The More We Connect, the Better It Gets — for Facebook - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/opinion/facebook-free-basics.html
As Facebook expands its global reach, it’s looking to the developing world to increase its two-billion-strong user base. One pillar of its strategy is a mobile application called Free Basics, a portal that offers access to a limited number of websites at no charge.
Facebook promotes Free Basics as a program for social good. The company describes Free Basics as an “on ramp” that introduces the internet to people in the developing world. The goal, Facebook says in its promotional materials, is to “bring more people online and help improve their lives.” The three-year-old app is available to hundreds of millions of mobile phone users in more than 60 countries.
But there is no hard evidence that Free Basics is connecting people who would otherwise be cut off from the internet. And the millions of people who do use the free Facebook portal are experiencing something quite distinct from the open internet: Free Basics is a closed space where Facebook picks the content — and profits from users’ data along the way — creating what some people call a “poor internet for poor people.”
A study by the Alliance for Affordable Internet found that most Free Basics customers had used the internet before they began using Free Basics. This and other studies suggest that a large proportion of Free Basics users see the app as a way to get extra free time on Facebook — a way to stay connected with their Facebook friends without using up their data plans — and not as an “on ramp” to the web. Facebook does not appear to be introducing people to the open internet, but it is making it easy for people who can afford smartphones and data plans to spend unlimited time in the company’s closed, for-profit environment.
The unclickable links, unloadable videos and paltry supply of websites all appear to be part of an effort to minimize the cost of data traveling through the network. Perhaps those limitations do keep costs down — and make it possible for the service to be free — but this technical design also helps benefit Facebook’s bottom line. It keeps users in a confined space, where the company can monitor and analyze their habits for profit.
