The Fight for the Internet Freedom.
The World Wide Web is the most notable invention of mankind. In the last few decades, more people have become millionaires and billionaires by using Internet as a tool than from anything else. However, it seems almost absurdly strange that the person who created the WWW, Tim Berners Lee, gave out his most notable invention for free. I happen to watch a video wherein he was asked the reason for it. Tim simply said that if even one person on the planet would have been barred from using the Internet, his invention would lose its purpose. It is for all, in its truest form.
Internet stands as the purest form of democracy - accessible to every person, irrespective of race, religion, country, or economic status. The Internet that you use is the same that that the richest person on the planet has access to. It offers you the same rights as anyone else. However, the freedom of equality has always been at loggerheads with monopolies and corporate interests. and thus, this battle was inevitable.
Coming back to the point, Facebook launched it’s initiative Internet.org few months back. It said their mission is to connect everybody on the planet and for that, they intend to provide free Internet to the people who can’t afford it. So far, so good. However, written between the lines were some clauses which clearly didn’t make any sense. As it turned out, Facebook wanted to give access to itself and bunch of other websites for free. As shocking as it might seem, Facebook’s definition of the Internet wasn’t the one we have come to believe. For them, some 100 websites constituted the Internet, and providing access to these selected few, constituted ‘connecting the world’. The problem is — this is against the fundamental principal on which the Internet was built. It’s was a censorship, veiled in the form the nobility.
Tim Berners Lee, on this topic said: giving people data connectivity to part of the network deliberately is a step backwards. It is sad to see Facebook spend millions of dollars lobbying for a stand which is against the innovation of the Open web, after benefiting from its openness.
How can one organisation decide which websites a user should visit ? It’s outrageous, undemocratic, and if Internet would ever had a constitution, completely unconstitutional.
Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik, supporting Net Neutrality, said, “If you dictate what the poor should get, you take away their right to choose what they think is best for them.”
After facing public flak on its proposed Internet.org program; Facebook tactfully rebranded it’s initiative as ‘Free basics’. In essence, there has been absolute little efforts made by them to address the core issues. If that was not enough, the dubious way of marketing it and garnering public support from users — by presenting one sided, unclear version of the truth — has only made it raise more eyebrows that garner eyeballs.
The Internet gave everyone a voice, so everyone of us can express our views freely. However, this structure of the Internet has put a lot of power (and hence, responsibility) in the hands of content discovery platforms (such as Google, Internet.org). So, this time, fight is not for who gets to express his views, the fight is to who gets heard.
Internet doesn’t have a government. It’s for everyone, equally. Thus, protecting it comes as a collective responsibility for all of us. It’s time to stand-up against the injustice & the only way to stop this from happening is if everyone considers it as their personal mission.
P.S. We’re not Facebook that we would ask you to make a decision based on our beliefs, so below are some of the links (both in favour and opposed to Free Basics). Please read about the issue on the Internet yourselves, and take a stand.
Free Basics Documentation by Facebook
Free Basics Myths & Facts
Save The Internet Initiative
You can reach out to me on twitter: @smilesikand
