“Facebook Is the Internet” and Other Things Media People Debate at Dinner

Re:“Facebook Is the Internet” and Other Things Media People ... by chewxy on Monday November 23, 2015 @11:54AM (#10615574)

Related: I was recently in Malaysia for a holiday. I bought a SIM card that promised unlimited internet (protip: unlimited anything usually a red flag, I should have known better)

It turned out that I couldn't use 4G to surf the net. All I could do was read Twitter. I went back to the shop and complained about this breach of contract. It turns out I didn't understand that "unlimited internet" meant "unlimited Facebook, Twitter, whatsapp, and Line". It didn't mean unlimited data.

I then spent the next 30 mins arguing with the shop person in a language that I'm rusty in, that no, I don't care about Whatsapp or Facebook or Instagram. I care that I can browse the web with a bloody browser, and connect to my machines via SSH, and no, what the plan promised was in NO WAY unlimited internet.

Still kinda pissed off over it

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:“Facebook Is the Internet” and Other Things Media People ... by chdir on Monday November 23, 2015 @02:48PM (#10616814)

FB is trying really hard to spread the same kind of love with internet.org in developing countries, to "help" the underprivileged.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:“Facebook Is the Internet” and Other Things Media People ... by kristopolous on Monday November 23, 2015 @01:14PM (#10616125)

I guess they don't have net neutrality. Those are some of the consequences

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:“Facebook Is the Internet” and Other Things Media People ... by Alupis on Monday November 23, 2015 @02:09PM (#10616520)

> I guess they don't have net neutrality. Those are some of the consequences

It sounds an awful lot like Facebook's plan to give free phones and "data" to developing nations... with restricted access only to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram.[1]

[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-free-internet-access-p...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:“Facebook Is the Internet” and Other Things Media People ... by Tloewald on Monday November 23, 2015 @02:26PM (#10616641)

Or you can go direct to the horse's mouth, e.g.

https://info.internet.org/en/story/developers/

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:“Facebook Is the Internet” and Other Things Media People ... by seltzered_ on Monday November 23, 2015 @01:58PM (#10616452)

You could argue we're getting closer to it in the US. Here's a plan advertised in rural Texas I observed during a road trip a few months ago: http://i.imgur.com/70nUeHH.png

looking at their website, you apparently get unlimited facebook at LTE speed, but the data plan for non-facebook data is capped to a varying limit depending on price at 3G speed. They also have a plan that only has talk/text/facebook access.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:“Facebook Is the Internet” and Other Things Media People ... by kristopolous on Monday November 23, 2015 @08:20PM (#10618549)

IANAL but isn't that what this title 2 thing was supposed to prevent? This sounds like the famed "internet fast lane" which we always claimed was going to manifest as the "internet normal lane for a few, slow lanes for all the rest"

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:“Facebook Is the Internet” and Other Things Media People ... by lakeeffect on Tuesday November 24, 2015 @08:31AM (#10620561)

Sorry for your luck. Just wondering, do ads show up on these sites? With the internet.org or this I'm curious if they have ads that link. It seems they could only go to user pages.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:“Facebook Is the Internet” and Other Things Media People ... by chewxy on Tuesday November 24, 2015 @05:20PM (#10623986)

Nah. No ads. I don't use those apps to begin with. What my rant was about was the perception that "whatsapp, facebook and twitter" == the internet, and anything else isn't.

There isn't a concept of net neutrality obviously, but thankfully no malicious preferencing yet (I don't think my experience was a result of malicious preferencing, just a result of marketing and giving the population what they want)

[ Parent | on HN ]