Comment by firasd
10 years ago
I don’t have much to add after the last couple threads on this (my concerns boil down to the importance of net neutrality, and the obscuring way free Facebook plus a few dozen apps is presented as philanthropy) but it’s interesting that after 36 countries, as they say, “embraced” internet.org, India may finally be where Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitions run aground.
We have a specific mix of an established tech ecosystem, educated middle class, and active (though imperfect) democracy, all of which combined to spark a grassroots movement for net neutrality. I hope we can resist Facebook’s lobbying, whether visible marketing like this or backroom deals with telecom networks and governments.
P.S. Not to mention the aspect I’ve seen many people bring up: a Western corporation trying to aggressively meddle in India has an unhappy precedent.
>a Western corporation trying to aggressively meddle in India has an unhappy precedent.
Are you referring to the East India Company as the linked article does? Please be clear, I am not familiar enough with Indian history, and I've seen no-one else bring it up on this page.
> the East India Company
Companies. There were several - British, Swedish French, Dutch, Portuguese, you name it.
The British ended up taking the rest over, but practically every European colonial power had their own East India Company at one point or another (or tried to) and they all competed on how best to exploit the resources they could extract from India.
Yeah, I see people reference colonialism in general as well as the EIC in particular.
Okay, I was just curious if you meant something more recent that I was not aware of. (Not that the colonial era wasn't bad enough, mind you.)