[governance] FW: [IP] The inside story of Facebook's biggest setback

Sun May 15 04:02:14 EDT 2016

Grenat story
Le 15 mai 2016 12:46 AM, "Michael Gurstein" <gurstein at gmail.com> a écrit :

> Fascinating and important account as Facebook confronts the real world and
> loses...
>
> M
>
> From: Hendricks Dewayne <dewayne at warpspeed.com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The inside story of Facebook's biggest setback
> Date: May 14, 2016 at 8:09:03 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net at warpspeed.com>
> Reply-To: dewayne-net at warpspeed.com
>
> The inside story of Facebook’s biggest setback The social network had a
> grand plan to connect millions of Indians to the internet. Here’s how it
> all went wrong By Rahul Bhatia May 12 2016 <
> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg
> >
>
> Until Mark Zuckerberg arrived in a bright orange helicopter in October
> 2014, Chandauli had never seen a celebrity visitor. One of 44,795 villages
> in the state of Rajasthan, Chandauli is only three or four hours’ drive
> from Delhi, but it exists alone and forgotten, tucked away, a kilometre off
> a quiet highway. Last year, when a local boy used the internet to buy a
> used motorcycle, astonished villagers called him an online shopping hero.
>
> Zuckerberg had come to see an experiment at work. Earlier that year, with
> its sights set on the forthcoming elections, the government had asked a
> foundation to help give Chandauli’s mostly Muslim villagers a digital
> education. And so, with uncommon haste, a small administrative building was
> turned into a community centre, where locals could learn how to access
> email and find information online. Soon, almost every household in the
> village had one person who knew how to use a computer.
>
> The digital transformation of Chandauli was an ideal story for Zuckerberg
> – a little parable for his grand mission for India. He wanted to bring the
> internet to millions of people who had never used it before. Specifically,
> he wanted to bring them a version of the internet that had Facebook at its
> core.
>
> After Zuckerberg landed, he was quickly guided by his advisers towards the
> community centre. He saw wheat fields and power lines, and a classroom with
> children sitting on a dirt floor. The heat warped the horizon. A crowd
> trailed behind him, talking excitedly about the man they called
> “Juckerberg”. But once he stepped inside the centre, the door was closed
> and latched.
>
> Zuckerberg took a seat on a plastic stool, and awkwardly asked the village
> children about how they used the centre’s computers. His stiff manner,
> combined with the presence of a reporter from Time magazine, and a Facebook
> photographer documenting the encounter, added to the sensation that the
> locals were playing parts in a performance directed by the company.
>
> But not everything went according to plan. The electricity had gone out
> shortly after Zuckerberg arrived, taking with it the wireless network that
> provided the village’s main connection to the internet. Instead, one of the
> boys showed Zuckerberg his mobile phone, and tried to bring up his Facebook
> profile page. This roused the CEO. “He genuinely wanted to know what they
> did on their phones, and how they spent time on the internet,” said Osama
> Manzar, the co-founder of the Digital Empowerment Foundation that had set
> up Chandauli’s digital literacy centre.
>
> Under Zuckerberg’s gaze, the boy’s profile page slowly emerged on a 2G
> connection. “Bandwidth issues,” Zuckerberg said to himself. He assured the
> children inside, and the villagers outside, that their connectivity
> problems would be fixed before his next visit.
>
> Later that day, Zuckerberg returned to New Delhi, where he posted a
> picture of himself speaking with a child at the resource centre. “Seeing
> first-hand how people here are using the internet was an incredible
> experience,” he wrote. “One day, if we can connect every village, we can
> transform many more lives and improve the world for all of us. Chandauli is
> just the start.”
>
> From Zuckerberg’s vantage point, high above the connected world he had
> helped create, India was a largely blank map. Many of its citizens –
> hundreds of millions of people – were clueless about the internet’s powers.
> If only they could see how easily they could form a community, how quickly
> they could turn into buyers and sellers of anything, how effortlessly they
> could find anything they needed – and so much more that they didn’t.
> Zuckerberg was convinced that Facebook could win them over, and even more
> convinced that this would change their lives for the better. He would bring
> India’s rural poor online quickly, and in great numbers, with an
> irresistible proposition: users would pay nothing at all to access a
> version of the internet curated by Facebook.
>
> But where Zuckerberg saw the endless promise of a digital future, Indians
> came to see something more sinister. Seventeen months later, Facebook’s
> grand plans to bring India online had been halted by overwhelming local
> opposition – the biggest stumbling block the company had hit in its
> 12-year-history. In the end, it seemed, Facebook had acted as if it was
> giving India a gift. But it was not a gift Indians wanted.
>
> [snip]
>
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