Facebook for All
davidsasaki.name
davidsasaki.name
If Facebook runs a line to a village that only allows Facebook-only access, you can bet your bottom dollar that that connection and hardware will be hacked and exploited to its maximum effect, software restrictions be damned, by the very teenagers the author assumes are too stupid, ignorant, or whatever, to do it. I'd rather this be the status quo than no connection at all.
What we really need to be worried about is not if Facebook is going to restrict Facebook-only access with software and hardware tricks, but if the local government is going to back those restrictions up with guns. Send the Mexican teenagers locked down phones, sure, but also leave it up to them what they want to do with them. Somehow I doubt a Mexican village's law enforcement is going to spend its time chasing down teenagers who are abusing their Facebook-subsidized Internet connection.
Who knows, maybe Zuckerberg himself will ignore this too, much like Microsoft and Adobe have never come down hard on kids pirating their software since it's in their best interest the kids learn to hack and use their software in the long run. The Facebook-only aspect to this program may very well just be what was necessary to get the board to sign off on everything. (This is all speculation of course.) It's in Zuck's best interest not to just get people to use Facebook, but for kids to continue to learn how to hack and build stuff so he can hire the smartest ones.
I'm not saying I disagree, and am of course sceptical of Facebook however, you provide nothing to the debate.
But, it certainly won't end there. I'm sure that many people who are users of any tech, will someday become makers in tech.
I was a user first, before I was a builder, in any platform. First you use it. Then, you figure it out. You take it apart & study it, see similar things all around you now. Then, you repurpose it, combine it, fix it, build something better than it, etc.
It's not a bad thing to get corporate sponsors underwriting basic connectivity to those who don't have any.
How do you take apart an iPad? I think that is the point.
If we are scrupulous and careful never to advocate for rights that don't protect people from violence, we will never ensure any other rights, no matter how deserved they are, unless we cast everything in those terms.
Like, for instance, the right to not get blown up by a terrorist. That's how the slippery slope starts.
But I am helping derail the conversation.
That said, humans have always have had "odd" priorities that might not make sense from the lens of rational cost-benefit analysis. Venkat Rao wrote quite an interesting piece about this- about how some people genuinely prefer the occasional escapism of movies to, say, proper sanitation.
We don't sit down and rationally work on our worst problems, we're aspirational, we're idealistic. People working on humanitarian projects have found that the threat of death and the promise of salvation from death DON'T actually stop people from defecating in the streets, etc.
It may be that people want Facebook more than they want protection from violence. That might seem utterly crazy, but it might also be true. That said, Facebook is free to do as it pleases. C'est la vie.
But, we are not all rational all the time. And, studying emotions & psychology are indeed full of answers & puzzles as well.
It's good to see the discussions on HN diverge to an even more interesting point than the OP.
Maybe I'm over thinking things, but as someone in the midst of it all, I can't help but try to make sense of what is going on in relation to other things.
From about.com: "Carol Hanisch's essay explains the idea behind the phrase "the personal is political." A common debate between "personal" and "political" questioned whether women's consciousness-raising groups [during the late 1960s and 1970s] were a useful part of the political women's movement. According to Hanisch, calling the groups "therapy" was a misnomer, as the groups were not intended to solve any women's personal problems. Instead, consciousness-raising was a form of political action to elicit discussion about such topics as women's relationships, their roles in marriage, and their feelings about childbearing." [2]
It is essential from any angle to talk about and recognize social, cultural, and economic historical and present systems in any discourse, even about one's personal experience. Activists and academics have been recognizing this for centuries, and the principle applies as much to supposedly democratic, egalitarian "technology" as any facet of life
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism
[2] http://womenshistory.about.com/od/feminism/a/consciousness_r...