Digital Fairness vs. Facebook’s Dream of World Domination

Digital Fairness vs. Facebook’s Dream of World Domination

As founder of the nation of “Facebookistan,” Mark Zuckerberg has his hands full with over a billion worldwide users. But as you may have heard, he has an even bigger dream — to hook up the 4.5 billion people around the world who lack internet access. The one-year-old Facebook-led initiative, called Internet.org, is designed to offer free access to a select set of websites like a “lite version” of Facebook, Wikipedia, and others, along with a limited number of content services on mobile phones. Facebook and the consumer make a deal: the consumer gets free access to a limited form of the internet and it’s a good bet that as more people get this access, Facebook itself will be one of the biggest beneficiaries.

It’s an arrangement that raises questions, especially from activists campaigning for net neutrality. Businesses like Facebook are filling an internet access gap in emerging markets that others, including the public sector, may simply never be able to address. Plus, the company has an interest in giving more people access; a Mobile Africa 2015 study of five of Africa’s major markets found that Facebook is, on average, the most popular phone activity, more popular than sending SMS or listening to the radio.

We believe there’s an even more fundamental issue at play here: What does a digitally “fair” world entail? Is it better for a society to be more digitally inclusive, even with the help of corporations (while also pursuing their business interests), or should a guarantee of absolute principles of net neutrality come first – regardless of whether it deters such private initiative?

India is a prime example. Only 19.2% of its population has internet access (at home or over a wireless device); other estimates, such as that from the World Bank, suggest that the number may be even lower, 15.1% in 2013. According to a McKinsey & Company study India’s biggest barriers to internet adoption are primarily in the areas of internet access capabilities and awareness of the internet itself. While the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced its intentions to help close the gap, including the recent launch of a widely publicized “Digital India” campaign, the country’s vastness, large population, and poor infrastructure mean that it will take time to see real improvements.

The private sector has shown a willingness to step into the breach. Despite having 200 million internet users at the end of 2014, India is not even among the top 10 e-commerce markets in the world, according to a recent eMarketer report. Meanwhile, China’s e-commerce market is 80 times as large. Given this context, it comes as little surprise that businesses — like Facebook, Google, and telecommunications companies — have the motivation to improve internet awareness and access. This helps them and other digital economy players expand their markets where governments continue to fail. It’s an investment for the future. And they are willing to fight for it – Facebook just launched a campaign in India to defend its Internet.org initiative as a government panel prepares a report on net neutrality.

In our Digital Planet study at Tufts, and in our related HBR article “Where the Digital Economy is Moving the Fastest,” we ranked 50 countries on their digital readiness and identified supply infrastructure, including telecommunications bandwidth and subscriptions to services that offer internet access as critical areas to improve. As part of this research, we examined how rates of digital evolution compared to mobile internet usage. We use a measure that we call the “mobile internet gap.” It is the difference between the total number of users in a country with cellphone subscriptions and users whose cellphone subscriptions also provide access to the internet.

Source :- https://hbr.org/2015/08/digital-fairness-vs-facebooks-dream-of-world-domination