> In a short essay outlining the vision behind Internet.org, Mr. Zuckerberg says one of its goals is to offer credit and identity infrastructure “that is still nascent in many developing countries.” Such services might be of some help in developing countries. But is Facebook the best entity to provide them?
"Best" among what alternatives? If nobody else is providing these services, then Facebook may necessarily be the best by default. Of course we can imagine better ways. But those ways are imaginary until somebody actually shows they can do it.
And I have a hard time getting upset that Facebook might beat out Experian and friends to become the credit bureau of choice in some developing countries. Why should I have a dog in that fight?
> And I have a hard time getting upset that Facebook might beat out Experian and friends to become the credit bureau of choice in some developing countries. Why should I have a dog in that fight?
Put aside developing countries for a moment - in the US, the three credit bureaus are very heavily regulated, and as a consumer, you have a lot of rights regarding your credit report.
Experian must provide you with free access to your credit report every year, they must explicitly mark any negative information, they must give you the right to challenge any incorrect information, and even if negative information is correct, they can only hold onto it for a certain period of time.
They also are limited in the ways that they can share this information with others, and in the ways that they can join the information from your credit report with other information that they or others may have in order to create a more "complete" profile about you.
This regulation is all very good, as it limits the extent to which one's credit history can harm one's prospects at financial progress (or even basic necessities of life, as even rental applications often ask for your credit history). It also means that someone in their 40s is not still being held back by poor credit decisions from their 20s that caused them to declare bankruptcy in their early 30s.
If Facebook were actually subject to all of these same regulations (and we trusted them to abide by them), it would be one thing, but I'd be very skeptical of how Facebook would handle this responsibility either in the US or in developing countries.
This regulation is all very good, as it limits the
extent to which one's credit history can harm one's
prospects at financial progress
Credit history can both help and hurt you. Imagine some people are Q and some are R, and Q-people are more likely to default on a loan than R-people. If we prohibit taking Q-vs-R status into account in making loans this is good for the Q-people because they'll get lower rates, but it hurts the R-people who will get charged higher rates.
Looking at your example of someone who made decisions in their 20s that left them with lots of debt, declared bankruptcy in their 30s, and now is trying to take out loans in their 40s. Do you think that they're more likely to default on these loans than someone who didn't go through that process in their 20s and 30s? If you do, then this is a Q-vs-R thing and one group is being helped but only by mixing them in with another group that's then hurt. (Or if you don't think they're more likely to default then they shouldn't be charged more for loans. And if they are charged more for loans, you/someone could go into business loaning to these people and make a bunch of money.)
Some examples are a lot harder than others, though. Say one race, as a group, tends to default a lot more. There are probably lots of reasons for this, with poverty being a big one, but say even after you take into account the rest of the data you can collect (income, age, years at job, profession) race still has lots of explanatory power for predicting whether someone will default. Should you be able to take this into account? This is another Q-vs-R thing, but it's not based on "poor financial decisions" or in fact anything within that individual's control.
On balance this regulation may well be beneficial, but we also need to acknowledge it has costs. (One thing in favor of regulation: the costs tend to fall on richer people and the benefits on poorer people, so because of the diminishing marginal value of money it could be worth it even if the benefits were smaller than the costs in absolute terms.)
Is access to small consumer loans really that significant among the problems facing Rwandans, Paraguayans and (I forget the other places[s])?
It seems to me that, if it were, there would already be a better solution than Facebook in place. Or if it is just about to be, that Facebook is unlikely - even with this project in place - to be in the best position to provide it. Unless they get really close with local regulators, but I doubt they have it in them to shimmy up with the local fuzz to be the most favoured credit bureau in Paraguay.
Because the people that live in those developing countries are fellow human beings, and generally have no economic/political power relative to Facebook and other MNCs.
This excuse has very often had the result of denying basic jobs and services to people in developing countries.
Like the GP said, "alternate ways" are imaginary until someone else does it. The best way to provide an alternate solution is to provide an alternate solution. The worst way to provide an alternate solution is to complain about it with that typical rich Westerner indignation that some people face harder choices than themselves, with the end result sometimes being that no solutions at all are provided.
Although it is concerning that Facebook could essential become 'the internet' for people in developing countries you can't sit in your nice, comfortable office and tell people that should be their main concern. When you don't have internet access and when you can't access essential services with as much efficiency as we can, privacy and monopolies aren't the main concern. Easy access to health information, banks, money, and business opportunities are the main concern. Long term thinking is hard to grasp when you are forced to focus on the short term. Long term thinking is a luxury a lot of people in developing countries can't afford.
Fair point about citizens in developing countries being forced to focus on the short-term. But does that mean it's right for Facebook to take advantage of them in a way that, in the long-term, is questionable at best?
This is about more than just providing heating oil or railroads... this is about their entire information infrastructure, and they're in no position to negotiate.
The alternative is to "get out of the way." Instead of allowing these countries to get to internet access in their own way, and at their own pace, internet.org will hamstring the efforts by providing this free crippled version that will permanently warp these users view of what the internet is and push out smaller local competition that provides real internet.
The very fact that it's called internet.org is obvious proof of the dishonesty at play.
Sometimes the right answer is to do nothing if you don't have anything good to contribute.
From the Internet.org website itself, comes a very timely affirmation: "The future of the world economy is a knowledge economy - the Internet, its backbone". Should this backbone be on the hands of, or at least controlled by, one single company (or cartel, or association)?
This move is a very good strategic move to access the so called "other 3 billion", and the mixture of tech companies and public services in developing countries has been proven effective (see M-Pesa, an initiative that revolutionized the financial services ecosystem in Kenya). But there are very deep philosophical implications when private companies start taking the role of government on the internet. Nowadays, many public servants do not understand the implications of this "knowledge economy" referenced on the internet.org website. Specially when it relates to the forces that lead to huge market concentrations and even de facto monopolies in these industries (see Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, ...). The irony of this specific initiative is that a company that fights for net neutrality with the EFF against the telcos tries to do the same thing, but at a different layer, in developing countries.
In reality, this raises a very important question for the future of the internet: what is the right amount of private interference on services that were previously considered public ones (identification being the most prominent of these nowadays)? Are we heading to a new Bell style monopoly, but at a global scale, nowadays? And what will be the outcome of the very important fight of internet versus infrastructure companies that is going on?
Regarding these doubts, I really and firmly believe that the most interesting phenomenons will not happen in the US, but on the most unsuspecting countries out there (again, see M-Pesa). We just have to wait and see
"Imagine your water meter giving you free quick showers but charging you for a bath."
Am I the only one that doesn't think this is ridiculous? We already pay for the water we use to take a bath or a shower. So basically this amounts to free showers. Isn't that something to be happy about?
You pay for the internet and only get facebook (while paying extra for other services) vs you pay for the internet and do whatever you want
and
you pay for the water and only get quick showers (while paying extra for flushing down the toilet, baths, taking care of your garden) vs you pay and do whatever you want.
no, it's a step away from completely commodifying water; and if someone offered that "package" i wouldn't for a moment believe they aren't making more money off of me in the long run than had they charged just a flat fee.
No one will actually care if they're making more money overall if the end user is saving because they spend less on water/data because their usage is lower. The sooner ISPs start charging based on usage the better. Low usage customers have been subsidizing heavy users for a long time.
The alternative is having heavy bandwidth services subsidize their customers' data use which would also work.
What's frustrating is how un-data-driven these efforts are. Surely we have some empirical research by now on the most cost-effective ways to improve quality of life through aid projects. And my guess is the top ten are all sanitation-related.
But they do this. What a [presumably tax-subsidized] waste.
Because other people are taking care of sanitation related problems. Why can't we tackle more than one issue? Throwing money at one problem, solving it, and moving on to another one isn't necessarily the most efficient way to solve those problems.
Yes, of course you want to direct your efforts at whatever will bring the largest marginal benefit -- and you're right that that can change if other people are already working on the absolute best things. However, that doesn't mean that all the other options are equally good! Would Facebook's money be better spent on internet access, or by being one among many working on sanitation? It's not a forgone conclusion, and it would be nice to see people be more data-driven about how they spend their charity money.
In practice, the internet thing is probably Facebook's only option, since it's the only one they can convince their investors to back. This isn't really charity; they intend to make a viable business. I really like that aspect of the plan. Charity comes and goes, but businesses tend to stick around when they're making money.
Permanently deleted my Facebook account a couple weeks back. I hadn't seriously used Facebook since high school, but had held back from deleting the account, because I didn't want to lose the data.
Of course, the older you get, the less of a good idea it seems to preserve all the dumb shit you said in high school for perpetuity.
"Best" among what alternatives? If nobody else is providing these services, then Facebook may necessarily be the best by default. Of course we can imagine better ways. But those ways are imaginary until somebody actually shows they can do it.
And I have a hard time getting upset that Facebook might beat out Experian and friends to become the credit bureau of choice in some developing countries. Why should I have a dog in that fight?