- What is Free basics?
"Free Basics by Facebook provides free access to basic internet services to a billion people all over the world. Your service can be a part of it. Free Basics makes the internet accessible to more people by providing them access to a range of free basic services like news, maternal health, travel, local jobs, sports, communication, and local government information.To date, we’ve been able to offer these services to a billion people across Asia, Africa and Latin America. By introducing people to the benefits of the internet through these services, we hope to bring more people online and help improve their lives." - Says Facebook.
- How will it help?
The Free Basics initiative by Facebook is obviously a step towards connecting a huge number of people in India (or any other developing nation). The social media giant says that this initiative is launched to let people access services like news, health, agriculture, education and many more, via internet free of cost (only for the services that are listed and subscribed).
- Contradiction & Controversy:
But it is contradictory to the fact of neutrality that Facebook's Free Basic is tied up with ISP's for providing the facility. I have personally downloaded the Internet.org app from google store and surprisingly came across the fact that the facilities are only available for only one network service provider, RCom. So, if it is absolutely free then why the restriction is there? This is not so called net neutrality. Under the criticism RCom has decided not to launch the commercial program partnering with Facebook. ( Read Full Article at Business Standard ).
Another thing is to be considered that the facility is only available for the people having an android power device where they can download the app, which will obviously cost the standard download charge.
- So, what is Net Neutrality?
Net Neutrality means an uninterrupted and equal internet availability for all. Anyone is allowed to access the internet without any kind of discrimination.
- The recent Facebook Campaign:
Now a days there is a hype in the social media, as well as in print media like news papers, to sign a petition to support the net neutrality India which says:
Act Now to Save Free Basics in India
Free Basics is a first step to connecting 1 billion Indians to the opportunities online – and achieving digital equality in India. But without your support, it could be banned in a matter of weeks.
Send a message to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and tell them you support Free Basics in India.
and it is followed by an option to submit the email petition to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) containing the message:
"To the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, I support digital equality for India. Free Basics provides free access to essential internet services like communication, education, healthcare, employment, farming and more. It helps those who can't afford to pay for data, or who need a little help getting started online. And it’s open to all people, developers and mobile operators. With 1 billion Indian people not yet connected, shutting down Free Basics would hurt our country's most vulnerable people. I support Free Basics – and digital equality for India. Thank you."
- My View:
In my perception this Free Basics initiative is to promote those business houses who have partnered with Facebook and diverting the traffic towards them. Take an example. Suppose you have two grocery shop at your place. One of them offers a pack of Coffee powder and Milk Powder at Rs. 50 each. You are happy with the pricing and consuming the goods. Now suppose one retailer says that "Ok for your benefit I will give you the Milk powder free of cost." Being attracted, you will start going at the second shop. Hence, the first shop looses its customers and shuts down. And then you find that "only" the Milk powder is free at the second shop and you will have to buy the Coffee powder costing Rs. 80. But you have no other way to go and have to pay Rs 30 extra than before. This might happen in case of the free services also. This might be a surrogate promotional tactics also. Who knows.
In a country like India, where a huge number of people is still below the poverty line and striving for the livelihood , free basic is nothing but just a fascination. Just submitting a petition and dropping a mail to TRAI will not go good in long run for the actual Net Neutrality. Hope there will be a time when people across the world will be connected via internet without any hurdle and enjoy working with each other and helping each other for mutual development. But unfortunately as of today there is practically no glimpse of it.
- One of My friend explains the thing in his own way:
“Free-Basics” c/o Facebook
SAMIK GANGULY·MONDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2015 (click on his name to get directed to his profile)
Let’s understand the “Free-basics”, the newest propaganda taken up by Facebook.
Technically it’s a proxy service provided by Facebook. Generally, most of our daily Internet browsing is an example of client server network model, where two parties are involved
- Server - classically the role of the server is to provide content 24x7x365, be it web pages or media. That content can be put there either by the server owner or it can be uploaded by clients, but it’s the server who keeps them available all the time. So we can call it the “Content Provider”.
- Client - fetches the contents from server to local device, or uploads them to server. They are allowed to be disconnected from network at any time.
In “Free-basic” service Facebook puts its “internet.org” web-proxy between you, the client, and the website you are trying to visit. If the content of that website comes under free-basics scheme this proxy will fetch the content from that website to you, otherwise not. Also note, you’ll not request the content from the website directly, you request it to Facebook’s proxy. The website is also not getting the request from you, it’s getting it from the proxy. In this model the control of the proxy becomes a vital point of communication in following ways
- Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) controls the flow of information unto proxy through their network. He can decide to reject every web request made by you which are not targeted towards proxy. It’s very easy to selectively allow your requests in contrast to selectively reject them because of the availability of public proxies these days. You see, the proxy technology is not a bane, it even can be a boon in some cases. Imagine your ISP blocks your access to website X but doesn’t restrict you to access proxy Y, you can just connect to proxy Y and ask it to fetch contents from X. Now as your ISP (probably) doesn’t controls Y’s access to X, Y can get the contents of X for you. This was a scenario of selective blocking, now imagine your ISP only allows your access to Z, yet another proxy, but blocks everything else from you. Now you can’t access Y and hence can’t get to X.
- Did you realize what Z is? Yes, it’s Facebook’s proxy. And since it’ll only allow you to access the contents from websites registered under “Free-basic” scheme, you’re not getting the contents of X if it doesn’t come under the scheme. Now your web-requests are not only at the discretion of your ISP but also Z. Remember, Facebook has clearly mentioned in https://developers.facebook.com/doc... that in order to save bandwidth and to function properly, websites registering for this scheme must remain usable without big images, videos, JavaScript, Flash, Java and SVG images, also they should be mobile friendly.
- Security is a concern, too. If you understand HTTPS protocol you’ll know it’s meant for end-to-end communication i.e. it virtually creates a secure channel between you and server. Since you are no more accessing the actual server but requesting the content through Facebook’s proxy, this end-to-end channel is broken into two halves. Facebook will maintain a secure channel with you, get your request out of this channel and deliver them to server in another (optional) secure channel. They claim not to store any information out of your request other than server’s address and amount of data in your request, but it’s technically possible.
Facebook is suggesting this scheme is proven to get more people online and ultimately convert them into paying user. It’s not very different from a marketing policy called “freemium”, which pushes a reduced-functionality product/service to the client first. When they gets so much used to it that it becomes a necessity but it doesn’t get the whole job done, they starts paying for it. The goal is to lure the clients into business, by letting them have a sense of power by using the free-sample. It’s not unnatural to assume that to attract people towards this scheme, specific kinds of websites will be highlighted more than the others, which appeals to the target users in some way. Hence the quality of highlightened contents depends of the quality of the current state of the target market. From a social point of view Free-basic is a marketing platform for content providers and ISP both mediated by Facebook.I wonder, why a simple alternative, providing some minimal free data usage to people doesn’t seem attractive to ISPs to get people online. After all, Facebook is not paying them for the access to Free-basic websites. It seems, at least to me, that as much as free data is attractive to an user, a data-cap is more annoying to him. So the user would be more inclined to paid data usage with data-cap than by unlimited access to a walled garden. Honestly, I’ve not seen a single person who doesn’t extend hist data usage after a few years (even months!) even if it costs him more. Whereas this scheme doesn’t restrict its users to a part of internet.
Last but not the least to all who are submitting the petition, are you actually aware of all the facts that are playing crucial roles behind the same? I doubt.