Supporting Digital India is not supporting Internet.org: Facebook

And that is what we are trying to do.

If only a cluster of job, money-oriented websites are available to nearly two-third of the population as a part of Internet.org, it becomes extremely easy to control and channel the flow of information.

We’re glad Facebook is taking steps to open Free Basics to as many websites as possible and increase its users’ security. In order to do that there are a lot of things that we are doing as part of Internet.org and other initiatives to reach people. Partnered with various wireless carriers and organizations, Facebook launched Internet.org to offer free access to a collection of Internet services (including Facebook) in developing countries. What we need is a comprehensive new national broadband policy which guarantees speeds, data transfer quotas, quality of service, availability, competition, and of course network neutrality.

The newspaper described India as the new China for American internet companies. We are pushing beyond that. So Twitter, using technology created by ZipDial, enables users to see the tweets of politicians or brands by calling a phone number, hanging up, and then receiving the tweets delivered as a text.

Facebook has supposedly been expanding aircrafts and satellite which will be willing to strobe Internet affiliates to effectively secluded cities and communities.

Yet, never before has the scramble for the digital pie been uglier, with giant corporations, egged on by powerful nations and their covert, unaccountable surveillance organisations, vying with each other for total control over the internet.

We have a historic opportunity to connect billions of more people worldwide for the first time.

A few of the biggest names in tech have pledged to bring internet access to less connected places in the world by 2020.

Breaking the net neutrality controversy, he said, “We believe in net neutrality very strongly”.

“But at the same time, if you have a student in a classroom looking up information for free to do her homework, it is hard to see why there is an issue for that”, he said. “Let’s say we roll out free basics everywhere in the world and are successful but if something goes wrong in India and the balance is not struck, it will deprive not just India but the whole world of minds as sharp as Srinivasa Ramanujan, who changed the mathematics landscape just because he got access to a single book at the age of 11″, he added. “The declaration recognises internet access is an important enabler of human rights”. For instance, one might find YouTube loading swiftly while Wikipedia lags because YouTube paid your ISP for preferential access.

The increasing appeal of India, now the world’s fastest growing major economy, was underscored in recent days. You might end up paying more than normal! Are there any specific investments you will be making? Sites no longer have to comply with Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, which Facebook could have used to censor services that provide controversial content (e.g., sexual health resources, religious commentary, or even art). Those two things have gotten conflated together, where a lot of people think that Internet.org is this one effort to connect people.

Zuckerberg has said he is working in partnership with the United Nations to bring connectivity to refugee camps. It is a big investment for Facebook and other companies as well. Actually, I was travelling in India when we chose to do this.