Cunning Facebook management has found a new tool to destroy net-neutrality in India

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Cunning Facebook management has found a new tool to destroy net-neutrality in India, now they are sending notifications to all users asking them to send a pre-written email to TRAI through Facebook page, urging TRAI to SAVE "Free Basics" in India! Facebook is even tagging all in the friends list.


Here is the content of the mail:

"I support Free Basics in India

To the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, I support digital equality for India. Free Basics provides free access to essential Internet services, such as communication, education, healthcare, employment, farming information and more. It helps those who can't afford to pay for data, or who need a little help with getting started online. And it's open to all people, developers and mobile networks. With 1 billion Indian people not yet connected, shutting down Free Basics would hurt our country's most vulnerable people. I support Free Basics and digital equality for India. Thank you."

By clicking Send Email, you agree to let Facebook send your name and this email to the TRAI.


And here is what Facebook has to say:

"Act now to save Free Basics in India

Free Basics is a first step in connecting 1 billion Indians to the opportunities online, and achieving digital equality in India. But without your support, it could be banned in a matter of weeks.
Send a message to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and tell them that you support Free Basics in India.


Free Basics gives people access to vital services, such as communication, healthcare, education, job listings and farming information – all without data charges. It helps those who can't afford to pay for data, or who need a little help with getting started online. And it's open to all people, developers and mobile networks.
However, Free Basics is in danger in India. A small, vocal group of critics are lobbying to have Free Basics banned on the basis of net neutrality. Instead of giving people access to some basic Internet services for free, they demand that people pay equally to access all Internet services, even if that means 1 billion people can't afford to access any services.
The TRAI is holding a public debate that will affect whether free basic Internet services can be offered in India. Your voice is important for the 1 billion Indian people who are not yet connected and don't have a voice on the Internet.
Unless you take action now, India could lose access to free basic Internet services, delaying progress towards digital equality for all Indians. Tell the TRAI that you support Free Basics and digital equality in India."

 

[RazorMC]

Pardon me if I don't see Free Basics as more Facebook intrusion into our lives.

The app has already been well-documented to constantly abuse smartphone platforms to stay alive at all times and continuously seek personal information to sell.

 

[dray]

My Story: Facebook Made Me Look An Idiot By Making Me Sign Up For Free Basics, You Don’t Become One

Till now you must have got the notification from Facebook showing your friends’ support for Free Basics and asking you to to do the same. There are many who are falling into trap of Facebook and regretting it later. There is no way to undo it. Facebook will be using your support to show TRAI that many in India want Free Basics. Free Basics violates Net Neutrality and undermines the Freedom of Internet within India.

Peri Maheshwer, founder of Career360, too fell for it when he saw one of his friends endorsing it.

“I am an Idiot. I fell for it. Please don’t act like me and become one. Don’t sign any Facebook petition because I, your Facebook friend signed one. I acted like an idiot. Use your head, don’t depend on mine. At least, not on this one.

I should have known better. But seeing some of my friends endorse it, I fell for it. The strategy by Mark the Zuckerberg exploited me being an idiot to the hilt, getting me sign on a petition that I am virulently against. In fact, in the comments, I said ‘I am all for net neutrality and Internet is better off being left on its own’. I now realise that my comment doesn’t mean anything and I am a signatory demanding ‘Free Basics’. It is abhorring.

What Facebook is doing is sinister and below the belt. It also shows the designs of Mark the Zuckerberg. I had ardently defended him when the controversy about his charitable intentions were being debated. But with this action, Facebook lost my trust as an enterprise with ethics. And surely, the top man is responsible for the DNA of an enterprise. Very soon, they will declare millions who signed it. But remember, it includes millions like me, who who were cheated, misled and misrepresented into signing their petition.

So, here is my warning. Don’t sign anything just because your friends signed it. We have been cheated. We were idiots. You don’t become one.”
– Peri Maheshwer

We urge all our community members to sign this petition to uphold Net Neutrality in India. In addition, please take a few minutes to visit www.savetheinternet.in and write an email to TRAI replying to their consultation paper and voicing your opinion. It just needs a few clicks from you to save the internet.

We have only five days left to act. Please make an informed decision as soon as possible and spread the information.

My Story: Facebook Made Me Look An Idiot By Making Me Sign Up For Free Basics, You Don't Become One

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TRAI Asked Reliance To Put Facebook’s Free Basics On Hold, Know The Untold Facts You Must Be Aware Of

Information Source: Freebasicsfacts | Image Source: economictimes
Once again, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has requested your opinion regarding net neutrality and differential pricing of services on the internet. And this time, Facebook has launched its own campaign telling its users to support its “Free Basics”/Internet.org initiative.

You might have received notifications from Facebook asking you to send emails to TRAI supporting its Free Basics. But the information Facebook is providing you is entirely misleading.

Following are the facts that Facebook is not telling you and leading you into making an uninformed choice:

1. Other Ethical Models: There are other successful models to provide free Internet access to users without giving a commercial advantage to Facebook and its partners. Such initiatives, for instance, include providing you free access to the entire internet in exchange of viewing an advertisement. Such models preserve net neutrality and bring digital equality at the same time.

2. Data Prices Actually Increase: Facebook doesn’t pay for Free Basics, telecom operators do. Where do they make money from? From users who pay. By encouraging people to choose selected internet services, Facebook increases the costs to access other main parts of the internet.

3. Unfair Advantage: Free Basics isn’t about bringing people online. It’s about keeping Facebook and its partners free, so that Facebook and its partners gain a competitive advantage. Thus the concept inherently violates Net Neutrality.

4. Facebook will Rule the Internet: Free Basics is NOT an open platform. Facebook defines the technical guidelines for Free Basics, and reserves the right to change them. They reserve the right to reject applicants, who are forced to comply with Facebook’s terms.

5. User Privacy Compromised: Facebook gets access to all the usage data and usage patterns of all the sites on Free Basics. No competitor of Facebook will partner with them because it will have to give all its user data to Facebook. Reportedly, Facebook gives data to the National Security Agency (USA) which compromises India’s security as a whole.

6. Users prefer Open Web: Research has shown that people prefer to use the open web for a shorter duration, over a limited set of sites for a longer duration. Free Basics makes few sites free and makes the open web more expensive.

Facebook is unethically recruiting more and more people to support Free Basics without informing them about the above facts. Perhaps thousands of gullible people have already made an uninformed decision by responding to Facebook’s campaign. This makes it more important for the rest of us to write to TRAI showing our support for Net Neutrality and saying no to “Free Basics” and other differential pricing schemes.

The Logical Indian would like to pose the following questions:

1. Competition is required for the emergence of better products in the market, and “Free Basics” clearly wants to kill competition. Had “Free Basics” been implemented by Orkut, would Facebook be as successful as it is today?

2. Why doesn’t Facebook organize an open Facebook/Townhall Q&A session and seek the opinion of Facebook users after they are informed of the real facts in detail?

3. Why is “Free Basics” provided only on Reliance network? As Facebook claims this to be the first step towards digital “equality”, shouldn’t every user, irrespective of the service provider he/she is using, have access to “Free Basics”?

4. Countries such as Finland have declared Internet access as a legal right. Why should a private company like Facebook step forward for internet services in India? If a private company can afford to do it in India, shouldn’t the Indian Government step in and do it itself, and make sure no corporate interests are involved in the schemes?

We urge all our community members to sign this petition to uphold Net Neutrality in India. In addition, please take a few minutes to visit www.savetheinternet.in and write an email to TRAI replying to their consultation paper and voicing your opinion. It just needs a few clicks from you to save the internet.

We have only six days left to act. Please make an informed decision as soon as possible and spread the information.

TRAI Asked Reliance To Put Facebook's Free Basics On Hold, Know The Untold Facts You Must Be Aware Of
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Petition · .@rsprasad & #TRAI: #SaveTheInternet and preserve #NetNeutrality · Change.org

 

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[Watch] Save The Internet, Once Again: AIB Explains Facebook’s Free Basics

 

[The_Showstopper]

I thought that opinion poll/views has been closed on 15th August if I am not wrong..

 

[dray]

I thought that opinion poll/views has been closed on 15th August if I am not wrong..

No. Facebook is not letting it go so soon! Did you miss those facebook notifications asking you to support "Free basics"?

 

[ThaniOruvan]

FreeBasics will eventually kill how we, the consumers, access internet freely today.
Give a big no to the business minded zuckerbeg.

 

[dray]

Facebook is misleading Indians with its full-page ads about Free Basics. | Mahesh Murthy | LinkedIn

Free Basics vs. Free Internet: Your Guide to the Raging Net Neutrality Debate | NDTV Gadgets360.com

10 reasons that explain why you should oppose Facebook's Free Basics campaign

Lots of my friends are submitting that facebook message to TRAI without understanding the actual deal.

 

[dray]

#SaveTheInternet

Save The Internet (part 3). Tell TRAI that we need net neutrality, once again (Dec 2015)
TRAI has issued another consultation paper asking once again, if we want Net Neutrality. This time, it's about differential pricing - Airtel Zero and Internet.org type services.

Respond to TRAI now or edit your answers (email to advisorfea1@trai.gov.in and a BCC to us on trai@email.savetheinternet.in) Made with ♥ by folks just like you Save The Internet Blog

Save The Internet!

 

[dray]

Facebook is a business with commercial interest, and that's why they are putting some 100 crores, 1/3rd of their profits from India in ads for promoting "Free basics" (which is basically facebook and a few other affiliated services together with Reliance telecom, maybe Airtel also), they have long term commercial interest here. Right now their proposal looks benign (previous attempt was not so sugar-coated, and got blocked), but that only opens the door to "Differential pricing" for internet services, which is the ultimate goal.

I am listing the issues with that; FIRST, it kills competition by destroying the concept of 'free market' and blocking the new entrants with thin capital, a startup by a young college grad Zuckerberg became the most popular social media by beating an older and much bigger player Orkut, a Google company with deep pockets because it was a free market, if google decided to pay to the telecom companies to make their service free, then facebook would have died right there. differential pricing will make the internet exclusive space of a handful of big companies with deep pockets who can pay to the telecom companies for differential pricing for their services.

SECOND, as I have mentioned previously that their (facebook+airtel+reliance) previous attempt was not so sugar-coated, previously the telecom companies wanted to charge services like flipkart and amazon for using their bandwidth and making money, but we the users are already paying for the bandwidth, if they charge flipkart also, then that added cost will ultimately come back to us as increased prices for the products, and we will end up paying for the same bandwidth twice. Besides, that will again create a barrier for the new entrants with small budgets to enter the ecommerce business, thereby destroying the concept of free market and competition, and create an oligopoly in the market.

THIRD, telecom companies are pushing for charging higher for using the services that offer 'voice over internet protocol', arguing that they are missing the revenues from voice calls, but they are getting revenue from higher data usage (and right now telecom companies make most of their revenues from data only), why should the users pay higher for some data usage? Do we pay different unit prices to the electricity companies for using different types of appliances? Telecom companies are free to fix the pricing of their data service in terms of units used, but not on the basis of how we use those units, that's unethical business policy.

I see the "Free basics" as a "Trojan horse" that has been developed by the facebook and a couple of telecom companies to destroy 'Net neutrality' and distort the internet market for a select few with deep pockets, if we allow that, then rest of the things will follow using similar arguments.

 

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Inventor Of World Wide Web: Just Say No To Facebook’s Free Basics

Source: hindustantimes | Image Courtesy: guim
In Web We Want Festival, Tim Berners-Lee, best known as the inventor World Wide Web said that the consumers should say no to initiatives such as Facebook’s Free Basics as such programs are not the full internet .

As reported by the Guardian, the Web We Want campaign endorses five key principles for the future of the web:

• Freedom of expression online and offline.
• Affordable internet access.
• Protection of user data and privacy.
• A decentralized internet infrastructure.
• Net neutrality.

While referring to net neutrality, he said that it is no when it comes to compromising on it.

In an interview to the Guardian, he was quoted:

“In the particular case of somebody who’s offering … something which is branded internet, it’s not internet, then you just say no. No it isn’t free, no it isn’t in the public domain, there are other ways of reducing the price of internet connectivity and giving something … [only] giving people data connectivity to part of the network deliberately, I think is a step backwards.”

Free Basics is an initiative by Facebook that aims to provide free access to a limited section of internet to the billion people online. Critics have put their view that this goes against the concept of net neutrality, which is against any priority being given to an entity in the traffic flow because of payments to service providers such as telecom companies.

Inventor Of World Wide Web: Just Say No To Facebook's Free Basics

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Facebook together with a couple of telecom companies are not providing 'internet' for free, they are providing a few selected services of their choice for free, putting all other competing services at a disadvantage, especially any promising startup with limited funds. Facebook and those telecom companies probably won't be able to do the same in America because of their strong 'Antitrust laws'. I think 'free basics', or the concept of 'differential pricing' is a losing proposing for the consumers in the long run for some short term gain.

Besides, apart from the content, facebook and the telecom companies hold the right to offer or deny the 'free basics' service to individuals as per their preference, and I just learned today that all the services under the 'free basics' scheme will be routed through the facebook servers, and facebook holds the right to decrypt the data, and use the data as per their liking under the T&C.

If free internet is a priority, then only government should arrange for it, and it should be "Free internet", not limited services as decide by facebook and the telecom company. Btw, internet charges will come down significantly once Mukesh Ambani's Jio service comes in April-May, he did end the duopoly of Hutch and Airtel and brought down the cost of mobile telephony in India among the lowest in the world, he is about to do the same with internet. Let's not allow a handful of very large web and telecom companies to control the 'free internet' in the guise of 'free basics'! Monopoly is dangerous, and 'free basics' promotes monopoly!

 

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This Indian Man Has A Critical Question On Free Basics That Even Mark Zuckerberg Can’t Answer

It’s a battle for internet freedom and Nikhil Pahwa has one critical question on Free Basics Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t answered yet. Read Nikhil Pahwa’s rebuttal on Zuckerberg’s defense of Free Basics.

Among all the questions we’ve raised about Free Basics, if there was one that I would pick to ask Mark Zuckerberg, it would be this: Why has Facebook chosen the current model for Free Basics, which gives users a selection of around a hundred sites (including a personal blog and a real estate company homepage), while rejecting the option of giving the poor free access to the open, plural and diverse web?

Facebook

Research done by Amba Kak at the Oxford Internet Institute has found that less experienced, low income groups prefer access to an open and unrestricted Internet, and while “some access is better than none”, the trade-off they are willing to make is how much they use the internet, not necessarily how much of the internet they get to use. That is, they would rather be given the choice of deciding what they want to access, with millions of websites and apps to choose from, for say, three days, over being given unlimited access to a limited selection.

All access is priority.

Why hasn’t Facebook chosen the options that do not violate Net Neutrality? For example, in India, Aircel has begun providing full internet access for free at 64 kbps download speed for the first three months. Schemes such as Gigato offer data for free for surfing some sites. The Mozilla Foundation runs two programmes for free and neutral Internet access: In Bangladesh, Grameenphone users get free data in exchange for watching an advertisement. In Africa, Orange users get 500 MB of free access on buying a $37 handset.

Perhaps the answer behind why Zuckerberg is ignoring these options lies in how Professor Vishal Misra of Columbia University, one of the foremost researchers on Net Neutrality, defines it: Net Neutrality is about the ISPs (and telecom operators) not giving a competitive advantage to any particular website or application.

Reuters

Today, Facebook, in partnership with Reliance Communications, reserves the right to reject applications from websites and apps for Free Basics, and forces them to conform to its technical guidelines. Services which compete with telecom operator services will not be allowed on Free Basics. It would need Facebook’s permission (and hence, time), for a citizen powered crisis-response effort such as Chennairains.org to be made available to those on Free Basics, and the flexibility and freedom with which such an effort can evolve would be restricted or limited by Facebook’s guidelines. Facebook is being disingenuous — as disingenuous as the company’s promotional programmes for Free Basics to its Indian users — when it says that Free Basics is in conformity with Net Neutrality.

While Facebook argues for Net Neutrality laws in the US, and supports permission-less innovation in that country, in India, it wants a permission-based Internet through its partnership for Free Basics. The perpetuation of Free Basics, would justify similar models such as Airtel Zero. With Idea Cellular and Vodafone also supporting Airtel in its lobbying, we would end up with each telecom operator carving out its own private bubble from the Internet. Different people in India would get access to different information and knowledge, depending on the deals that their telecom operator strikes with online service providers.

FreeBasics and its peer telecom operator models are not open, plural or diverse, and can be harmful for India’s democracy. It is a form of vertical integration that is anti-competitive and is inimical for India’s fledgling startup ecosystem. It gives Reliance Communication and Facebook the power to pick winners and losers online. With telecom operators making money from websites and apps instead of from consumers, their focus will shift to meeting the needs of their business clients, over the needs of consumers. The incentive to invest in better, faster and cheaper access to the entire Internet will be replaced with one of providing better, faster and cheaper access to its websites and apps. Telecom operators would have a perverse financial incentive to get users to consume more of their partner services over the less lucrative open web: it could mean more expensive access to the open web, or poorer quality of service.

Reuters

Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik, in a letter to the TRAI supporting Net Neutrality, said, “If you dictate what the poor should get, you take away their right to choose what they think is best for them.” If Free Basics and its peer programmes are allowed to continue, it would leave us all with poorer access to the Internet, and take away our right to choose. Tim Berners Lee, one of the founding fathers of the Internet and the creator of the world wide web, said that “giving people data connectivity to part of the network deliberately” is a step backwards. It is sad to see Facebook spend millions of dollars lobbying for a stand which is against the innovation of the Open web, after benefiting from its openness.

India is expected to have 500 million Internet users by the end of 2017, and what kind of an Internet they get access to is important for our country. This is why the battle for Net Neutrality, with the last and current TRAI consultations included, is the battle for our Internet Freedom.

This Indian Man Has A Critical Question On Free Basics That Even Mark Zuckerberg Cant Answer

Here's Why Facebook's Free Basics Is Worse Than A Woman Friend-Zoning A Man

Facebook’s Free Basics debate is all over the internet right now. Stop signing the Free Basics certificate! It’s nothing but Facebook’s strategy to monopolize its business on the web. Still don’t get what we are saying? Well then, let standup comedian Abish Mathew explain to you Zuckerberg’s plan to take over the internet in the most hilarious manner ever!

 

[dray]

Nothing free or basic about it

• PRABIR PURKAYASTHA

“The danger of privileging a private platform such as Free Basics over a public Internet is that it introduces a new kind of digital divide among the people.” Picture shows protests in Hyderabad against Facebook’s campaign.— Photo: Mohammed Yousuf

We need to provide full Internet at prices people can afford, not privilege private platforms. This is where India’s regulatory system has to step in

The airwaves, the newspapers and even the online space are now saturated with a Rs. 100 crore campaign proclaiming that Internet connectivity for the Indian poor is a gift from Facebook which a few churlish net neutrality fundamentalists are opposing. In its campaign, Facebook is also using the generic phrase “free, basic Internet” interchangeably with “Free Basics”, the name it has given its private, proprietary platform. This is in blatant violation of Indian rules on advertising, which forbid generic words being used for brands and products. This is from a company which, in spite of having 125 million Indian subscribers, refuses to be sued in India, claiming to be an American company and therefore outside the purview of Indian law. Nor does it pay any tax in India.

The Free Basics platform is a mildly tweaked rehash of the controversial internet.org that Facebook had floated earlier. Facebook and Reliance, the sixth-largest mobile service provider in the country, have joined hands to offer it as a platform for free data services restricted to a few websites. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has stopped this service for now, pending its public consultation on the subject. Facebook’s campaign is essentially to influence the outcome of such a consultation.

Data as commodity

Evgeny Morozov, one of the most insightful commentators on technology, has written extensively on how Silicon Valley seeks to subvert the state, promising to give the people connectivity, transport and other facilities, if we only hand over our data to them. Instead of people demanding that the state provide access to various services — from drinking water to transport and communications — people are being led to believe that a few capitalists from Silicon Valley will provide all these services. We will have Internet connectivity instead of education, and Uber will provide private taxis, instead of public transport. To paraphrase Marie Antoinette, let the people have cake instead of bread. This is the Internet monopolies’ agenda of hidden and mass-scale privatisation of public services.

By accepting the Silicon Valley model of private services, we pay the Internet monopolies with our data, which can then be monetised. Personal data is the currency of the Internet economy. Data as commodity is the oil of the 21st century. Facebook and Google’s revenue model is based on monetising our personal data and selling it to advertisers. Facebook generates an estimated revenue of nearly $1 billion from its Indian subscribers, on which it pays no tax.

Free Basics is not free, basic Internet as its name appears to imply. It has a version of Facebook, and only a few other websites and services that are willing to partner Facebook’s proprietary platform.

Today, there are nearly 1 billion websites. If we consider that there are 3.5 billion users of the Internet, 1 out of 3.5 such users also offers content or services. The reason that the Internet has become such a powerful force for change in such a short time is precisely because anybody, anywhere, can connect to anybody else, not only to receive, but also to provide content. All that is required is that both sides have access to the Internet.

All this would stop if the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or telecom companies (telcos) are given the right to act as gatekeepers. This is what net neutrality is all about — no ISP or telco can decide what part of the Internet or which websites we can access. Tim Wu, the father of net neutrality, has written that keeping the two sides of the Internet free of gatekeepers is what has given a huge incentive for generating innovation and creating content. This is what has made the Internet, as a platform, so different from other mass communications platforms such as radio and television. Essentially, it has unleashed the creativity of the masses; and it is this creativity we see in the hundreds of millions of active websites.

Facebook’s ads and Mark Zuckerberg’s advertorials talk about education, health and other services being provided by Free Basics, without telling us how on earth we are going to access doctors and medicines through the Internet; or education. It forgets that while English is spoken by only about 12 per cent of the world’s population, 53 per cent of the Internet’s content is English. If Indians need to access education or health services, they need to access it in their languages, and not in English. And no education can succeed without teachers. The Internet is not a substitute for schools and colleges but only a complement, that too if material exists in the languages that the students understand. Similarly, health demands clinics, hospitals and doctors, not a few websites on a private Facebook platform.

Regulate price of data

While the Free Basics platform has connected only 15 million people in different parts of the world, in India, we have had 60 million people join the Internet using mobiles in the last 12 months alone. And this is in spite of the high cost of mobile data charges. There are 300 million mobile broadband users in the country, an increase fuelled by the falling price of smartphones.

In spite of this increase in connectivity, we have another 600 million mobile subscribers who need to be connected to the Internet. Instead of providing Facebook and its few partner websites and calling it “basic” Internet, we need to provide full Internet at prices that people can afford. This is where the regulatory system of the country has to step in. The main barrier to Internet connectivity is the high cost of data services in the country. If we use purchasing power parity as a basis, India has expensive data services compared to most countries. That is the main barrier to Internet penetration. Till now, TRAI has not regulated data tariffs. It is time it addresses the high price of data in the country and not let such prices lead to a completely truncated Internet for the poor.

There are various ways of providing free Internet, or cost-effective Internet, to the low-end subscribers. They could be provided some free data with their data connection, or get some free time slots when the traffic on the network is low. 2G data prices can and should be brought down drastically, as the telcos have already made their investments and recovered costs from the subscribers.

The danger of privileging a private platform such as Free Basics over a public Internet is that it introduces a new kind of digital divide among the people. A large fraction of those who will join such platforms may come to believe that Facebook is indeed the Internet. As Morozov writes, the digital divide today is “about those who can afford not to be stuck in the data clutches of Silicon Valley — counting on public money or their own capital to pay for connectivity — and those who are too poor to resist the tempting offers of Google and Facebook” (“Silicon Valley exploits time and space to extend the frontiers of capitalism”, The Guardian, Nov. 29, 2015). As he points out, the basic delusion Silicon Valley is nurturing is that the power divide will be bridged through Internet connectivity, no matter who provides it or in what form. This is not likely to happen through their platforms.

The British Empire was based on the control of the seas. Today, whoever controls the data oceans controls the global economy. Silicon Valley’s data grab is the new form of colonialism we are witnessing now.

Net neutrality is not an esoteric matter, the concern of only a few netizens. It is fundamental to the world, in which the Internet is a source of knowledge, a means of communication, an artery of commerce. Whoever controls access to the Internet will control our future. This is what the current battle over Facebook’s Free Basics is all about.

(Prabir Purkayastha is chairperson, Knowledge Commons, and vice-president, Free Software Movement of India.)

Net Neutrality: Nothing free or basic about Facebook's Free Basics - The Hindu