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

Sun May 15 10:41:39 EDT 2016

As indicated in the Guardian article, India in the end didn’t think that it was a “gift” but rather a “Trojan horse”.  

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg 

M

From: Akinremi Peter Taiwo [mailto:compsoftnet at gmail.com] 
Sent: May 15, 2016 5:04 AM
To: Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>; governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Cc: Forum at Justnetcoalition. Org <forum at justnetcoalition.org>; Ciresearchers <ciresearchers at vancouvercommunity.net>
Subject: Re: [governance] FW: [IP] The inside story of Facebook's biggest setback

Hmmmm. May I ask for link or reference to this nice writeup to better understand the Indians local position and why they did not allowed zukerberg gift.

On May 15, 2016 12:46 AM, "Michael Gurstein" <gurstein at gmail.com <mailto:gurstein at gmail.com> > wrote:

Fascinating and important account as Facebook confronts the real world and loses...

M

From: Hendricks Dewayne <dewayne at warpspeed.com <mailto: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 <mailto:dewayne-net at warpspeed.com> >
Reply-To: dewayne-net at warpspeed.com <mailto: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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