Internet.org isn’t Evil
Having read an article about the incredible evil which is Internet.org today, I remain unconvinced. Getting Internet to developing nations is a hard and non-trivial task but letting the perfect be the enemy of the good is not the right answer. Giving people unfettered access to networks has never driven adoption, constraints drive adoption.
Internet.org is the new Eternal September.
It turns out that giving the keys to the castle to your users is confusing and not particularly helpful. The Internet existed for decades before users began to gravitate towards the system, and it was only the introduction of AOL at the end of 1993 that drove very large numbers of people onto the net. Remember AOL keywords? Right, nobody else does either, and that’s exactly the point with Internet.org. It’s not about driving people into Facebook’s ghetto, it’s about helping people discover the Internet in the simplest, most obvious way possible. For what it’s worth, this is Mark Zuckerberg’s position today:
“If you ask these people, who didn’t grow up with a computer and have never used the Internet, do you want to buy a data plan, their answer is going to be ‘Why?’ They actually have enough money to afford it, but they’re not sure why they would want it,” Zuckerberg says. “So, the answer to that requires a business model innovation, which is making the Internet something where you can use some basic services that don’t consume a lot of bandwidth for free. Within a month, more than half of the people who get access to those services realize why the internet is valuable and become paying customers.”
It is tempting to believe that blimps and white space initiatives will cure all of the world’s bandwidth woes, but that narrative misconstrues the problem. There are literally billions of people on Earth right now who are covered by broadband networks but do not use them. It is not a network access issue, it is a knowledge issue, and building more networks does not solve that. It is a cost-benefit analysis issue; users in 3rd world countries have no idea why they should want the Internet.
What 3rd world nations need is not more networks, but, rather, services that provide immediate, obvious value. Internet.org’s examples include weather reports, crop rotation and access to health services. These have clear, present value that is immediately obvious. In contrast, if one were to be presented with the entirety of the Internet, such an offering could be overwhelming at best and inconsequential at worst. Providing a curated experience that provides clear, immediate value is how users are helped towards self-actualization using the Internet. Again, networks do not grow as a result of giving users unfettered access as clearly demonstrated by the contrast between the world before AOL and the world after. Networks grow because of clear, obvious constraints within which users can reason (and ultimately grow beyond).
If having access to information is power, the way to provide it is with a curated, closed experience, not an ocean of possibility. From those humble beginnings, a world of creativity and knowledge, unconstrained by any walled garden, will flourish, as it always has.
