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India’s Poor Want More Than Facebook’s Walled Garden Internet Experience

Indian people in the subcontinent are in two minds as whether to take up Facebook’s offer of a free but limited internet experience for all, confined to the boundaries of the world’s largest social media network. Or, whether they should bide their time and wait for the main internet to become freely available to all, courtesy of Indian officials and future entrepreneurs. QUARTZ reports: Last week, the Times of India reported that the country’s telecom regulatory body had asked Facebook’s partner, wireless carrier Reliance, to cease the Internet.org service as it determines whether operators should be able to price their services based on content. Responding to criticisms of the program, Zuckerberg penned an op-ed published Dec. 28 in the English-language daily. In it, he expressed annoyance that India is debating net neutrality—a principle dictating that telecom operators provide people with equal access to the internet—as the country struggles to connect its citizens to the internet. In the process of defending Internet.org, Zuckerberg paints India—where about a billion people are not connected to the internet—as backwards for even daring to question the benefits of Facebook’s charity-like endeavor. “Who could possibly be against this?” he asks passive-aggressively. “Surprisingly, over the last year there’s [...]