Facebook's Internet.org Presents Threat To Net Neutrality And Privacy (Op Ed)

[Guest]

Yesterday, Facebook announced new changes to its Internet.org service. However, even the new changes don't do much to alleviate net neutrality concerns, and they also pose a significant threat to a secure and private Web.

Facebook's Internet.org Presents Threat To Net Neutrality And Privacy (Op Ed) : Read more

 

[wardler]

It takes nothing more than a very, very, very basic understanding of economics and government regulation to know that Net Neutrality has so many issues that no one with less than nine-figure incomes will come out on top.

 

[Guest]

Someone gets free content, complains that the content is biased. Oh, right, the complaints come from India.

Everyone half-educated understands that you get what you pay for. The only reason Facebook exists is because they track their users and sell data to 3rd parties. Everyone understands this. If you use Facebook or one of their free services, and complain that they track your data and feed you biased information, then you are stupid.

 

[Kadathan]

It takes nothing more than a very, very, very basic understanding of economics and government regulation to know that Net Neutrality has so many issues that no one with less than nine-figure incomes will come out on top.

Please, take a couple of minutes to educate us ignorants on why net neutrality is worse off for most of us than a traditional, "Go nuts, capitalists" kind of attitude, I'll eagerly await your well reasoned, obvious and simple argument.

 

[Xenophage]

This is a COMPLETELY ridiculous article. Every new product and service is disruptive to competitors, that's the nature of competition in a free market, and your fears about a decade or two later the services not changing are completely, laughably absurd. Like that happens! When data is 100 times cheaper, this kind of service will be obsolete. There will either be lots of super-low-cost full-access Internet, or free Internet everywhere with no restrictions.

In fact, this kind of service is only possible in the first place because data has become so cheap!

Now if you're worried about censorship or privacy, there is only ONE solution to that problem: RESTRICT GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT EVERYWHERE, AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. The problem, if it becomes a problem to the extent that you fear it might, can only come from India's government - or any government anywhere that *cough* has regulatory jurisdiction over the Internet (thank god us free marketers in the west don't give overzealous regulatory angencies carte blanche control of our Internet, right?)

 

[alextheblue]

I think everyone who has a problem with this should DEMAND A REFUND!

(thank god us free marketers in the west don't give overzealous regulatory angencies carte blanche control of our Internet, right?)

Damn right! Wait... uh oh... CRAP!!

 

[PaulBags]

If it's free, you're the product.

 

[someperson123]

It is shocking how little people read and how quickly they have an articulate opinion based on the first paragraph of this article.

I personally am of the belief that if someone did not like Facebook's approach to this, they should make their own. If Facebook somehow prevents others from trying is another story in the anti-trust topic. However, that does not blind me to the clear distinction that Facebook is trying to expand their ad revenues by retrieving data from other websites to use with their advertisers.

Furthermore, restricting HTTPS is obviously designed so they can more easily steal data from your activity on the sites visited on Internet.org. I say steal specifically in the context that the website from which Facebook is retrieving data for ads is not owned by Facebook. HTTPS would make it so Facebook could not snoop on the communication between the user and their target website accessed from Intenet.org. I cannot express enough how dangerous a precedent that sets.

While I do understand that Facebook wants to profit from this (or at least break even), I do see it as a bit unethical to essentially monetize another company's website by acting as a Man-In-The-Middle between a user and their target website.

 

[stoned_ritual]

It is shocking how little people read and how quickly they have an articulate opinion based on the first paragraph of this article.

Welcome to the internet, you must be new here.

 

[bin1127]

The fact that they are not allowing https says it all. It's going to be a massive data mine and everything sold for ad revenue. It might be free now, but the price will be heavy when the users come to realize their internet is not the same internet that exists for us and what should've been for them too.

A private corporation should never be allowed to create and own in whole or part of the internet where individuals are the end users.

 

[plasmacutter]

This WILL be censored. Facebook has over the past 2 years become the most censored "public forum" social media on the planet. They censor critics of feminism, creationism, jesse jackson style race-baiting, and marxism, and offer "fake news" tools to extremist ideologues with large followings to "flag offline" any material which debunks their sophistry, not only making it invisible to everyone, but not telling the people who shared it it's been deleted to allow them the opportunity to contest or protest the censorship!

This is no doubt being used by domestic political groups and foreign regimes to gag untold amounts of news and prevent it going viral.

They are the closest thing to the great firewall of china the western world has, and there's a special place in hell for Zuckerberg's totalitarian incursions upon free expression.

 

[stoned_ritual]

I fear that if facebook ever started to go the way of myspace, and the vast amount of other smaller, niche, social media sites, that the Government would bail them out like they did for the banks under the premise of "too big to fail" so they could keep us fat, igorant, and on the internet.

 

[arktype]

This is about creating a network that's controllable. This is a big, big problem that we should stamp out while we still can. It requires only a bit of foresight to see where it's heading.

Look at where the support is coming from: Facebook, and a group of telcos.

It's an investment that will pay out for years to come, at the expense of those desperate enough to not have a better option. As it grows in reach it will likely create a division between the poor who use this service and those who use the open internet.

This is about gaining control over what is currently free, and it isn't good for anyone but a select few.

 

[someperson123]

It is shocking how little people read and how quickly they have an articulate opinion based on the first paragraph of this article.

Welcome to the internet, you must be new here.

Nope, not new, but still shocked. Furthermore, this is, in no way, restricted to the internet.

 

[crossworm]

AMD will go bankroupt in 2016, all experts point towards it, they will be bought out. Their Z score and debt to income ratio is worse than when blockbuster went out of business. Zen cpu's will never exist nor will amd in the next year. They havent turned a profit sense 2013 and their stock is the lowest its ever been.