Is Free Basics a Form of Colonialism?
Facebook has launched a free internet service that was initially called internet.org and changed to Free Basics due to people being misled. The campaign was launched in around 63 countries, mainly from Asia, Africa, and South America. The concept was to give people free internet in order to connect with the world around them and become more literate about the technology of smart phones and social media. While some countries have accepted what has been given to them by Facebook, others have strongly rejected it because of net neutrality. The main country that has created a huge buzz regarding that is India; they argue that Facebook only provides a limited access of the Internet to the new users referring to it as the “walled garden” and that is a problem because everyone should have the same portion of internet access no matter what their status or situation is (Backchannel, 2016). Facebook tried to bombard India with advertisements to convince the people that it is for the better.
Colonialism is “the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically”, based on the Oxford Dictionary. People have compared the Free Basics to colonialism because it wants to feed on the data of the poor countries as an excuse of wanting it to become connected to the more civilized and advanced countries. Back in the old days, some colonies occurred under countries in which people were from different race and considered minorities. This caused unbalanced form of intercultural relations (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2013). This could be compared to Free Basics in a way that the citizens that could be considered as minorities gain access to much lesser information than the Western and more developed countries.
Free Basics is mainly an initiative in the form of a mobile app that gives a portion of the internet to people from countries that don’t have the privilege of being connected through the phones to the rest of the world. When people join the Free Basics, all but Pakistan are not asked about personal, demographic information, but they were answered to the operator. The sites are mostly about news, health, education, and job searching. Concerning language, it provides English language and few of the local of the countries, but the majority of the links people have access to is in English.
In the countries, Pakistan, Mexico, and Philippines, people used Free Basics to expand their data consumption instead of it being their only source for online platforms. In India, there was a percentage of 15–22% of people that didn’t have access to Internet (Global Voices, 2017). In Africa, on the other hand, the huge population that is not connected to the Internet was a main target even with the hardships of weak connections (Spillane, 2015). These differences can cause variations in the efficiency of the initiative. Facebook has launched this based on the fact that it is the only thing that people could use to be connected because they can’t afford the data, so the solution is to let people try the internet and be encouraged to start paying once the realize how beneficial it is to have (Global Voices, 2017). It can be more needed in the poorer countries of Africa that have technical problems and just a bonus for other countries. This could be a sign that Facebook mainly just aims at reaching more population, especially with a billion people in Africa that barely have access and India that is rapidly developing.
Facebook is the only social media platform that is provided. The fact that the language limits the capacity of information that people could understand, especially for those that don’t understand English, contradicts to what Facebook aimed at, connecting the unprivileged to the world (Global Voices, 2017). The data that is chosen by Facebook and specified to certain companies is proof that there is a huge gap between the freedoms of a normal data consumer and that of the Free Basics user. Going back to colonialism that feeds off the advantages of a country to provide it with certain economic and governmental support is just a comparison that might be exaggerative but also makes sense in a way. Trying to gain the control of the people that could in the future be normal data users is far off from net neutrality. Relating this to what is happening currently and the huge call to delete facebook in the developed countries speaks for itself that there must be something suspicious about this. It is more than possible that Facebook is just in it for the gain and not to benefit any country necessarily even though it might look it. Imagine how productive it would be for the countries to have all the access and be able to fully take advantage of that privilege instead of feeling overwhelmed with the International information that can seem too foreign.
Facebook has done tremendous work on advertising and PR to show people how great life could be with this grand idea, but for some reason when thinking of the benefits of it, it seems like Facebook would gain so much more than the users because data means so much these days. It can defend itself by saying that it simply cannot just pay for everyone’s full access of information, but the question is whether this privilege is worth the harm that it can cause when it comes to people’s privacy. Moreover, India has opened people’s eyes and showed a whole darker side of this campaign when it comes to net neutrality. Maybe, if Facebook hadn’t had the power to choose what sites should be available, it would have been in a different situation. Free Basics campaign is a huge debate that opens up different aspects of how Facebook operates that can seem endless.
References:
Ashcroft, B. & Griffiths, G. & Tiffin, H. (2013). Post colonial studies: The key concepts. New York, NY: Routledge. p. 40–41.
Backchannel (2016, February 2). How India pierced Facebook’s free internet program. Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/backchannel/howindiapiercedfacebooksfreeinternetprogram6ae3f9ffd1b4#.66h5946ip
Global Voices. (2017). Free Basics in real life: Six case studies on Facebook’s internet “on ramp” initiative from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Amsterdam: Stichting Global Voices. p. 1–35.
Spillane, C. (2015, June 24). Facebook to offer South African Cell C users free web access. Retrieved from www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-24/facebook-to-offer-south-african-cell-c-users-free-web-access.
