Mark Zuckerberg calls Andreessen’s India comments “deeply upsetting”

Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday publicly addressed comments from Facebook board member Marc Andreessen over the company’s efforts to bring expand its Internet.org efforts in India.

Zuckerberg clarified that he nor Facebook’s subscribes to Andreeseen’s views and called it deeply upsetting India has been personally important to me and Facebook. However, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not support his comments and Mr. Andreessen apologized later. He said he traveled to India while in the early stages of developing “Free Basics” and was “inspired by the humanity, spirit and values of the people”.

In response to a user’s comment on India’s aversion to internet colonialism, Andreessen tweeted: “Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?”, tweeted Mr Andreessen.

Although the tweet was subsequently deleted, the comment, made after TRAI’s decision of saying no to differential pricing of data content, led to several Indians storming social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter with angry reactions.

Critics saw this as violation of the principle of net neutrality that states that entire Internet should be available to everyone on equal terms as Free Basics allowed access to selected websites.

“I now withdraw from all future discussions of Indian economics and politics, and leave them to people with more knowledge and experience!”

Andreessen had a long conversation on Twitter where he made the “anti-colonialism” comment about India.

India introduced rules on Monday preventing service providers from having different pricing policies, effectively dismantling Facebook’s Free Basics programme, which offers a pared-back version of the internet. “I am a huge admirer of the nation of India and the Indian people, who have been nothing but kind and generous to me for many years”. He added that “Facebook has always stood for connecting people across the world but we need to understand the past of a country before shaping the future”.

Andreessen who sits on the Facebook board of directors ad expressed on Twitter that he felt it was morally wrong for India’s poor to be denied free Internet access for ideological reasons.

Zuckerberg goes on to suggest that “to shape the future we need to understand the past”. He strongly opposes colonialism and is in favor of freedom.

Andreessen begged to differ, standing up for Facebook’s plan and arguing with fellow tweeters about the social network’s move into other countries.