All been there, all done that. This draft spends much too much time on a controversy that was. Zero-rating was, as you say now and as we said then, a simple way of buying up routing access to the packets of the world's poor. As Wikimedia said then, universal free access to Wikipedia reader- and editorship would be uncomfortably transformative for regimes that depend on keeping their masses ignorant.

Meta attempts to conquer the Global South

This paper discusses Meta’s (formerly Facebook) “Free Basics” initiative. Free Basics was launched in 2012 and is one of the most controversial initiatives undertaken by tech giants in order to (supposedly) increase connectivity in the Global South. Free Basics provides unlimited data to mobile users, but only to access a limited number of websites/apps. These obviously include Meta’s services, such as Facebook and WhatsApp? , but also a few so-called “basic services” such as Google, Wikipedia, health and food prices information.

I argue that what Mark Zuckerberg presents as a philanthropic project seems to rather be at the backbone of a strategy to impose Meta as the main data-exploiter in the Global South. I will then explore the reasons why Free Basics failed in India and Egypt, which showcase some of Free Basics’ dangers to democracy and freedom.

Almost 10 years ago, Mark Zuckerberg published a White Paper arguing that connectivity to the internet is a basic human right. The 10-pages opinion outlined Facebook’s strategy to connect the at-the-time 5/6th of the world population that did not use Facebook on a monthly basis. To note: connecting people to Facebook is slightly different than a strategy to fulfill a basic human right to an internet connection. In fact, mixing up connection to the internet and connection to Facebook reflects Free Basics core strategy: making the internet and Facebook synonyms in the Global South.

One week after the publication of Zuckerberg’s White Paper, Facebook launched Internet.org (to note that .org is commonly used by non-profit organizations), and in its introductory keynote at the Mobile World Congress of 2014, Zuckerberg presented Free Basics as the main pillar of Internet.org, officially aiming at providing connectivity to everyone.

It is difficult to assess Free Basics’ popularity/success, given that Meta does not publish any data on it. According to the researcher at the Stanford Center for African studies Toussaint Nothias’ own investigations, Free Basics was available in 62 countries as of July 2019, half of them located in Africa. Hence, a fair amount for countries, including the most populated ones such as Nigeria, Sudan, DR of Congo, and Kenya.

In fact, Mark Zuckerberg seemed to target two specific regions: India and sub-Saharan Africa, where he travelled respectively in 2014 and 2016. These regions have three things in common: (i) a very large and fast-growing population; (ii) a low social media penetration (India had in 2014 a social media penetration of less than 15%, while the Central, West and Eastern African countries are still below 15% today); and the fastest growing economies on the planet (with average GDP growths over the period 2010-2020 of around 4% for Sub-Sharan countries and 5% for India, according to the World Bank).

These markets are therefore extremely promising regarding today’s most valuable resource on the planet: behavioral data. Even if the yearly revenue by Facebook user is currently more than 15 times higher in the US and Canada than in Africa/India, these regions have an immense potential in terms of demography and economic growth. Instead of willing to promote the basic human right to connectivity, Meta is rather making sure that seize the behaviors of people who will constitute more than half of the humanity by 2050. In fact, Meta recognized this. While negotiating with telecom providers, Meta’s main argument was indeed that giving unlimited access to only a tiny part of the web would trigger greater demand for data allowing to access the entire net, and ultimately increase the mobile data subscribers.

Despite the appealing offer, Free Basics failed in two major countries: India and Egypt. These failures both showcase two major dangers of Free Basics.

The reasons why Free Basics was banned from Egypt remain a little obscure. Most likely, it appears that Meta refused that the authoritarian government to surveil Free Basics users or censure contents. It is reportedly for the same reason that Free Basics was announced but never launched in Uganda and Zimbabwe. Even though these failures appear to favor democracy and free speech, it shows the role that Meta is trying to acquire: the only and necessary intermediate between the state, the internet and the citizens. What is Meta’s legitimacy to decide whether a government is democratic enough to allow citizens to access the net? What are Meta’s standards for tolerating surveillance/censure? Even in the unlikely situation where Meta would be supporting democracy and free speech, to what extent can we make sure that they not compromising on free speech/democratic values/surveillance in return of behavioral data?

In India, Free Basics faced immense public protest. In a nutshell, Free Basics was accused of compromising the net neutrality as it gives access to only selected websites. In addition, Free Basics was considered by the public opinion as a digital neo-colonialist initiative given that a Western company would decide what is good for poor Indians and what kind of websites they need to access. Despite Zuckerberg’s advocacy published in the Times of India – the country’s main newspaper –, arguing again that Facebook was not making any money out of Free Basics, and despite Facebook’s moto “If the sun is free … If the air is free … Then why shouldn’t the internet be free?”, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India banned the service in 2016 after a public consultation on net neutrality. I can only agree with the authority’s argument that net neutrality would be undermined. In addition, suppose that Meta was allowed to select available websites, on what basis would they do so and what is their legitimacy?

What is capable of stopping Meta, Google, or Chinese companies (Chinese social media are not very present in the Global South, but China is heavily present in African telecom infrastructures, smartphones, recently in facial recognition software, etc.) from providing access to (limited) internet services, build infrastructure (such as the future undersea internet cable financed by China and Meta, 2Africa) and thereby surveilling and exploiting behavioral data, undermining net neutrality, democracy, and free speech.

-- By LouisAmory - 08 Dec 2021

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