An Open (and Open Source) Campaign Takes on Facebook
April 3, 2016 10:53 PM Subscribe
How a diverse, self-organized group of volunteers took on Facebook (and won).
From Greenpeace's always interesting Mobilisation Lab.
From Greenpeace's always interesting Mobilisation Lab.
So India bans subsidised web access for poor people
If you think that's what they did, someone's been lying to you.
posted by effbot at 2:06 AM on April 4, 2016 [25 favorites]
If you think that's what they did, someone's been lying to you.
posted by effbot at 2:06 AM on April 4, 2016 [25 favorites]
Support Ganesh 🐘
posted by sammyo at 6:56 AM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by sammyo at 6:56 AM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
If you think that's what they did, someone's been lying to you.
Well, either that or the Mobilisation Lab did an incomplete job of explaining the issue because it's focused on how the anti-Facebook campaign was conducted, rather than the larger context around it. I get that there was a campaign against Facebook's FreeBasics offering because net neutrality, but there's frustratingly little in the piece about the context, at least for people unfamiliar with the issues. Why is free Internet for poor people a bad thing? What are the fairer alternatives? What steps are being taken to replace FreeBasics, like, immediately, for those who signed up and relied on it?
I clicked around a little and found this "top 10 facts about FreeBasics" page, which pretty much got me up to speed. But the linked article is kinda lacking in that regard.
posted by Mothlight at 6:58 AM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
Well, either that or the Mobilisation Lab did an incomplete job of explaining the issue because it's focused on how the anti-Facebook campaign was conducted, rather than the larger context around it. I get that there was a campaign against Facebook's FreeBasics offering because net neutrality, but there's frustratingly little in the piece about the context, at least for people unfamiliar with the issues. Why is free Internet for poor people a bad thing? What are the fairer alternatives? What steps are being taken to replace FreeBasics, like, immediately, for those who signed up and relied on it?
I clicked around a little and found this "top 10 facts about FreeBasics" page, which pretty much got me up to speed. But the linked article is kinda lacking in that regard.
posted by Mothlight at 6:58 AM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]
Well, either that or the Mobilisation Lab did an incomplete job of explaining the issue because it's focused on how the anti-Facebook campaign was conducted, rather than the larger context around it.
As someone who is quite closely connected to the Mobilisation Lab, just for some context: this is a site mainly intended for environmental/social justice campaigners and organizations to learn from in terms of running successful campaigns. So that's sort of a feature, not a bug in this case - it's not trying to convince people this campaign was worthy, but rather show practitioners a case study of a successful campaigning effort so that they can hopefully borrow tactics for their own campaigns.
posted by lunasol at 7:21 AM on April 4, 2016 [5 favorites]
As someone who is quite closely connected to the Mobilisation Lab, just for some context: this is a site mainly intended for environmental/social justice campaigners and organizations to learn from in terms of running successful campaigns. So that's sort of a feature, not a bug in this case - it's not trying to convince people this campaign was worthy, but rather show practitioners a case study of a successful campaigning effort so that they can hopefully borrow tactics for their own campaigns.
posted by lunasol at 7:21 AM on April 4, 2016 [5 favorites]
Refreshing news. I do not presume to judge what would be best for people in other countries - many may prefer to have free access to facebook rather than net neutral access to the entire internet. That said, I am happy that an american/global company did not sink its hooks into the heart of a third-world infrastructure, because that's not how I think we should behave.
posted by rebent at 7:22 AM on April 4, 2016
posted by rebent at 7:22 AM on April 4, 2016
Why is free Internet for poor people a bad thing?
It wasn't "free Internet for poor people". It was free Facebook for poor people. And that makes all the difference in the world. The system would keep the underclass in Facebook's walled garden.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:28 AM on April 4, 2016 [9 favorites]
It wasn't "free Internet for poor people". It was free Facebook for poor people. And that makes all the difference in the world. The system would keep the underclass in Facebook's walled garden.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:28 AM on April 4, 2016 [9 favorites]
It's interesting to me that on first blush and with limited context, it seems like a totally cool thing that Facebook would offer a program to democratize Internet access in developing areas. I mean, sure, anti-Facebook activists and others reflexively understand this stuff. But it takes some education and some critical thinking before more people realize what a self-serving "charity" (really a land grab) this really is.
As someone on some website somewhere once said, if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer.
posted by Mothlight at 7:53 AM on April 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
As someone on some website somewhere once said, if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer.
posted by Mothlight at 7:53 AM on April 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
So, does this mean fewer people with any, even non-neutral, Internet access?
Meanwhile, "Egypt reportedly banned Facebook's Free Basics program because it couldn't spy on users".
posted by zennie at 8:24 AM on April 4, 2016
Meanwhile, "Egypt reportedly banned Facebook's Free Basics program because it couldn't spy on users".
posted by zennie at 8:24 AM on April 4, 2016
People with internet access successfully use the internet to create campaign against people who don't have internet having (some) internet access.
posted by huguini at 8:27 AM on April 4, 2016
posted by huguini at 8:27 AM on April 4, 2016
No, the point was that the best way to stop a walled garden from becoming entrenched is to not let it get established in the first place. This isn't perfect being the enemy of good, it's stopping bad policy at the root.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:42 AM on April 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:42 AM on April 4, 2016 [6 favorites]
people who don't have internet having (some) internet access.
people who don't have internet having (some)internet Facebook access.
posted by Mister Bijou at 8:43 AM on April 4, 2016 [5 favorites]
people who don't have internet having (some)
posted by Mister Bijou at 8:43 AM on April 4, 2016 [5 favorites]
Anticapitalist anticolonialists demand colonization by corporations?
posted by ethansr at 8:45 AM on April 4, 2016
posted by ethansr at 8:45 AM on April 4, 2016
When I started online it was what? Dial-up to universities? GeoCities chat rooms? Free Juno email? And it was still like magic to talk to strangers in the other parts of the world.
Are things like that still available?
posted by zennie at 8:46 AM on April 4, 2016
Are things like that still available?
posted by zennie at 8:46 AM on April 4, 2016
This is a great example for our discussion about Slack in that other thread. If that company maintains its neutrality (pun intended), it's a great tool just like Twitter.
posted by numaner at 8:51 AM on April 4, 2016
posted by numaner at 8:51 AM on April 4, 2016
Dial-up to universities? GeoCities chat rooms? Free Juno email?
University dialup was not free; it was either an employment benefit or it was paid for as part of your tuition, and it was not available to the general public. GeoCities and Juno were both free services, but the barrier to entry to compete with those services, either as alternative free services or something paid, were quite low, even at the time. I never did use Juno and I switched off Geocities as soon as I could because it was cool but having a subdomain somewhere else was even cooler. And while you might host your stuff on GeoCities or Juno, you were never kept from contacting the rest of the web that was being hosted on paid sites.
AOL is the better comparison, and there are two things that were true about AOL: One, the wall around that particular garden was not completely impermeable. I'm not sure this was always true, but from a fairly early point, at least, you could access other things with external web browsers, telnet clients, etc. And AOL did eventually get a web browser. This was in part because, two, AOL was not free; you could get dialup access from another ISP for a very similar price, at the time. AOL had competition.
In this case, as I understand it, the cost to access non-Facebook services was going to be quite high, and anybody offering alternative internet access was going to have to develop substantial infrastructure in order to compete with a service that was being offered for free. If AOL had been able to provide a service using this model, I think the results in the US would have been scary.
posted by Sequence at 9:32 AM on April 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
University dialup was not free; it was either an employment benefit or it was paid for as part of your tuition, and it was not available to the general public. GeoCities and Juno were both free services, but the barrier to entry to compete with those services, either as alternative free services or something paid, were quite low, even at the time. I never did use Juno and I switched off Geocities as soon as I could because it was cool but having a subdomain somewhere else was even cooler. And while you might host your stuff on GeoCities or Juno, you were never kept from contacting the rest of the web that was being hosted on paid sites.
AOL is the better comparison, and there are two things that were true about AOL: One, the wall around that particular garden was not completely impermeable. I'm not sure this was always true, but from a fairly early point, at least, you could access other things with external web browsers, telnet clients, etc. And AOL did eventually get a web browser. This was in part because, two, AOL was not free; you could get dialup access from another ISP for a very similar price, at the time. AOL had competition.
In this case, as I understand it, the cost to access non-Facebook services was going to be quite high, and anybody offering alternative internet access was going to have to develop substantial infrastructure in order to compete with a service that was being offered for free. If AOL had been able to provide a service using this model, I think the results in the US would have been scary.
posted by Sequence at 9:32 AM on April 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
I think the key to understanding how evil Facebook's plan was, here, is that it would have taken them more effort to do what they were offering, which is block off everything but a small, pre-approved subset of the internet, than just give everyone free internet access. That was the tip-off, for me, that this was pretty much just an attempt to grow a huge captive audience. Why not spend less money and offer people more? But no, charity had nothing to do with it except as far as it could ride along with profit, and even then, best not to give poor people too much charity.
What I wonder is, was Zuckerberg so afraid that Indians would spurn Facebook if they had the whole weird internet to choose from that they were determined they shouldn't have that choice? I mean it already was the king of social media elsewhere. Wasn't that lead enough? Maybe what they actually were doing was trying to limit the audience for a homegrown alternative, which might one day grow large enough to become a worldwide challenger?
posted by JHarris at 11:22 AM on April 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
What I wonder is, was Zuckerberg so afraid that Indians would spurn Facebook if they had the whole weird internet to choose from that they were determined they shouldn't have that choice? I mean it already was the king of social media elsewhere. Wasn't that lead enough? Maybe what they actually were doing was trying to limit the audience for a homegrown alternative, which might one day grow large enough to become a worldwide challenger?
posted by JHarris at 11:22 AM on April 4, 2016 [2 favorites]
people who don't have internet having (some) internet Facebook access.
Not the entire internet, but not only Facebook too.
posted by huguini at 3:27 PM on April 4, 2016
Not the entire internet, but not only Facebook too.
posted by huguini at 3:27 PM on April 4, 2016
They're just poor third-worlders, how could net neutrality matter to them, right? Net neutrality is for rich people and Netflix.
posted by vanar sena at 3:23 AM on April 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by vanar sena at 3:23 AM on April 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
And to be a bit less flippant,
So India bans subsidised web access for poor people
If you think that allowing a single company to control what a large number of low-income people see as "the internet" is harmless, you need look no further than the dirty tricks they already pulled in support of this effort, from using misleading click-to-mail campaigns on facebook to running a $50 million marketing blitz that amongst other things, told blatant lies - so blatant in fact that they were called on it by senior academics in an open letter.
posted by vanar sena at 3:46 AM on April 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
So India bans subsidised web access for poor people
If you think that allowing a single company to control what a large number of low-income people see as "the internet" is harmless, you need look no further than the dirty tricks they already pulled in support of this effort, from using misleading click-to-mail campaigns on facebook to running a $50 million marketing blitz that amongst other things, told blatant lies - so blatant in fact that they were called on it by senior academics in an open letter.
posted by vanar sena at 3:46 AM on April 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
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Looks like this will be the African Century, global warming permitting...
posted by alasdair at 1:29 AM on April 4, 2016