Comment by morgante | Hacker News Reader

Comment by morgante | Hacker News Reader

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It sincerely depresses me that the top comment on Hacker News is so incredibly cynical. The man is giving away a huge amount of money and you can only find ways to detract.

> Firstly, the donation is stock not cash, so the value of this foundation will be directly linked to the value of Facebook shares.

So? The vast majority of his wealth is in Facebook shares. That doesn't change the fact that he's giving away the vast majority of it. You think he should have sold it all now, destroyed its value, and donated a much smaller pot?

> it has been stated that one of the things this foundation will do is "participate in policy debates".

One of many things. Not to mention he has never attempted to make Internet.org anything close to a monopoly.

That your reaction to an incredibly charitable act is such pure cynicism is absolutely disgusting. There are plenty of billionaires who hoard their money or perpetuate hereditary fortunes, and those who don't should be commended.

> Not to mention he has never attempted to make Internet.org anything close to a monopoly.

Do you even know what Internet.org is? They're providing free access to a subset of the internet that Facebook controls, while forcing people to pay if they want to access the internet as a whole. The entire reason Internet.org exists is to create a Facebook monopoly on data access in developing countries.

Your entire comment is naive.

Internet.org provides access to a subset of the internet that Facebook chooses to pay for. The target audience is mostly people that can't afford any internet access to the first place because it is to outrageously expensive. As well, that subset of the internet is open to developers to submit their own services to be supported by Internet.org [1]. Last time I glanced through the agreement, Facebook is just trying to avoid paying for HD photos and video downloads, which would increase the cost of Internet.org beyond feasibility.

An initiative can be charitable while also benefiting the donor. The users of Internet.org get free access to Facebook as well as the other services being provided and that doesn't detract from the service or make the whole initiative evil.

I have yet to see research that providing a zero-rating service is harmful as you suggest.

[1]: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org

> I have yet to see research that providing a zero-rating service is harmful as you suggest.

"Internet.org provides access to a subset of the internet that Facebook chooses to pay for."

> Last time I glanced through the agreement, Facebook is just trying to avoid paying for HD photos and video downloads, which would increase the cost of Internet.org beyond feasibility.

This could be achieved by choking bandwidth, which would be easier to implement, simpler, and more transparent. Instead, you get stuff like:

"In order for your content to be proxied as described above, your URLs may be re-written and embedded content (like javascript and content originating from another domain) removed. In addition, secure content is not supported and may not load." [1]

Let's be absolutely clear here: Facebook wants to control what content gets into Free Basics and how it's presented, and is willing to make security impossible in order to do it. This enables both censorship and mass surveillance controlled by Facebook and whoever is willing to pay them.

> The users of Internet.org get free access to Facebook as well as the other services being provided and that doesn't detract from the service or make the whole initiative evil.

It's not the things users get access to that I'm worried about, it's the things they don't get access to, and who else gets access to those user's data.

[1] https://developers.facebook.com/docs/internet-org/participat...

Try exercising a less naive approach ("incredibly charitable act") perhaps.

In particular, regarding your statement "he has never attempted to make Internet.org anything close to a monopoly", it surely looks like that's the end game here - see https://www.techinasia.com/talk/facebooks-internetorg-evil/ (discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10568525)

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