision for themselves.
> The "target market" here consists mostly of people who, as a group, have no understanding whatsoever of what is being offered
So you deny the poor autonomy since they're poor? Poor != uniformed. They're not subjects of the state due to their circumstances.
Because I love quotes:
'Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it.' - Abraham Lincoln, letter to H.L. Pierce, April 6, 1859.
> Mind you, that so far none of the "India's top tech institutes, startups, entrepreneurs & other eminent people" are forcing general population to reject the offer. They're just explaining what the costs and the long-term consequences are. Who, if not them, is supposed to do that?
I have no objection to that. They can advocate that it should not be used. I am only opposed to banning this service.
I'm not denying anything to anyone. I'm only stating observations. People have less and less autonomy nowadays. The illusion of autonomy, yes, there's an abundance of that. But it's not the real thing. It's actually more dangerous that no autonomy at all, because in the latter case at least you know you're doing someone else's bidding.
> Poor != uniformed.
I didn't think along this line. It's more of "general population == uninformed", especially when it comes to science and technology. It's too new and it's changing too fast. Societies internalize things very slowly.
I love quotes too, but denying freedom isn't what's happening. A big issue in our times is that people have very limited capabilities to exercise their freedom for any good. Not only the world is too big and complex, in every aspect of our lives we're constantly facing armies of malicious people that are paid for fucking us over. "Free will" sounds cool, but it loses much of its glamour when you see how easy is to manipulate people into doing things that go against their best interest.
> I have no objection to that. They can advocate that it should not be used. I am only opposed to banning this service.
Yeah, I'm not advocating a ban either. But I don't see anything bad about the third-party "elites" speaking up. They aren't just random celebrities, they're the people with knowledge and means to understand this particular issue.
I (as an Indian with easy access to internet) may not be target audience of this service, but I would also have to suffer the implication of such service on telecom policy of my country, by which I mean, end of net-neutrality. That I want very much to be maintained. So I, and other Indians who are against it for this reason, have all right to oppose it.
Well its in your right to choose not to use it, advocate that it should not be used by others or offer an alternative. You shouldn't have the right to force others to not use the product and therefore bare a cost to serve your ideal.
But why do you not want poor people to have Internet? Some entrepreneur is able to build a business plan around helping poor people, and people are demanding that instead he must do charity.
Charity is not the reason why you're not the intended audience of that market.
Regarding net neutrality, that idea needs to die (and I know it's a hugely unpopular thing to say on HN). All bits are NOT created equal, some bits are more economically valuable than others. This is a fight you can't win, because it isn't against special interest groups etc, it is against the reality itself.
> But why do you not want poor people to have Internet?
You're making the exact same fallacy the article says Zuck makes. Free Basics is not the only solution, there are other solutions out there which don't need Facebook's involvement, which could and should be implemented. Opposing Free Basics is not opposing free internet. Get rid of that strawman.
My main concern with Free Basics is that it's literally a reinvention of AOL, using a different shade of blue.
Moreover, I find it extremely hypocritical of Mark Zuckerberg to push a system that would have prevent his own company from becoming as big as it has. Put another way, he would be screaming bloody murder if it was Google offering Free Basics, and forcing everybody to access the web through Google+.
But a free AOL. Net neutrality makes sense when you pay for it. When someone offers you a free service it is hard to complain about the quality. You might refuse to call it "charity" but I don't think there is anything wrong with it.
It's not so simple. If the company who has monopoly power[1] provides free services, or if the free service can be used to gain monopoly power, there is possibility for market failure.
If it would be OK to do anything as long as the service is free, it would make sense for Chinese government & Baidu & Huawei consortium to provide High Quality Free Basics for every American who wants it.
But you can say the same of any free service. What about free news website, free email services, etc? They all could (and do) drive competition out of business. But they provide a service which is just good enough for most people. And if people want something better they will pay a premium for it (like access to The Economist website).
I am sure that most Indians who have the means to pay for broadband will not want to be restricted to that facebook service. In fact the more restrictive facebook makes it, the more likely it will not prevent competition.
But it's not much of a monopoly and though I'm not American I'd have no problem with the Chinese government giving me the option of say free commie propaganda basics. I probably wouldn't use if but it would be fine to have the option.
But who's paying for the bits to be transferred? Neither the user nor the site. The ISP is paying for it themselves. And where do they get the money? From users paying for access to other sites.
So, ISPs are taking the money from (users paying for) site A, and using that to subsidise site B. This is a blatant net neutrality violation.
A neutral way of doing this is to offer the site the option of paying on behalf of the user, at the same rate the user pays. Offer the same option to all sites at the same price and subject to the same terms. Allow this to be resold, so that CDN-like companies can spring up that allow a company to reach all users in India (or the world) without having to sign up with multiple ISPs. That will be a level playing field.
There are two inaccuracies in that statement. First, Free Basics will not be free, over the long term. Facebook has said that their long-term plan for Free Basics includes monetization of some sort. Presumably, it'll be a combination of advertising and collecting commissions for e-commerce transactions made via Facebook.
Second, and more importantly, even if Free Basics were completely free, it'd still be wrong. Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer for free with Windows. They did not do this as an altruistic gesture. They did it to crush Netscape, which was challenging their software monopoly on the desktop. Facebook is doing exactly the same thing with Free Basics. This is not an altruistic gesture by Facebook, regardless of what Mark Zuckerberg writes in his op-ed. This is a calculated move to establish a Facebook monopoly over user data in the largest untapped Internet market in the world. Facebook, with Free Basics, is ensuring that no other social network or messaging platform can challenge it in India.
The technology community rightly applauded the US Department of Justice when it initiated anti-trust actions against Microsoft. We should applaud the Indian technology community for standing up and forcing the government of India to take a hard look at the long term consequences of a Facebook monopoly.
It's odd that the article regards privately owned schools, hospitals, and libraries as absurd abominations. Private schools are a huge part of the American education system, and they're not the problem. Even when the funding is public, lots of jurisdictions in the US are moving toward privately owned schools, i.e. charter schools. The Catholic Church runs private schools around the world and is widely lauded for it. A big portion (most?) of the best American universities are private. 80% of hospitals in the US are private. Private is good.
Can someone explain for me how Free Basics would be harmful for anyone? If there's an alternative way to bring full internet connectivity to people who currently can't pay for it, wouldn't that alternative beat Free Basics in the market? The article briefly mentions "public internet access" as an alternative, but the Indian government has already failed the 400 million Indians without electricity, and 1 billion without internet. "The Indian government can probably get the money somewhere" reveals a total misunderstanding of the scale of the problem and places a laughable faith in the Indian government, the incompetence of which is in fact the single largest factor holding India back. Why not give market solutions a chance?
It should be mentioned that currently 40% of Indian children are enrolled in private ("independent") schools, which in turn make up 25% of the K-12 schools in India[1]. The public school system is viewed as such a poor education that demand for private schools is high, and thus can be quite affordable too; as low as $2 per month[2]. Which even in India is within the reach of most families (minimum wage there is ~$225/month).
Meanwhile I'll point out that this sort of disdain coupled with a demand that India accept a Faustian bargain ("Who could possibly be against this?", as Zuck says) is exactly what prompts people to think of this perspective as a variation of the "White Man's Burden".
I reject the idea that if someone comes up with a plan for a country, upon turning it down the country has to provide an immediate substitute. If I say highly-polluting cars are affordable and will give more people mobility, it doesn't mean opponents have to immediately provide less-polluting cars at the same price.
You've linked one level too deep into the conversation.
My arguments about the power of the free market are not limited to India or any particular country. I preach the same for America. The American government is incompetent and is holding back growth.
Except they often don't. Being horrible and abusing people is very profitable. Democratic governments can also be voted "out of business", and the result is more-less the same as with companies: good and evil thrive, what disappears is people and organizations too stupid or too inhibited to game the system.
One of the great things about business is that they don't have to follow much morality besides their own self-interest to be useful to society.
Subsidies preserve broken business models at great cost to not just taxpayers, but economic efficiency and quality of service. They create and perpetuate structural deficiencies in the economy. They reward political rent-seeking instead of creating real value for people.
As they pile up, the cumulative effect becomes worse and the ability of society to change its mind erodes. At an extreme, when subsidies drive a huge portion of economic activity, returning to a free market requires years of painful readjustment.
They also support business models that do good when doing good is not profitable. Or basic research, which is pretty much by definition something the market won't touch with a ten-foot pole. Or ventures that could be the milestones to fixing something big about the world (see: Tesla Motors).
The great thing about business is also one of the worst things about it. Profit drive is a very powerful optimization force, and we owe to it most of the wealth around us. It's great when it kind of follows along the lines society wants it to. But, as you said, it has essentially no reason to keep doing that, and so when being horrible and evil is more profitable, the business turns horrible and evil and that's where we need the government - an agent that does not follow the same incentive gradient - to step in and force that business to behave.
The market is like a great river. It's simple - it flows downhill. Put an obstacle on its way, and the river shall destroy it or route around it. But just as majestic and life-giving it is, it can equally easily take lives away. It will flood villages and cities without stopping. Governments are like people tasked with landscaping. They don't have the power of the river. But they can put things on its path to redirect it - whether away from settlements in danger, or towards a barren land, or straight into a power plant that will help feed millions.
Politicians are subject to market forces just like everyone else. It just happens to be a market for votes, and the tools at their disposal include pandering to special interests, demagogy, class-warfare, and racial division. Taxes, subsidies, and regulations are driven at least as much by those as by any genuine concern for the people or the economy. And they always want to spend someone else's money instead of their own!
I agree that we need both. Basic research is a good example. I'm not familiar with the economics of electric cars, but you might be right about Tesla too. But beware the easy incrementalism of this all. Each step is logical and difficult to oppose on its own, but the collective result is a society drained of its dynamism and freedom. And then the real kicker is that the government programs that you sacrificed them to don't work. They become barriers to entry for competition, vehicles for political pork, permanent bureaucracies that lobby for their own existence, and more opportunity to waste other people's money.
As an aside, businesses do have a very good reason to continue to serve the public interest: they need to continue to create value for their customers, or they soon won't have any.
In a way markets and governments aren't really that different from one another. I think people often forget that neither exists in a vacuum. Politicians, like you say, are part of the market too! They want money (like everyone) and they have power and influence to sell. Supply and demand are there, and so the trade happens. To stop it completely we'd have to staff our governments with alien beings that would not desire anything we could offer them.
(And no, disbanding all governance will not make power spread itself evenly among everyone - it's not a stable state. We'd be back to having warlords instead.)
RE Tesla, they took some DOE loans (inb4 someone pops up with "evil Musk eating taxpayer money" again - loans which they paid back in full and way before the due time) that were important to their growth. It's a textbook example of why those loans, and other grants, exist in the first place.
I agree that all the problems you mentioned are real and important. Governments do create nasty issues. But they handle some things well. Markets too have issues, just different ones, and also have terrible failure modes in other areas (which include bribing governments into changing laws to benefit them instead of the general population). Personally, I'm advocating for dropping the ideological approach and just evaluating every problem on its own, whether it is solved best by top-down governance, bottom-up free market work, or some combination of both.
Private is also classist. Either you're already wealthy and the cost doesn't matter; or you're working harder and saving less money for retirement as that money is siphoned off on a kid learning how to be a good worker bee and being socialized.
Private schools exist from an aristocratic history. England has this nonsense also. Meanwhile there are countries who take public education seriously and there is essentially no such thing as private education. Look at how Scandinavian countries do this. And the Germans are offering U.S. college students free degrees, many of them stay in Germany. And by and large the education level in these countries is more uniform, where in the U.S. it's again, quite classist.
So if you're in favor of feudalism, yeah private school is a great idea.
As for Free Basics, I think it's for the users to decide whether it meets their needs or not, but for that to be possible Facebook shouldn't be referring to what they offer as an essential service. Facebook itself is not essential. A full, unabridged Internet connection, is essential. But that's not what's offered. Further, the connection with the user requires dual certificates, so Facebook can see what everyone's doing even if they aren't using Facebook proper - something an ISP doesn't even get to do. The harm is the obfuscation.
I'm glad you mention the Scandinavian countries, because they are an example that rejects your argument. 14% of the students in Sweden go to private schools, without "siphoning off" the parent's money, by using a voucher system.
Who funds education can and should be a separate argument from who runs the schools.
Not everywhere. Schooling is totally state-dependant.
And maybe the fiercest and bitterest war waged in state politics over the last decades were about school systems.
In Hamburg there are mostly comprehensive schools. In the largest state, Northrhine-Westphalia, there are still those separate tiers, but comprehensive schools are probably the majority.
> lots of jurisdictions in the US are moving toward privately owned schools
Jurisdictions are moving toward charter schools because their teachers are not unionized, and can therefore be paid less salary and benefits than public school teachers, with the side “benefit” of breaking public schoolteachers unions. Additionally, charter schools help rich white people redirect their tax money away from funding public schools in poor brown neighborhoods. Finally, charter schools are much less regulated w/r/t the salaries they pay their management or the services they purchase from other firms, which makes them a booming profit center, and gives plenty of slush to spend on lobbying, bribes, and PR/marketing.
That's an awfully cynical view of it. An alternate narrative is that public school bureaucracies, perverse incentives for teachers unions, and political meddling from government created a system that was failing to offer students a good education. Mix that in with a very American belief in the power of free choice and free markets, as well as a belief that ability to pay should be no barrier to an education, and charter schools are the solution that has emerged.
I think there's problems with that narrative too. The impact that good teachers can have on kids from very troubled homes is probably overstated, and teachers unions have often been fighting against performance rating systems that unfairly ignore that. But in defense of charters, a performance rating system that doesn't work won't survive very long in the private sector.
Edit: Perhaps a better question, that avoids the nasty politics of the current situation, is: what does the ideal system look like? My inclination is that it would look more like charter schools than like public schools.
The ideal system probably looks a lot like Finland, where teaching is a selective high-status profession with good pay, benefits, professional development, and autonomy; schools are competently managed; students are treated as people instead of numbers in a spreadsheet; and everyone in every wealth bucket receives a solid education.
The precise policy details might not apply in extremely different societies/political systems, but the high-level goals should be the same:
Highly qualified professional teachers with good career prospects and lots of personal responsibility and a culture of continuous professional development, adequate school infrastructure and materials, focus on the individual needs of diverse children, resource equality for students regardless of wealth or social class, work to solve child poverty and other severe social problems that prevent any education system from functioning.
And in finland there is school choice, which means that the money follows the student. If no students choose to go to school X, the school gets shut down. This is quite similar to what the charters in the US represent.
> These aspects from the article sound like US charter schools.
Some charter schools. A minority. Others are run like tiny military academies, or have gone all-in on high-stakes testing, or profit by relying on low-paid short-term teachers with high turnover, or are mainly financial schemes/scams with schools attached (cf. the alternet link a few posts upthread).
All of the bits you listed actually sound precisely like my southern California suburban public elementary school experience in the mid–late 1990s. Unfortunately the school got constant pushback from the school district and state for not being excited enough about letter grades or standardized tests, but was able to mostly persist its culture through support from local parents.
This seems like a game of chicken. The "teachers, ex-teachers, school administrators" are betting that public elementary and secondary education would have to be much, much worse than it already is in order to justify supplementing it with something, anything else. They're wrong.
That’s horseshit. The public schoolteachers I know closely are dedicated professionals who work 70-hour weeks, agonize over their students progress and personal situations, and buy classroom materials out of their substandard salaries because their schools are broke.
The hard work, mediocre pay compared to alternative professions, and lack of autonomy and social respect they receive takes its toll though, and teacher attrition is higher than ever. Instead of “playing chicken” as you suggest, experienced teachers are retiring in droves and top potential teachers are scared away by poor career prospects, and as a profession teaching is hollowing out. Most states cut education budgets sharply after the 2008 recession and in general those budgets still haven’t recovered. I fear that in another decade or two public education will be in a very tough place, having lost a huge proportion of its human capital with no easy way to get it back. In parts of the US this is already a crisis, but the political response has been to further demonize teachers and push for more standardized testing, voucher programs, charter schools, and so on.
The problem is that teacher compensation has not scaled with educational spending over the past few decades in the US. K12 spending in the public sector has increased faster than inflation * population growth everywhere, yet median teacher pay has gone down (I think average is stable but that's because some senior teachers get really sweet packages).
Even if states cut education budgets sharply in 2008 it shouldn't have been a problem, because it's not like teachers 30 years before that were suffering under much more parsimonious spending. It's just that when they cut those budgets, someone decided to pass the pain on to the teachers instead of figuring out where the real waste was.
The atrocious thing is that the teacher's unions keep clamoring for more educational spending instead of higher teacher pay. Empirically speaking in the US, more educational spending will correlate with lower teacher pay.
There have been proposals to sharply raise pay as part of reforms that make it easier to hire and fire teachers. Teachers' unions have always been extremely opposed.
It's probably accurate to say that the blame lies more with administrators than with teachers, and more with the American public than with either of those parties. The term "hollowing out" is really just another sort of demonization. It doesn't matter though. Taken as a whole, USA public education consumes more resources per student than it did a generation ago, with steadily declining outcomes. There is no law of nature ensuring that children can only learn in such dismal conditions. "In another decade or two", students will get their educations in some other fashion. Hey, it happened to travel agents!
> A big portion (most?) of the best American universities are private. 80% of hospitals in the US are private. Private is good.
Mark Zuckerberg's Op/Ed piece[1] specifically makes the case that Free Basic's is valuable likening it to public healthcare, public education, and public libraries.
So yes, private good. But private also is private, and not beholden to the public. Free Basics isn't private, though Zuck et al would like it to be accepted and lauded as a public service.
Putting aside this particular argument, I'm fascinated by what appears to be Zuckerberg's philosophy of creating profitable business models to provide public goods that are traditionally the realm of governments or charity. When successful, and I don't think they always can be, such solutions seem fundamentally more robust. They don't require continual interest from the donor class or the use of government coercion. And the resulting businesses would have a stronger incentive to spend their money wisely.
I don't think this is true. The B-corp just gives shareholders a cause of action in court against management for not pursuing the social objectives of the company. A corporation is free to pursue any lawful interest. Here is a good article about this: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-cor...
Interesting. In this particular case, though, Free Basics is designed in a way that allows Facebook to track what content is being accessed, without any explanation as to why, aside from the obvious incentive of being able to use that browsing data to create user models.
An advertising giant offering "free internet" with the ability to MITM and track https connections is hardly charity.
The problem with Facebook is that it's trying to invent problems for its solution. It has been my observation that the limited internet accessibility in India is less because of people not being able to afford it (internet is quite cheap, and definitely affordable for anybody who can afford to have a phone capable enough for modern web) but because there is a huge barrier to internet literacy. Most people aren't online because they do not know the benefits of email, search or social networks. And even if they do know the benefits, there's a barrier to learning it. I have many relatives in my family who are well to do but don't know how to use the browser properly. At the same time, a lot of people in the lower income classes don't feel the internet is important enough to invest in the resource to access it, eg web capable phones. Free basics will not provide that section of people any kind of benefit, because it doesn't lower any of those barriers.
> Can someone explain for me how Free Basics would be harmful for anyone?
It makes the entire technological infrastructure of the country grow crooked, relying on a particular corporation as backbone, rather than growing their own.
We (Indians) already suffer a lot due to free things provided by government. (Laptop, Cycle, Bus Pass, for students, TV, Mixie, Fan for household) all in public money but labeled as the party that is in power. Now a private company starting this, tomorrow what stop Reliance doing this where they encourage to buy from thier stores across India. Or send Ads of particular party for vote with higher preference? TV and News is already fully controlled by mafia parties. Now internet and next text with whatsapp i think.
As for the public/private debate, at least for schools, I can some points. Indian school system is very different from the US ones. Majority of the schools, both public and private follow curriculum set by either two central boards (CBSE and CISCE) or the individual state boards. In either case, the level of education based on the curriculum is not very different between public and private schools. So many students are now enrolled in private schools solely because the public schools have highly inefficient management with teachers hardly qualified enough to teach to them not turning up at all.
The case is entirely opposite in higher education. People swear by public institutes and universities and private institutes (barring a few big ones) are looked down upon because they have historically charged more for a lesser education compared to the highly subsidized and excellently staffed public universities.
Public schools in India also have teachers with excellent credentials (i.e. Kendriya Vidyalaya) but some of them just don't care to teach better. I've done my whole schooling from various KVs across Rajasthan, most of the teachers were actually quite good, but they weren't motivated to innovate and experiment. We were rarely informed about Olympiads, competitions, scholarships etc. Also, management was definitely terrible most of the time.
The public/private thing is a red herring. Ownership isn't really central here. Nobody would object if Zuckerberg wanted to give these people Internet access.
The question, if we can agree the open network is something desirable, is will this initiative help the population get Internet access sooner or later? My bet would be later, but I am happy to be proven wrong.
Why isn't facebook running this programme in USA? There are 50 million Americans without internet. Although 50 million is not as big as 600 million Indians without internet, it is still bigger than populations of many countries Facebook is running Free Basics in. The Americans without internet are usually old and poor and internet connectivity can do a lot for them. A lot of these people cannot afford the internet.
My only question...would Americans think it would be wise to destroy Net Neutrality?? Just asking. Perhaps someone should try and get Facebook to start this in USA.
It's not a problem in US doesn't mean the initiative will not be welcomed there. Toll free phone numbers exist and are used extensively in the US, Free Basics can work on similar lines. Obviously, introducing the initiative will raise questions on violation of net neutrality.
you've conflated nonprofit and forprofit entities as though they are the same thing, but they're not. there's a world of difference between a private library which is nonprofit (there are lots of those) and one that is owned/controlled by a forprofit corporation.
"If Zuckerberg really wants to sell Free Basics, he needs to stop trying to convince people that it’s some self-sacrificing public service and admit what it actually is: a company offering a service that’s (supposedly) beneficial for both users and the company in question."
This is a good argument. This is not a charity act but a business decision. Although it brings something good to the Indian, Indian also helps Facebook to expand its business.
There is nothing wrong with expanding a business by providing a service. Every service that we use voluntarily, charitable or otherwise, makes our lives better off otherwise we would not be using it. I can't help but think that the poorest in the world are more helped by the efforts of private profit motivated enterprise than that of governments and charitable organizations.
> The World Bank and African Development Bank report there are 650 million mobile users in Africa, surpassing the number in the United States or Europe. In some African countries more people have access to a mobile phone than to clean water, a bank account or electricity, the agencies add. [0]
Perhaps its time to rethink what organizations are best suited for raising the standard of living.
It doesn't have to be either-or, and I'm saddened that so many people still think that government solutions are always superior to private ones, or the other way around. In fact both have their strengths and weaknesses, and we should learn to evaluate which one fits a given problem better - or even structure a combination of both. For instance, mobile phones are a great success story of market economy, but mobile networks universally start to suck as they grow, and have to be heavily regulated.
It would be kind of like saying Google is offering Gmail for free for charity reasons. I think most people would immediately shot down that argument as well.
Some much worse organizations do that too on territories they control, which makes the analogy even better. Does Zuckerberg want to preach good news or does he need a cheap source of cannon fodder?
Indian politics has trained people well to see through Zuck's strategy and his TOI article only exposes his immaturity about what works/doesn't work in India.
It's not difficult for people to understand this initiative violates net neutrality and is an attempt to create a "separate internet" where budding entrepreneurs/content providers have no choice but to pay Zuck to be onboarded. This is akin to license raj (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj) that was demolished way back in the 90s.
This argument is a non-starter. We do indeed allow private organizations to create libraries. Moreover, the conflict of interest exists even when the state (not to be confused with society) participates. How do we make sure our public schools don't become institutions where the pupils are 'educated' to blind obedience to the current president, for example?
This is why I don't like to use metaphors when discussing net neutrality. The current regulatory question in India is very specific: whether telecom services should be able to differentially price data. The internet is in a class of its own, and arguing net neutrality as an abstract principle applied to other contexts blurs the issue.
Free Basics just happens to depend on differential pricing, and Facebook is running a campaign to preserve Free Basics, hence it has become lightening rod for the debate.
The basic assumption here is state looks after matters of social welfare and private organizations look after maximizing profit. Free Basics is being touted as a service for public good, but is coming from a private organization - that makes it a non-starter. This would have been more trustworthy had this been an initiative of the Indian government. There would still be concerns of furthering Government's agenda (blind obedience), but in that case there is a bigger problem and elections every 5 years facilitates corrective action. FB cannot be voted out.
I agree with you in that the state is better placed to handle services for the public good, however private organisations can still offer services for the public good, the issue here is really down to what is proposed.
Let's put it like this, Facebook could be pushing for a net neutral version of free Internet access, the cost to them is exactly the same as the Free Basics plan, as the real cost is in the Internet bandwidth/infrastructure. The fact that they're not pushing for a net neutral Internet says volumes about their true intentions.
private organizations do not necessarily maximize profit. There are plenty of nonprofits (archive.org, e.g.), benefit organizations (rotary, lion, etc), research institutes/funders (HHMI, ACS, AHS, UL), NGOs (MSF, HRW, JWB, etc.) Each of these organizations would arguably be in a worse position if the things they were doing were attached to state functions.
Mozilla is another example, and then there are standards boards, IEEE, e.g., which are very closely tied to industry. So why not internet.org?
Putting Facebook in the same category as Rotary, NGOs, research institutes and the remaining long list you mention cannot be a more flawed analogy.
In any case, you seem to be missing the bigger point here - it's not about whether FB is promoting this today for maximizing profit or not, it's about promoting the re-modelling of the internet where information flow is controlled by FB.
Sure. Typically they are specialized in a single type of content. For example, JSTOR is a self-described "digital library" which provides journal access. Your local movie rental store (or its competitor Netflix) provide entertainment or educational content (movies and shows).
Of course they can be regulated just like any business or service. So could this service, in fact. Forcing net neutrality for all service providers would cut out a lot of crap and I'm convinced it's a long-term boon.
It's not regulated - not sure about the profit part. It is hugely dwarfed by the public library, but it is still quite popular. They have a smaller collection, but the percentage of the items that circulate is supposedly astronomical.
It only has a 10,000 year lease though, so I suppose it's only temporary.
So Mark Zuckerberg made billions selling people's data contributing to a business model which makes the world a worse place in exchange for a bit of entertainment. Whatever, at least people semi-voluntarily signed up for that (it wasn't obvious to many what the deal is before they got a big chunk of their life locked in there) and they are getting their fix on regular basis.
So how is Mark using the billions now? Right, actively trying to make the world much worse and closed place. A place which would prevent him from starting his business in the first place. What world we live in that such individuals are so successful :(
I don't get why Zuckerberg's or Facebook's intentions are even relevant.
It's a fairly simple question. If Free Basics, which violates net neutrality (Facebook has never denied this, instead responding by saying that poor people internet is more important than net neutrality) is allowed, then every ISP in India will have the legal ability to violate net neutrality.
Indian providers are already terrible, and will almost certainly abuse their powers to have both website providers, and customers, pay more to access services. They will be providing different packages with the lowest tier only giving Facebook access, the next one adding Bing, etc...
What we know as the internet, and the best parts of the internet, which allowed companies like Facebook and Google to flourish in the first place, cannot exist without net neutrality. Allowing Free Basics is essentially India kissing the internet good bye, in favor of AOL style walled gardens. Admittedly, there will be a wide variety of walled gardens to choose from, and some of them may even allow you to talk to your friend in a different walled garden.
I don't get it. You can completely ignore using Facebook.com, and just use the free access to Wikipedia, among other useful local services.
When I first got a Kindle, it had unlimited free access to Wikipedia. I thought this was the coolest thing ever, and didn't think about net neutrality, just a cool bonus that came with the device.
You might not use Facebook, but the vast majority of other users will and that's where the real problem lies. Unlimited free access to a non-profit website like Wikipedia alone would be great.
Hmm this is an interesting question. Does a Kindle (or other device) that is connected to the internet, but can only access limited sites or services violate net neutrality? It really depends on applicable regulations or legislation, and how exactly the connection is setup (between the Kindle -> the Connection -> Amazon -> the Internet) but I think it's not an obvious violation...
In theory, you could also ignore all ads in general, but in practice you can't really ignore them, so you'd better realize that you're trading off a service for some influence over you.
It seems like the same old mentality of someone from outside a particular society trying to impose rather imperious ideals in a manner that leaves them open for criticism of their motives.
Zuckerberg might spend a lot of money on this, but an entire continent's opinion is turning against him.
India should do what Romania did: nothing. Deregulate all telecommunications and create a free for all. They'll have the fastest internet and the cheapest phone system with a couple of yours. It's not as if Indians aren't as much or even more entrepreneurial than Romania (which still has a head start over the neighboring countries because of this).
Corruption will likely not tolerate such a free market without getting a slice of the pie, that's the biggest stumbling block.
Market forces are slow in some markets. It's very hard to get started in the telecom industry in india, so you pave the way for an oppressive ologopoly instead. There's no reason to believe that Romania's telecom industry and market is comparable to that of India.
What are the reasons to believe that it wouldn't work?
ANRC (the body that governs communication) in Romania I think did more (by doing very little) for the Romanian economy than any other government agency. It's funny because we used to hate them for not allowing us to get more ethernet cables on the public infrastructure (which we payed for a nominal price) because of some safety issues. I was working as and admin working for one of those free for all ISPs. It's crazy how good and cheep the internet has become since then.
What happened is that in a small city (250k people) we had about 30 independent ISPs and we had gigabit peering between ourselves. Scroll 5 years, big companies come in and buys us all out, then slowly start replacing ethernet with fiber. Scroll another 5-10 years, most have fiber in the cities and gigabit connections at very low prices.
It can be argued that the little guys (ISPs) got a little screwed especially those who haven't been bought, but overall the romanians got a really good internet and that's all that matters in the end.
The take away here is that once people started getting used to low-cost mostly local network + internet within a highly competitive environment, the "big" ISPs had no choice than to provide at least an equal service.
It's true, that was a different time, but now it's even better, because hardware is a lot faster and cheaper!
Looks like in your case you had an overregulating authority that loosened up.
That's not the case in India.
Also, note that India is much larger and setting up a network is a much harder investment to make. If there's an oligopoly already active, they could simply not let new ISPs get a foothold unless you set up all the infrastructure on your own. And part of the problem of low internet usage is low internet connectivity in rural areas (which is probably less of a problem for Romania). That's not going to be solved by Facebook or market forces.
Hence my suggestion to make it a free for all, let the market sort it out. The long term beneficiaries of that strategy would be the general public rather than the current crop of incumbents. If there is one thing they hate it is a level (and unregulated) playing field with a bunch of upstarts with absolutely nothing to lose.
"let the market sort it out" only works if the market is easy to enter in the first place. Politics and high bootstrapping costs are roadblocks to entering the telecom market. If an oligopoly is formed, where everyone has terrible service at terrible prices, the market will stay stuck there.
Capitalism isn't a magic wand you can wave over things and have them fix themselves.
Poor people needs food and shelter, not Internet. That comes later when basic life needs are met. Free Basic is not even Internet. It's just Facebook with perks.
"imagine that instead of building a public school, the area allowed a private company to build and operate the local schools. If you lived in the area, would you be in favor of these plans? Of course not, because the opportunity for conflicts of interest is too great".
It really irks me when someone tries to convince me by speaking on my behalf. Yes, I might be in favor on these plans.
"Exxon could build a school and then teach kids in its science classes that fossil fuels are the healthiest way forward for our planet"
And states don't do that? Pick up a history book from American, French and Russian public school, see if they tell the same story...
"Penguin could build a library and stock it in a way that pushed more people towards reading (and buying) Penguin’s books"
So what, as long as other publishers aren't forbidden from doing the same thing??
Why it is not called facebook.org and zero rating for only facebook?
Many facebook posts include links/videos to other sites, and almost all of these will not work unless you pay facebook tax.
Most indians use whatsapp as it is cheaper(free) and offers more features than SMS, that actually means people use data probably 2G, but vast majority of these customers are not using facebook. free basic is to get the whatsapp users to become facebook users.
> But it’s difficult to agree wholeheartedly with Zuckerberg’s mission in India when he’s apparently willing to make such a misleading, fallacy-ridden argument in an attempt to win more Indian supporters and discredit his opponents.
Unfortunately this is a winning strategy politicians follow in India to garner support. Its getting better with education and the Internet, but it still works to some extent.
That's incorrect. People in India already have access to pretty cheap internet. A one day ~50MB GPRS pack costs $0.1 and can be voluntarily renewed daily. That's ₹10. And for the extremely poor(who are being targeted by Facebook) that's not a big sum to pay. You'd consider that if they can spend $50 on a phone, they can spend that much once in a while to access critical information like whether and crop prices. This is disregarding that monthly edge packs for up 3GB data are available for less than $5 from most providers and the speeds are very usable.
There is not such a huge barrier as is being portrayed by Facebook. A better comparison would be a very cheap book rental store which can lend you anything you want to a free private library which controls what and how you read.
We changed the outrageous title to something that more neutrally expresses the substance of the article. If anyone can suggest a more accurate neutral title, we can change it again.
I don't believe he's trying to hoodwink India. I believe he sees a lot of potential for business growth here and I think he also wants to do something good and feel like he's helped make a difference somewhere.
The problem is that he's trying to kill both those birds with one stone.
What bothers me most about the campaign is that Facebook has easy access to a large number of people and is using it to influence government policy. A large number of people login to Facebook and read only Facebook's side of the argument. The critics have to work through a variety of media outlets available to them ( including Facebook ) to get their word out.
This is too much power for one private company. I just hope that projects like diaspora can take off.
Would be awesome to see a mass exodus from Facebook. It's already passed its peak anyway, with many US teenagers using different, non-Facebook-owned networks and apps.
>Free Basics might still be the best short-term solution for some people. I’m not interested in trying to decide for others what might be right for them.
Oh, so you agree that it shouldn't be banned, which means you're taking Facebook's side, against the advocates that do want to ban it. Glad that's clear.
nd at the end, FB addicts gonna use it rather than the poor section of Indian society. Zuckerberg has an evil plan is disguise which he considers that the world doesn't know, however, everyone knows.
I feel "evil plan" is a stretch. The worst case of malice you can attribute to FB is they are trying acquire huge untapped user base but disguising the fact under sheet of public good.
Well that's exactly what Internet.org and Free Basics is. Transparently so. FB has 1.5 billion users in a world with 7.3 billion people. It's not an exaggeration to say that pretty much everyone 13 and up with an Internet connection that wants a Facebook account, has one. That means that the only way you can grow your user base is to increase the number of people with an Internet connection.
Zuck and Facebook do bill Free Basics as a charity, but yet, they're not giving the Internet, they're giving poor people what Zuckerberg wants. They're not hooking up Twitter are they? They say it's because of "agreements", but really it comes down to the fact that they are paying the telcoms money, and they want an audience for their ads. Now that's not immoral, but it's not a charity, so don't expect people to say how great and benevolent they are. Now FB could pay for the real Internet, but they don't, because they're not a charity. It's this mismatch between rhetoric and actions that really pisses people off.
We saw this before when Google first started operating in China. The Google Triumvirate said, "Hey, isn't some Internet better than no Internet?" (The exact same argument that Zuck is making today.) Of course, the Chinese had Baidu at the time, and Baidu actually worked better for Chinese language search than Google as well. The real reason Google wanted in China wasn't to spread knowledge, but rather to get access to the 1.4 billion potential users, because pretty much everyone with an Internet connection outside of China already used Google.
Yes, and if Zuck is that much interested to provide free internet to Indians, he can get in talks with the govt. of India and start providing free Wi-Fi to Indians. He may make a norm to have an FB account to get access to the Wi-Fi, for that matter. This could be a way more better option.
He may not violate netneutrality plus can expand his user base also.
But he may not go with this solution. It is less cost effective. But as it is a charity, cost shouldn't be a point.
Zuck is masking his for-profit venture with charity.
There are a thousand effective ways in which you can help the underprivileged. Partnering with ISPs to decide what's "basic" internet is not one of them.
P.S. Many professors from India's top tech institutes, startups, entrepreneurs & other eminent people have spoken against "Free Basics".
https://github.com/net-neutrality/no-free-basics - Feel free to add more with a Pull Request.