What Mark Zuckerberg isn't telling you
Affordable, and in some cases even free, internet access is something that would excite anyone who has ever used an email or glanced at Wikipedia. Internet is an incredibly powerful tool.
It is something that has potential to change lives. It is the greatest tool mankind has invented, albeit in an uplanned way, after the discovery of fire (also in all likelihood unintentionally) or the invention of wheel.
So when someone with billions of dollars in his bank account takes to the stage and calls for affordable and viable internet access for all in the world, it is difficult not to stand up and applaud. Mark Zuckerberg is a big deal.
He is arguably the most charismatic of all technology CEOs (at least that is what venerable Steve Jobs believed). He also happens to be the CEO of Facebook, which is one of the most influential technology companies today. Sum of the matter: Zuckerberg is a big deal and when he starts buying drones etc and starts talking about bringing internet to people in remote areas of the world, it is something you take a note of.
Well, the world has surely taken the note. If you saw the newspaper this morning, you must have read about Zuckerberg in India and his mission to bring millions of people online. He is talking about the Internet.org, a organisation established to push for affordable web access across the world, for the last one year.
The Internet.org is a noble project. There is no doubt about it. It is hard to argue against easy and affordable web connectivity. Even journalist Evgeny Morozov won't be able to in absolute terms.
But there are two questions around this noble project that Facebook - or for that matter Google, which has its own plans for affordable web connectivity - has so far refused to address. One is around the privacy and the other is around the concept called net neutrality.
As millions of people join the online world, something that Facebook is trying to push for with the internet.org, they will joining a world that is amazing, and yet scary, in many ways. Amazing because of all the information and content that floats around on the web, and scary, because once you are on the web, you give up your privacy.
In the early days, it didn't matter. Nobody, not even the US government, took internet seriously. It was largely ignored. But now, governments are not sure about it. Many openly treat it as a threat. Those that don't believe it is a threat, want it regulated. Some, like the US, neither want it banned or regulated, but then they are happy gathering all the private data they can on their own citizens as well as people in other countries.
Web services like Facebook are built around the advertising model, which means a user has to be tracked on the web. This tracking allows for more effective advertising. Unfortunately, the data that is collected is also an easy source for anyone to peek into private lives of people. As we learned from Edward Snowden, the capabilities that Stasi had pales in front of what NSA in the US can manage due to a connected world.
As millions of people join the internet, what is going to happen to their privacy? This is a question that Facebook - or for that matter any big technology company - has refused to answer in a convincing way. All they want at the moment is to bring millions of web users to the web so that advertisements can be sold to more people.
The second question is around the idea of free or subsidised web services with the help of telecom operators. Again, a nice idea. But the devil is in details.
The world wide web is built around the concept of net neutrality. The idea is that on the web every bit is treated as dumb data. This means 01 = 01. Now whether this data belongs to a porn site or a to a page run by an NGO, the website is accessible in the same manner and at the same cost.
So far, this idea has worked beautifully well. It has allowed companies like Google and Facebook, started in garages and dorm rooms, to come up and challenge biggies like AOL.
On the web, barriers are so low that anyone with an idea can come up, create something nice, and reach out to millions of people because telecom operators or anyone else is not supposed to filter content or give preference to one service over the other.
But when Zuckerberg talks of putting Wikipedia, Facebook, Google search and useful services in a package and then provide them for free to subscribers of certain data plan or data service, it breaks this net neutrality principle.
Yes, it is done for a noble cause. But then it is also a slippery slope. Once you break the idea of net neutrality, you break the fundamental nature of the internet. You break one of the most important features of internet that makes it awesome.
In a controlled way, for greater good maybe we ought to deviate a bit from net neutrality. That is understandable.
But so far Facebook hasn't really explained how it is going to work. It has just pushed the idea of free or subsidised web services but hasn't detailed how it is going to keep the idea of net neutrality intact in a world where some web services like Facebook may be available for free, making it extraordinarily difficult for a new social networking to come up and challenge it.