When an entrepreneur and VC such as Om Malik is calling you out, you know it’s just not right! FB’s Free Basic is purely false advertising - cough scam
My opposition to Internet.org is not recent: Ever since it was announced, I have denounced its duplicitous name. Facebook still calls its efforts Internet.org across most of the world and paints it as a not-for-profit effort. I disagree with two points:
- Internet.org isn’t about the internet, so Facebook should stop calling it as such and call it what it is: Facebook Free (with strings attached). To call it Internet.org is actually the first sin of this whole debacle.
- Facebook Free Basics isn’t a charity. People will pay for it with their data. It is a way for Facebook to gather more attention and sell services and advertising to those who get Facebook’s Free Basics.
Maybe I’m suspicious because my family has told me their personal story of the British Raj or maybe because I have read books that over and again detail how a commercial spearhead (The East India Company) came bearing gifts and then became a symbol of British imperialism. Regardless, I am suspicious of any for-profit company arguing its good intentions and its free gifts. Nothing — and I do mean nothing — in this life is free. You always pay a price.
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In our post-internet age, labor and commodities have been replaced by attention and connectivity. By controlling these, Facebook in many ways has its algorithm decide what is important in the future. I am positive that its role as a gatekeeper of information will cause much deeper problems in the long term.
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Up until then, from my perspective, Free Basics/Internet.org is all about advertising and making money. Today and tomorrow, Facebook will make decisions based on how it makes or will make money. That is what for-profit corporations do.
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