Before diving straight into the Free Basics program introduced by Facebook, we need to focus on some very basic principles. So, to access the internet we have to pay our Internet Service Provider a specific sum of money to get a “data pack” which we can use to access the internet. Internet Service Providers (ISP) include Airtel, Vodafone, etc. if we talk about India. 

In India, these companies feared competition and loss due to the coming up of apps like WhatsApp which had the features of messages and calls and these worked without using the facilities that these ISPs had to offer. 

To understand what went wrong, we should understand the real meaning of a term called Net Neutrality. This term means that if a person has given money to an ISP for a specific data pack, the person should have full freedom to use that data to access any website on the internet. This means that the companies cannot favor a specific website or take more money per se for another website. One exception here is when that app/website is nationally or regionally banned by the authorities. Then this does not hold.

Airtel launched a scheme called Airtel Zero, in which it gave internet at a very low price to access some websites (these websites partnered with Airtel) and did not allow access to other sites unless more money was paid by the users. This completely goes against the Net Neutrality that we talked about. 

Now that we have the background, we move on to the main topic, the scheme introduced by Facebook. It launched a scheme named “Internet.org” and later renamed it to “Free Basics by Facebook”. What this initiate had to offer was that Facebook would provide free internet services to people who require internet access. 

On the surface, it may seem to be a very noble idea, but let’s go deeper inside. Any person with even a little bit of background and information would see how this is wrong on so many levels. This initiative did provide internet access, but only to specific sites, one of which was Facebook itself. To access any other website, they would charge you extra money. And let’s be real, any person would choose a free site/app over a priced one any day and thus they were indirectly making sure that people only use the websites that had partnered with Facebook.

They changed the very definition of Net neutrality from “Freedom to access the internet” to “Free internet for everyone”.

They claimed that giving free internet access is net neutrality even with only limited websites allowed to be accessed. This was a very wrong statement given by Facebook. Their target audience was the middle and the lower-middle-class people in developing countries. These people who are somewhat unaware and in a little harsh economic conditions would choose free internet over freedom of the internet. 

I feel that Facebook was scared that any better app, if available, will soon overthrow Facebook. Thus they introduced this to maintain a very large user base. Facebook claimed to have a support base of 3 million users on this initiative in India. Although in a country of 125-135 million people, if Facebook kept filling their notifications about the initiative, it was nearly obvious that 2-3% of people would end up supporting it. 

So the main problems included that the people would be unknowingly forced to use the apps that they are getting for free which would put the other companies that provide services at a loss. This would also restrict the flow of information within a country. Instead of free internet, Facebook would control what would a user see on the net. Eventually turning it into “Facebook Net”. Not to mention the unavailability of high-resolution images, videos, and VoIP in this package. 

Considering the situation, if this had become successful, other companies would not sit silently being at a loss. Eventually, the other companies would start coming up with their own schemes like this and this would be set in an endless loop due to which subsequently the net neutrality would be lost forever. 

This initiative did not make any sense in my opinion. Facebook claimed to be connecting people who earlier could not spare money to buy internet services. If this really was their intention, they could have given like 200MB or 500MB data to every smartphone user and let them use it in any way they want. One classic example of this can be seen when reliance JIO stepped up and gave free data for a while to connect people all around the nation. 

In 2016, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, or TRAI for short, banned this free basics initiative in India considering it violated the Net Neutrality terms and I am in full support of this decision. We need to ensure that our freedom is maintained, schemes and initiatives will come and go but if we compromise with our freedom even for once, it will be very difficult to get it back up. 

I feel this initiative sure did have alternative motives and they even got the right target audience, lucky for us that before we received the injection of “Facebook net” per se the government as a whole banned this program.  

References-

facebook.com/connectivity/solutions/free-basics/

theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg

theverge.com/2016/2/8/10913398/free-basics-india-regulator-ruling

youtube.com/watch?v=vruQbXnsBFg