Here’s why I’m welcoming Zuckerberg’s Internet.org with open arms

Frankly, I’ve been taken aback by the wave of criticism and negative publicity that has surrounded Internet.org. In India, a campaign against the initiative by digital rights group Save the Internet managed to gather over a million signatures in three weeks. Eventually, 67 digital rights groups from across the world wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, saying “The economic boom and revolution in connectivity that the internet created in developed countries needs to be shared equally with the next three billion people.” Similar protests have also been witnessed in other countries, with Indonesian telco XL Axiata giving a painstaking explanation as to why it was quitting the initiative, citing “controversies and concerns over the business model.”

It is possible to see why people may not like Internet.org. The service offers access to a number of pre-determined sites and portals. Unsurprisingly, access to Facebook is at the top of the list. Internet.org does not allow users to determine their own preferences and it is this limited access that has people talking eagerly about net neutrality and restrictions on open expression. However, I still cannot fathom why it has attracted such venomous hate and outright derision.

Let’s take a step back and understand the offer Zuckerberg is making us. Is it mandatory for people to use Internet.org? Definitely not. Will you still be able to access the open internet, albeit with a fee? Absolutely. Is anyone stopping you from opening your web browser, typing in whatever URL you fancy, and spending hours meandering through its vast cache? I think we know the answer to that by now.

Instead, Facebook has offered millions of people across the world an opportunity to truly enrich their lives. In Pakistan, there are a total of 17 sites that you can access for free through Internet.org. 17. One Seven. If Facebook was truly that hungry, greedy, selfish, capitalistic parasite that we would like to believe it is, then why would it give users 16 other services besides itself to choose from? We all know Facebook is fast integrating media, content, video, messaging, and search into its app and web platforms. Wouldn’t it just be simpler for the big, bad behemoth to offer everyone in the world unlimited and free access to its own site? That way, it would probably scale even faster than it is right now. Users would be addicted (if they aren’t already) and Facebook could simply offer them everything they wanted right on the platform. Advertisers, brands, media houses, search engines, and other web services would have no option but to work with Facebook closely if they wanted to survive. Facebook would truly morph into big brother, and the ‘all-seeing eye.’ It would have the power to make governments fall.

Selfish? Maybe. But that’s the nature of the game.

The critical aspect to take away is that Zuckerberg could have presented Internet.org as a way of accessing Facebook for free. But he didn’t. Heck, he could have named it Facebook.org, and people would still have registered in droves to use it. But he didn’t. I will go out on a limb and give him the benefit of the doubt, for now. I will choose to believe him when he says he wants to make the internet accessible to the two-thirds of the world that remain offline. Maybe it’s too expensive to make the rest of the web similarly free and available. Actually it probably is. The size of the world wide web stretches beyond our imagination. A number of related questions also prop up. Who determines what language to display content in? There’s no one language that is read and understood by the majority of the world. Why restrict to English, when Mandarin is spoken by more people across the world?

It’s easy to criticize Zuckerberg for not offering rival services like Twitter or WeChat within the package. But that’s part of the global economy we live in. The same market dynamics which helped Facebook reach the pinnacle we see today force Zuckerberg’s hand into adopting a selfish posture. Has Coke ever helped Pepsi? Will Uber ever assist Lyft? Unlikely. And after all, while Internet.org may be a free service, Facebook doesn’t want to sit back and remain content with the roughly 1.4 billion active users it has. It wants the remaining 6 billion to sign up too.

Let that statistic sink in for a second. Facebook has a little above 1.4 billion monthly active users. Clearly it must be doing something right to convince such a vast number of people to use the service.

At this point, I’d like to examine in a little more detail, the services that are part of Internet.org. For the purposes of this article, I’m only looking at the ones that are offered in my home country, Pakistan.

Looking at it through a deeper lens

As a journalist, I’m prone to rolling my eyes when reading press releases, particularly when peppered with jargon like “empowering society”, “enriching lives”, and “creating opportunities.” It seems like every web service existing in cyberspace today is an altruistic demi-god, sent from heaven itself to magically rid the world of each and every evil. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a firm believer in the power of the internet to break down barriers to information, bring people closer together, and create a truly global society. However, you aren’t entitled to that privilege and respect merely by running an app. It has to be more concrete.