Over the past couple of months Facebook had tried to push it's new free basics plan in India. So what is free basics? Why is Facebook so bent on it? And why it's a very bad idea?
Facebook first came out with a plan called internet.org, a service through which it wanted to push free access to Facebook to all mobile users, even for those who did not have data services enabled. This brought up the net-neutrality debate, and very soon people realised Facebook was up to no good.
Facebook realized that with the net-neutrality debate kicking in and the service providers backing out (because of a wider boycott thereat) , internet.org was not gonna be accepted. But they didn't stop, they came back with Freebasics, which basically is internet.org with a new name and a few inconsequential services thrown for good measure.
Consider this, if services providers like Airtel and Vodafone were to tie up with each of the social media sites, portals, ecommerce players with similar free access schemes, the internet would no longer be an open domain where everybody is equal. Currently access to any information, site, search, portals costs the same. Without this it would very soon become a skewed market. New platforms and startups would not be able to break into the scene because of an entry barrier created by free access to certain players. People will have to pay for certain services while some are free. You no longer have a level playing field.
With Freebasics, Facebook says, users will get free access to educational and select government sites along with, you guessed it, Facebook. For heavens sake, from when did Facebook become a basic human need? Facebook is probably the most time wasting and productivity killing tool in the whole of the IT industry.
And to top it all Facebook is running media campaigns, spending billions to convince it's a social cause is bs.
To sum it all up, we don't need Freebasics, we don't need internet.org, we need net-neutrality.
