Discover is Facebook's New Effort To Help People Access Websites for Free -- But With Limits (techcrunch.com) 17
Facebook has a new connectivity app called Discover to help those who can't afford to get online access information on the web. From a report: The service, available through mobile web and Android app, allows users to visit any website in text format (no video, images, audio and other elements that eat up large amounts of data) and consume a few megabytes of internet data. For Discover, which is part of the company's Free Basics initiative, Facebook is working with mobile operators in Bitel, Claro, Entel, and Movistar. Discover is currently available in Peru, where it is in the initial testing phase. In Peru, Discover is offering 10MB of free data to users each day. A Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch that the partner mobile operator determines the daily data allowance, and it anticipates operators in other countries where Discover would be tested to offer up to 20MB each day.
So... lynx, then? (Score:4, Informative)
This is (please select):
1 The second coming of Gopher
2 WAP/WML FTW
3 lynx/elinks for the masses
4 RMS's web->email gateway for the masses
5 What would happen if I ran Navigator on today's web anyway
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NO no, entirely different. (Score:2)
With this method Facebook gets to collect information about you, the old stuff doesn't
That said, I would think it may do a better job at formatting for reading, then these old systems, especially as most sites are designed with massive CSS, and JavaScript to micromanage it formatting.
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links2 is pretty impressive, you can build it with graphics and mouse support that actually works in a plain console (used to do that first when building gentoo from stage 1 source so i could at least browse the web somewhat while X, etc. built on a P2-350 w/ 128mb ram.) Bade for impressively fast browsing on a 28.8 dialup in the early 2000s...
Given how bloated Facebook's page is (Score:2)
Free Basics service has been banned in India (Score:2)
https://www.theverge.com/2016/... [theverge.com]
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Your information is WAY out-of-date. See, before, only a select few popular websites were included. That unfairly privileged certain sites and services above others. This new initiative doesn't exclude any website, just certain media types.
Bandwith is cheap (Score:2)
Especially for web browsing. Back in the old days sites use to get the Slashdot effect because
1. Slashdot was popular then
2. The hardware to host thousands of request a second was expensive.
Today even a simple server with a Home grade connection can deal with most web traffic. This seems like a solution to a problem we no longer have. Like making a more comfortable buggy whip.
Re: Bandwith is cheap (Score:1)
Tell that to my mobile phone, whose 4G connection has 3GB a month, which means 2 weeks tops if I watch YT on 144p, and then 2 weeks of 64kb/s (8kB/s)!
Until I get wifi again, that's the deal.
(And a new phone, cause don't let a dumbass spray your phone with disinfectant and kill both wifi and BT!)
No video, images, audio etc. (Score:2)
So basically a shitty version of Opera Turbo? (Score:1)
Opera had this, a decade ago. A proxy that re-compressed and minimzed websites.
https://www.opera.com/en/turbo [opera.com]
Except with less Facebook MITM spying.
Internet for the poor? (Score:1)
I mean, what shit is this? It is like saying: "yes, you are poor, so you are subjected to a shitty internet experience."
Instead of tackling the root of the problem, which is, give people the chance to dignify themselves with a work with good salaries, no... they prefer to keep reinforcing on them the concept of "you're poor", so, "you're not good enough for full-internet-experience".
I mean, I know Facebook isn't part of the problem, Peru's government is th
10 MBytes - reality check (Score:2)
Ever tried reading or writing 10 MBytes of text in a day,
FaceAche is out of touch with reality
email over 1,000 pages
text over 6,700 pages
MS doc about 650 pages
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Do you actually read every text character you download on each web page?
Many pages (I'm looking at you, Wikipedia) download an entire article every time you land on a new page, no limit - so if you search Wikipedia for the entry for, say, England, you will very likely get inundated with hundreds of screens full of text. Once you then find the population or land mass or whatever you called up the page for, the rest is ignored, lost data. You're 10 MBytes will go quickly.
The real point of this is FREE DATA n
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I mean--don't forget, some people will be using this text-only service to watch text movies.
The 17 minute long Star Wars movie from towel.blinkenlights.nl consumes a whole 3.23MB, so even with a whopping 10MB, you will only be able to watch that movie 3 times per day.
While I do see your point that it's a lot, I'd say it's still cutting it close on some of the decades-old telnet services that people might want to access...
I'm also sure there are some millennials right now clamoring for some of their newfangl
Basically an always-on MITM (Score:1)
I can already see them having some kind of data collection even inside this, given the user data they can easily extract from the entire browsing history of someone, complete with cookies and everything.
Just look at the VPN they tried to make people install, and what data collection it had.