Comment by silisili
2 days ago
I can't read the whole article, but one important point is that Facebook subsidizes users from these areas. It's cheaper to get 'Facebook data' than regular data.
As a result, life revolves around Facebook. All day, every day. It's how you shop, you contact each other, you 'google things', it's everything. And being rather high unemployment areas, people tend to spend all day there.
So given that you've essentially captured an entire demographic with little to no money that spend all their time on your platform, it's no surprise that's where the scams come from, whether it's outright or through such slop. Who can blame them?
And FB doesn't care, they just report 10 million user growth, without telling the actual truth that they're in a roundabout way, paying those users.
You may be thinking of Facebook’s Free Basics. That was a short lived program that ended years ago.
Interesting. I'm not quite sure that's the same thing, but I may be wrong.
Here are a couple articles describing it in PH[1 and 2].
It's not some limited access thing, it's literally unlimited data. Video calls, watching movies via FB, etc.
AFAICT it's still a thing, though it's not clear to me if FB is still sponsoring it or it's some carrier marketing[3].
1 - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/09/how-facebooks-free-i...
2 - https://technology.inquirer.net/30705/globe-telecom-to-offer...
3 - https://store1.smart.com.ph/addons/4569/