India Telecom Regulator Pooh-Poohs Facebook's Orchestrated Lobbying Campaign 32
theodp writes: After India's telecom regulator asked a local company to temporarily stop Facebook's Free Basics service amid questions about whether it violates net neutrality, Facebook launched a controversial lobbying campaign, encouraging FB users to write to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), which oversees the country's Internet policy, urging the service be preserved. As of Jan. 7, the deadline for accepting comments, the regulator said it had received nearly two million comments from accounts affiliated with the site, including the domain names "@supportfreebasics.in" and "@facebookmail."
But many of these comments, the regulator said in a statement, are "basically template responses and the content are identical in nature." TRAI's we-ain't-buying-it response to the orchestrated flood of millions of comments (from both sides) differs markedly from the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, which recently told the Court (PDF) it couldn't possibly comply with a Judge's six-month deadline to address issues with the OPT STEM Extension Program because it was overwhelmed by "the approximately 50,500 comments" (about what the average Slashdot reader reviews in a day!) from individuals urged on by the White House and other organizations. By the way, among the comments received by DHS was one from NAFSA — the lobbying powerhouse that represents 3,500 colleges and universities — calling for DHS to have OPT extensions expanded to include all fields of study (PDF).
But many of these comments, the regulator said in a statement, are "basically template responses and the content are identical in nature." TRAI's we-ain't-buying-it response to the orchestrated flood of millions of comments (from both sides) differs markedly from the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, which recently told the Court (PDF) it couldn't possibly comply with a Judge's six-month deadline to address issues with the OPT STEM Extension Program because it was overwhelmed by "the approximately 50,500 comments" (about what the average Slashdot reader reviews in a day!) from individuals urged on by the White House and other organizations. By the way, among the comments received by DHS was one from NAFSA — the lobbying powerhouse that represents 3,500 colleges and universities — calling for DHS to have OPT extensions expanded to include all fields of study (PDF).
What da F? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
You mean that you don't think the fact that facebook tried to leverage its users to ddos a government department is notable news in the tech world?
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If he's the one who put "pooh-poohs" in the headline, then yes, he has gone off the deep end.
Facebook was trolling for comments (Score:3, Interesting)
If I remember correctly this was a full page desktop ad that came up and weepingly asked for me to click the send button so the poor babbies in india could get free "internet access".
I ctrl-a/x'ed the form, put in my own verbage about Fuckerberg and his bitch mother and sent that instead.
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My observation is that I wish most of the internet fulfilled the technical requirements for a site to be on Free Basics. It would be a slashdotter's wet dream if it didn't look suspiciously like a walled garden/trap.
technical guidelines [facebook.com]
Specifically, mobile websites should work in the absence of:
JavaScript
SVG images and WOFF font types
iframes
Video and large images
Flash and Java applets
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Read the part about https in your link. This "free internet" thing is just a MitM datamining proxy to bombart ads at its users.
Re:Don't be so quick to take sides. (Score:5, Insightful)
While Facebook's motives are certainly not selfless and altruistic, they are talking about giving free connectivity to people who'd otherwise have nothing.
That's their argument, but it's based on false premises.
Zero-rated content is problematic because it supplants other means of getting universal access to the internet. We agree that the argument for zero-rating is: 'It's better than nothing.' But that's begging the question. Why does 'nothing' have to be the alternative?
Telco revenues in the developing world have nearly doubled in the last 10 years [medium.com]. Virtually all revenue growth in the telco sector is in the developing world. And yet... not only are we not keeping up with the rate of increase in bandwidth, subscription base and accessibility in the developed world, we're actually falling behind.
Service levels are improving by leaps and bounds in the developed world, in a sector with *stable* income. And yet they're not improving nearly as much in a part of the world that's seen 50% revenue growth in 10 years.
How is it that the only way we can get actual services—you know, the thing telcos are given partial monopolies to deliver—is when customers are commoditised and effectively sold on an exclusive basis to an information service operator?
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Easy - because the alternative IS nothing.
No, it's fucking not. I live in a Least Developed Country and spent a decade assisting it in making region-leading progress in technology. Last year, the UN gave our country an award for its advances. Our Universal Access Policy dictates that 98% of the population will have access to 21/12Mbps bandwidth by the beginning of 2018.
These things are possible when a country actually bucks the lobbyists and industry reps and sets some real goals.
So unless you have some actual real-world insight into this, perhap
Re: (Score:2)
The main source of opposition by the way is ordinary users, not corporations or telcos. The reason for the opposition is not that facebook will become a monopoly ISP. The reason is that facebook's service breaks net neutrality.
Ordinary users everywhere are fighting to preserve net neutrality, while corporations are fighting against it (for it gives them a chance to strong-arm websites and services and extort money from them).
Basic services need to be neutral. If toll roads started charging differently depen
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On their own network...
Translation:gimme bigger envelopes under the table (Score:2)
>> India Telecom Regulator Pooh-Poohs Facebook's Orchestrated Lobbying Campaign
Translation:gimme bigger envelopes under the table. At least that's how it works here in America.
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Please, advise. (Score:2)
Could you, please, explain me in simple words why I should learn to use it?
I tried to learn Google+, Linkedin, but they are all the time changing, and I did not get it yet. Is it the same or better?
50,000 comments per day? (Score:4, Informative)
No, the average Slashdot reader does not read that many comments per day. At the rate of one comment per second, that's almost 14 hours straight.
Re: (Score:2)
At the rate of one comment per second, that's almost 14 hours straight.
14 hours is 50,400 seconds, so 50,500 seconds is actually more than 14 hours. But your point is correct.
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FB did everything wrong... (Score:3)
What FB should have was test the service in selected areas, or may be one or two circles before planning a pan-Indian roll out.
Also, I doubt if the feature phones used by a majority of poor / lower income strata citizens (including some of the tech agnostic well off crowd) will have any meaningful browsing experience.
50K Comments? (Score:2)
That's a lot of commenters. The federal stuff I comment on [nist.gov] seems to have about 15 others who care enough to comment. The comments are pretty good though.