Comment by gcb0
10 years ago
that usually comes to bite you later.
with only one tv channel/radio station/available free web site to billions of poor, bad politicians can focus much easier on praying them. this worked very well when their only entertainment was religion cults.
everything has a consequence that will indirectly affect your ivory tower.
Your saying I'm in the ivory tower? Bad politicians have already kept a billion Indians out of modernity. Maybe they should give Free Basics a chance before they shut it down to protect their own power, or some ivory tower view that no internet connection is better than a very limited connection that nonetheless connects you with people across the world.
If there's an alternative way to expand connectivity, then why doesn't it exist now, or why doesn't someone set it up in competition to Free Basics? No one will use Free Basics if they can get real internet at an affordable price.
And your characterization of "one station" is wholly inaccurate. Even if the service included only Facebook (which it doesn't, as anyone can apply to have their web service included in the system), that's millions of profiles and pages with differing opinions, competing products, etc.