There's an interesting phenomenon where people in developing countries begin to think that Facebook is the full extent of the internet:
Indonesians surveyed by Galpaya told her that they didn’t use the internet. But in focus groups, they would talk enthusiastically about how much time they spent on Facebook. Galpaya, a researcher (and now CEO) with LIRNEasia, a think tank, called Rohan Samarajiva, her boss at the time, to tell him what she had discovered. “It seemed that in their minds, the Internet did not exist; only Facebook,” he concluded. [1]
I feel extremely lucky and privileged to have grown up with an open internet, where there was at least some (diminishing) percent of websites that did not treat me like a product to be marketed to advertisers, prodding and analyzing, constantly gamifying and creeping ever-inwards on my privacy. I deactivated my account a few months ago because it felt like Facebook was taking more from me in terms of time and energy than I was gaining from it.
There is a huge benefit to bringing the connectivity of Facebook to developing countries and remote territories. Many people wouldn't be able to run businesses or keep in touch with family without it.
I just wish it didn't come with the strangely uncomfortable, sell-your-soul type of vibe that a project funded by publicly owned, for-profit venture usually generates. Especially when PR tries to spin it off as a charitable or humane act. Once you go public, it's about profit and it always will be. And a lot of the time, that's fine. Our country was founded and continues to run on capitalistic principles. Just don't hide behind any false pretenses and you'll have my support 100%.
>think that Facebook is the full extent of the internet:
My mother wanted to "get on the internet" because of the Facebook phenomenon a few years ago. Now she thinks Facebook is the full extent of the internet. Googling something or visiting a "homepage" is completely foreign to her. She'll search in the Facebook bar or ask questions in her feed if she's looking for information. Now she has a smartphone, and outside of texting and the odd call, only uses the Facebook app.
Obviously, her aptitude and usage is minimal, but it's an interesting phenomenon to behold.
I'm spending some time traveling in Thailand. While topping off my phone data package, I noticed that you can pay for a "Facebook and Line only" data package. [1]
Locals have told me the role that Facebook and Instagram play in eCommerce here is different from how it is in the states. Many physical product merchants will set up a Facebook or Instagram account for their store. They'll post their products as pictures, take payments via Line, and then ship merchandise once cash is received. Since Facebook and IG are eCommerce platforms, giving FB + limited net access means more than just accessing a social network.
I too, find it off-putting that Facebook markets this project as charity work, but I think the picture is grey at best and at worst.
But back in the day, AOL was more closely equated with something like a Yahoo-style content homepage & search box that also offered ISP connectivity services, which was critical for millions who were unserved by what was at the time "high speed" DSL or cable ISPs. Mailing bazillions of installer CDs worked -- who'd have guessed!
"Maguire told Quartz that the company intends to provide “the full internet,” but also noted that it will work with network operators’ bandwidth needs and business models."
Yeah, the telcos that build pretty much the full entirety of the "last-mile" internet as we know it today can not but trusted in the least to be at all involved in any new last mile provisions what so ever.
We (fairly rich, definitely reasonably connected, people) cannot allow the third world to enjoy something as humiliating as imperfect internet (to a standard we barely enjoy ourselves, however immensely beneficial our connections are in spite of this) and we certainly can't allow some of the richest corporations in the world investing in it - after all, the result might not end up perfect.
It's much better potential beneficiaries (you know, some of the worlds poorest and most disadvantaged people) for us to complain, dismiss and and wait until someone will roll out a 100% neutral network, unencumbered by any commercial interests.
I'm pretty sure you haven't heard me complaining about the imperfect/perfect Internet this would offer, or whether we should wait or not for something more/less neutral, so your reply is totally misguided.
I have 7 years of experience working in telco business. I don't mind "rich" companies investing in this solution (something else you got wrong), what I mind is telcos in the loop.
Oh, BTW, besides the experience with the soul-crushing telco business, I also have experience at that third world thingy... You see, I've grown in a third world country. Born '85, had no idea that compact discs (CD) existed until '94.
Sorry, bad habit. Take away is that it's a bad idea (in this case arguably even immoral) to let the good solution today get in the way of the perfect solution in the future.
That isn't true. One of the reasons why France tends to be a bit behind in all things internet even today is that they had 'minitel', a system that wasn't quite the whole internet (it was information services reachable by phone using a custom terminal with the prestel protocol). It worked so well that they didn't replace their system with the internet when it became available and as a result have been playing catch-up since then.
Just having some applications is not the same as being online, it's just a way for those companies to short-circuit the wait before they can add those users to their 'inventory'.
As a result the incentive to roll out the remainder is for a large part removed. This is the corporate wet-dream for the net: just a couple of big data silos. And where better to trial this idea and lock in the users as much as possible.
I disagree that minitel itself played any significant role in France's current situation. It was the French governments inability to get out of the way. Minitel was also in the U.S. in the early 90s, but didn't last because competition wasn't outlawed.
This is a substantial step up to the current alternative. No one is being 'locked' in, this will increase education and communication, and therefore the welfare of the users. Than, ISPs will come in and wipe them out. You have to start somewhere.
> It was the French governments inability to get out of the way.
That's because FT had the government as their shareholder and they were trying to protect their investment. That's definitely another important factor but the fact that minitel actually worked was definitely a detriment.
I remember visiting France during the Internet boom in the rest of Europe and people there were proudly showing off their minitel terminals (tiny little screens with a slide-out keyboard) and what they could do with it and how they didn't need this newfangled American nonsense in their houses.
Of course that didn't hold in the longer term but it certainly did not help early adoption.
> That's because FT had the government as their shareholder and they were trying to protect their investment.
I remember in 2002, when my family, and all my friends' families had an unlimited internet connection, having to use the minitel to register to some exams for some Universities. It felt like an anachronism. So unconvenient. I wouldn't be surprised if the government played its part in leaving it that way.
The next year though, they changed it and we could register through internet.
The thing is, Minitel, the system not 'quite the whole internet', provided tons of awesome features (unavailable in other places) more than a decade before the 'quite the whole internet' (as available to consumers) even existed.
Now, today the internet obviously exists, but there's a eye-watering amount of capital investment to be made in third world countries not generally well suited for capital investment, and largely populated by people with very little money, before "the whole internet" is broadly available.
So the situation is more akin to standing around in France in say, 1992 and arguing for shutting down Minitel because in 1997, there will be awesome, real internet, and having Minitel around will be an impediment to quick adoption.
I am in France at the moment, and I have never (exaduration) seen so many feature phones... Getting a French SIM for data was an exercise in frustration even with a local helping me. I got a SIM from Bourgues Telecom by registering it to a friend's name and address. Mostly works but it is really really difficult to give them money (wtf) and they modify unencrypted HTML page image links: http://serverfault.com/questions/339780/who-what-is-http-1-1...
Sellers on second hand trading site leboncoin.com keep saying to use the phone and not email (I.e. I presume they don't have a smart phone and data connection).
One place I stayed at had been trying to get ADSL for two years, even though it was reasonably built up.
As a NZer that travels a lot, the internet infrastructure appears less than 1st world to me.
I've got unlimited call + sms + 4G data (limited bandwidth after 20Gb) for 20€/month, and 300Mb/s fibre connection for 35€/month. I have not seen similar rates in the UK/US.
We can substitute (no internet + desire for internet) in for the right side, and I think that's better than (some internet + lessened desire for full internet)
Disclaimer: I am only a young person in Germany, but used the 0.facebook.com service (facebook for free) here for almost 10 years.
Result: Yes, some internet is better than no internet.
Nowadays, where I stopped using facebook mostly, I just buy like the tiniest data package my provider supports, wait for it to throttle to 64kbps, and just use IRC, the web without JS, etc.
Ya, there's nothing wrong with them providing this service. They just shouldn't be heralded as providing some great charity, I think that's all people are saying.
If they were providing full internet, that would be an incredibly charitable, generous, and positive thing. As it stands, it's just another business venture - which is fine, but not great.
Facebook is a business, yes. Does that mean they do not positively impact the world? Absolutely not. IIRC they are providing FB and Wikipedia (among other resources), those two resources alone will allow people the access to the entirety of human knowledge, and the ability to connect to anyone in the world. Via there phone. That is _huge_. Yes, it isn't perfect, and yes FB is investing for advertising in ~5-10+ years to come. But, that doesn't mean that hundreds of millions of people's lives will be dramatically better as a result. I apologise of this was slightly incoherent, I'm on mobile and do not have time to re-read.
> ... will allow people to access the entirety of human knowledge ...
This is so far removed from the truth. What about blogs? Academic papers? Journalistic articles? Mailing list threads? Even paper books!
The name "Internet.org" is grossly misleading. "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." Willingly giving a service effective control of the present yields dastardly results.
My claim was not correct. However, a lot of blogs, journals, books etc. are used as references for Wikipedia.
Regardless, this is a huge step up. We must not let perfection get in the way of progress.
FB will not have any control, people can choose to use it, or not. They are also free to pay for an ISP when an affordable and reliable one arrives. Which at this point is not possible.
This is frightening on many levels. A facebook plane? To get people on facebook, right? To get them on the internet is secondary to Zuckerbergs goals here, lets be honest. A walled garden? Come on. It should be the whole internet or they shouldn't even bother.
A walled garden, with no security protocols, with the intention of getting the entire world on facebook? Not cool.
How is the world with no Facebook plane in any way better than the world with a Facebook plane that provides Facebook access? If you don't want Facebook access, or you already have it, the two worlds are indistinguishable.
Because internet.org's proxy server gives Facebook monopsonic control over the internet.
Even ignoring the massive man-in-the-middle attack problems from running old phones on a proxy, Facebook is positioning themselves to control exclusive access to large number of users for websites.
You could argue that Google already does this - but Google has competitors that users could switch to in a heartbeat. Internet.org users don't have options, and websites need to pander to Facebook to be in that walled garden. It also makes it easier for third world countries to censor the internet.
In the end, this is damaging to the open internet ecosystem. Facebook could have just implemented a rate-limited or data capped system like other ISPs, but they opted to create a more restrictive system that gives them more power.
> If Comcast didn't exist, internet access wouldn't exist for many people.
Sorry that is extremely far from the truth. Any of the other major ISPs' would leap at the chance to guzzle up these customers if there was no other competition.
You're splitting hairs. Most of Comcast's last mile infrastructure was government subsidized, exactly because no-one was "jumping on it".
So you're saying that it's okay to ignore net neutrality (charge Netflix) when the government isn't there to help subsidize last-mile infrastructure? When you could just as easily provide a capped alternative?
That's the point and splitting hairs doesn't change it.
Depends on precisely where they're deployed, but this kind of thing can damage the local market and slow down the roll-out of normal infrastructure. A zero-cost "Facebook internet" is a partial substitute for real internet, which worsens the market for a local ISP trying to get off the ground. A kind of price-dumping, basically.
Yes. Most people and companies have to justify their extensive time and boat loads of money spent. He wants to grow his business and he's willing to invest to do it. If Coca Cola built roads to villages to sell their products, you would also be unhappy?
Oh you are right, Facebook plus a bunch of friends right?
But thats the "internet" right?
Facebook just added some sites, so people couldnt say "but its just Facebook"
guess what.. people are not stupid, it is just facebook,
and something else so we can think that is not "just facebook"
But if you think is right to train people that are not used to the internet that the internet is facebook, just for the facebook´s sake, and that this is a good thing?!
If this project were really serious they would give full access to people in need, so they can have plenty of access to knowledge to improve their own lives...or what the ads will do to them?
And not to be just a facebook catle, so they can show more ads to more people, and increase their market value in the stock market and pleased wall street with more people using facebook.. if that is not plain evil, i dont know what is.
Release the full internet to people, or just dump this whole project in the trash where it belongs.
People do have the option of not using it. Giving people nothing without a say in the matter seems wrong. Other organizations are free to bring more of the Internet. Google is working on solutions too. It seems wrong to criticise others when you are offering nothing better.
What's to stop one of the participating websites to offer a web proxy, so people could browse any website? If they ban proxies, it will be like the Great firewall of China
But those roads were already nonexistent, and their nonexistence is not affected by the existence of Coca Cola roads. In this hypothetical, we are comparing a world with no roads to a world with roads to deliver Coca Cola. Since some people like Coca Cola, I find the latter world preferable.
What if it's the other way around? What if the smart and passionate folks at Facebook really do just want to get the internet to the rest of the world, and this is the way they can justify doing so?
They are a public company, after all. They have to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders, or at least appear to do so...
The fact that going public always tends to make a company's contributions to society less altruistic and turn the ethos of the company into "moar profitz foar de shaerhoaldurs" raises some fairly damning questions about our capital system and its tendency towards greed and stagnation.
Is this really the fault of the financial system? In some respects I believe 'economics' is a verb, so the fault -if there is any- lies with the agents enacting the verb, that is to say: people. Humans, groups of them even, certainly have a tendency to produce and accumulate all sorts of things being their survival needs and go on to trade them. This raises all sorts of concerns and has cause many a lot of stress.
Blaming 'capital' seems fairly erroneous. Deirdre Mccloskey, in her book 'Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World' has a very convincing go at turning the idea into a fallacy. The accumulation and use of capital isn't, in and of itself, a bad thing. How much good has come from our desire to pool resources.
Also, it seems to me we tend to forget what the word 'corporation' means, literally "any group of persons united or regarded as united in one body". Certainly the other more obvious definition of the word includes that thing about "having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members", though me must remember that the words "an association of individuals, created by law or under authority of law" come immediately prior. If people lose faith in a "company" it will rapidly cease to exist, or at the very lease must drastically change in order to continue.
And yes, I acknowledge we are, probably to a greater extend than we typically realise, products of our environment, products of the societal structures, and built environs, we find ourselves in, and that this makes it very messy to try to discern cause and effect, and to apportion blame. I guess I'm just sceptical of apportioning blame, I don't believe it's particularly helpful.
Maybe this comment is a bit incoherent. I often find myself writing comments then not posting them because I can't seem to make a point without contradicting, or undermining, my own writing.
Maybe my point is that things probably aren't as simple, as clear cut, as we think. Maybe that's why some people study the liberal arts and sciences and go on to write entire volumes on these sorts of topics.
I don't think anyone's saying that capitalism is directly at fault. Theoretically, a fully free market (assuming that companies always have consumer and shareholder interests at heart) should be optimal, encouraging healthy competition, choice for the consumer, and the economic freedom to found your own startup. Unfortunately, the realities of the free market encourage economic foundationalism and excessive bureaucracy. Despite the free market's relative strengths when looked at from purely a business and consumer perspective, the fastest way to earn revenue and (eventually) break even is to have a company playbook which encourages business decisions that are completely antithetical to what you'd expect from a free market company. After the inevitable IPO, they slowly tend towards maximizing shareholder profit in place of ensuring consumer satisfaction (there are exceptions to this rule-- Apple and Tesla are good examples), and the results are more acquisitions, more profiteering, more tax avoidance, and more focus on the bottom line than putting out a good product. Particularly harmful is how an unregulated free market encourages trusts and oligarchies -- the latter of which we still can't solve today with legislation alone.
For every airbnb or Facebook there are a thousand of acquired startups who kept thinking short-term and forgot entirely about long-term. Which is a shame, because I've no doubt that many put out a quality product -- and I've also no doubt that the company which acquired them may very well have killed said company's specific product two seconds after filling out all of the paperwork. See Google's numerous acquisitions for proof of this.
First, that's a myth. There is no legal fiduciary responsibility to shareholders beyond the basics required by the SEC (which does not cover anything to do with maximizing profits et al).
Second, Zuckerberg controls Facebook. He has less realistic responsibility to the shareholders than almost any other CEO of a big public corporation in US history. The dual class share structure ensures he is able to ignore shareholder concerns and pressure that most other CEOs simply cannot.
> They have to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders, or at least appear to do so...
Actually they could completely ignore their shareholders from this point forward and absolutely nothing would happen to Facebook the company.
They have their IPO money in their pockets and the daily ebb-and-flow of Facebook share-trading provides no benefit to them other than reputation-enhancement should they wish to go to the markets again in the future.
They're likely not using something too exotic: 10Gbps free space optical links have been available commercially for a few years now (see products by AOptix). The tricky part is pointing them and getting the last bit of power on target. If they're actually forming links at 100's of km separation they're already on par with what APL was doing just 2 or 3 years ago [1]. Impressive that they not only have the data terminal to develop but have had the additional complication of building a new airframe as well.
Having worked on the pointing/tracking/acquisition side of this problem that's the part that's truly impressive to me. Sub-microradian pointing is not trivial. Their "red beam following green beam" shots in the video must be included for a bit of a laugh...
Agreed, this is very cool. How do free space optical links work in the rain though? Shouldn't be a problem for the link between aircrafts as they fly above the weather but might be for aircraft-ground link if that's optical.
Hope FB will open source parts of this! I know NASA has been looking at optical links for high bandwidth space communication, this accurate tracking would really help
There are a couple effects from rain: absorption ("db per km") and scattering (bigger constant in front of your r^2 term), neither are good for FSO. Fog (and since this is airborne, clouds) is the real killer. Imagine taking your nice .1 degree wide laser beam and pointing it into one of those frosted street lamp bulbs so that it now points in every direction, then add to that the attenuation from being absorbed by the droplets. Now, in FB's case, they're doing something pretty smart to mitigate the water problem. Using RF for the ground-air links avoids most of the problems with scattering and absorbtion depending on droplet size and the band you're transmitting in. Hard to beat the bandwidth of FSO, so that's a great option for above the clouds. 60,000 feet should be above most clouds - anything that tall and you'll be wanting to get out of the way in any case.
The LCRD stuff that NASA is doing is indeed impressive. I think that their pointing problem is a few orders of magnitude harder than what FB is dealing with though - if anything we'll see technology transfer in the other direction.
I hate Facebook and what it does to people. There is nothing worse than sitting in a room full of zombies on their mobiles. Despite all the great tech my first thought is how satisfying it would be for one of these to be taken down by a ground to Facebook missile.
This video has given me a newfound respect for Facebook.
Many engineers at tech companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. report that they feel overqualified for their work. I imagine many yearn for the chance to work on moonshot projects like these - is there any reason why secretive research divisions at these companies are so small, when there is plenty of engineering talent to go around internally?
Because more engineers makes for a worse product, particularly if you're doing something very innovative that requires a lot of iteration.
The amount of code you can write grows linearly with number of engineers, but communication costs grow quadratically. Therefore, the speed at which you can execute is inversely proportional to the size of the team, unless you can cut communication costs. Established projects can do this with architectural decisions that prevent one engineer from needing to know about or communicate with other engineers working on unrelated parts of the product. New projects cannot, because the architecture hasn't been established yet. That's why every innovative product grows out of a small team.
I'm guessing cause the 'overqualified' engineers are tied up with what they were hired to do.
Not to mention that the monumental risk that a company takes on when they do moonshot projects. There are very lax expectations of any profitability in the near term, so there seems to be large disincentives to invest heavily ... esp when the company is public and facing quarter by quarter scrutiny.
I think also because there is some negative sentiment to projects like these from people like bill gates, companies like FB try to keep it on the down low until they have something worth showing.
Why are people on HN actually supporting this? Facebook built a plane to beam its horrible timesink to even more people. Facebook is not a good thing. No company "gives things away" out of the good of their heart. They built a PLANE. Honestly, the only word I can describe this with is: scary.
So Facebook is the new AOL/Compuserve in some places. Did AOL die because people prefer the full open Internet, or did AOL die because it was too limited? Either way, history will likely repeat itself. Are people on this thread really worried that as things develop, people won't want to reach outside of the wall garden eventually? I think they will naturally.
Sorry. I had to. But really, I think everyone's a little sad that this kind of impressive technical achievement is in pursuit of a questionable final objective.
We're so advanced now with so many smart people, we're not really limited by what we CAN build but what we DO build. There are so many things that are theoretically possible but what we spend our time and money on is often so mundane.
I think it would be cool if there were thousands of these planes flying around providing free internet to everyone. What we'll probably get is hundreds flying around giving free facebook to some people.
But I shouldn't complain. At least research is getting implemented. That is cool.
People aren't even considering that once it becomes a solved problem, the next company that wants to do it gets the knowledge for free. Figuring out the engineering also has value.
Other uses for autonomous solar airplanes? Delivering medicine and supplies to remote areas?
> Other uses for autonomous solar airplanes? Delivering medicine and supplies to remote areas?
Or even, say in five to ten years when the cost of the technology drops, delivering unrestricted, high speed internet to hundreds of millions of people.
I believe that as facebook gains the territory, so does Instagram, messenger, WhatsApp, and every other acquired product. So the plan isn't really to just deliver internet service but to buy up the social world in the area without competitors. Since about 1.49 billion of the 1/3 of the internet enabled regions use one of Facebook products even with the competitions, it's evident that this project would triple their impact.
Another attempt at producing a machine that can fly for months. The Pluto project[1]:
"The nuclear engine could, in principle, operate for months, so a Pluto cruise missile could be left airborne for a prolonged time before being directed to carry out its attack."
So the NSA`s 'surveillance' activities can now look like a benevolent mary poppins feel good internet provider? Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to have worked on such a project ... just not for FB ... sorry, not a fan.
multiple months on station - dream come true for data acquisition in a lot of civilian and not very civilian applications. Like a platform for that gigapixel/Argus continuously recording everything happening in the city. Almost not existent noise and IR signature, and with carbon fiber construction i'd suppose very low radar cross-section. It can toil for months near China/Russia/etc. airspace listening/watching/etc. Or electronic CAP/AWACS kind of mission during peace time over aircraft carrier group. Sky isn't even the limit :)
Lasers are a poor choice for atmospheric communication, unless this kind of infrastructure is specifically designed to be deployed in places like deserts with a clear sky all the year around!
There certainly are other ways. It is a shame the world isn't a better place. Turn off your computer and get out there and get it done. Complaining because a company needs to align its investments with future growth doesn't help. Many companies only make plans for the next several quarters. It's actually refreshing when one does research that will pay off in a decade.
May 14th, 2024:In other news, today marks the 11th time in recent months that ISIS terrorists were able to shoot down a Facebook Aquila V.9 autonomous internet drown. Cutting off Facebook and general internet access to millions of Facebook users in the arid region.
Officials from Facebook, the NSA, and the NTSB were unavailable to comment.
This tragedy highlighted on this, Mark Zuckerberg's 40th birthday.
Indonesians surveyed by Galpaya told her that they didn’t use the internet. But in focus groups, they would talk enthusiastically about how much time they spent on Facebook. Galpaya, a researcher (and now CEO) with LIRNEasia, a think tank, called Rohan Samarajiva, her boss at the time, to tell him what she had discovered. “It seemed that in their minds, the Internet did not exist; only Facebook,” he concluded. [1]
I feel extremely lucky and privileged to have grown up with an open internet, where there was at least some (diminishing) percent of websites that did not treat me like a product to be marketed to advertisers, prodding and analyzing, constantly gamifying and creeping ever-inwards on my privacy. I deactivated my account a few months ago because it felt like Facebook was taking more from me in terms of time and energy than I was gaining from it.
There is a huge benefit to bringing the connectivity of Facebook to developing countries and remote territories. Many people wouldn't be able to run businesses or keep in touch with family without it.
I just wish it didn't come with the strangely uncomfortable, sell-your-soul type of vibe that a project funded by publicly owned, for-profit venture usually generates. Especially when PR tries to spin it off as a charitable or humane act. Once you go public, it's about profit and it always will be. And a lot of the time, that's fine. Our country was founded and continues to run on capitalistic principles. Just don't hide behind any false pretenses and you'll have my support 100%.
[1] http://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-ide...