News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Mark Zuckerberg's Free Basics argument doesn't address co... by wildmusings on Thursday December 31, 2015 @02:23AM (#10816657)
Putting aside this particular argument, I'm fascinated by what appears to be Zuckerberg's philosophy of creating profitable business models to provide public goods that are traditionally the realm of governments or charity. When successful, and I don't think they always can be, such solutions seem fundamentally more robust. They don't require continual interest from the donor class or the use of government coercion. And the resulting businesses would have a stronger incentive to spend their money wisely.
Re:Mark Zuckerberg's Free Basics argument doesn't address co... by andreyf on Thursday December 31, 2015 @01:39PM (#10818931)
> philosophy of creating profitable business models to provide public goods that are traditionally the realm of governments or charity

Unless we're talking about B-corp's [1], such a philosophy is not compatible with the legal responsibility a corporation has to its shareholders.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation

Re:Mark Zuckerberg's Free Basics argument doesn't address co... by wildmusings on Thursday December 31, 2015 @02:41PM (#10819252)
I don't think this is true. The B-corp just gives shareholders a cause of action in court against management for not pursuing the social objectives of the company. A corporation is free to pursue any lawful interest. Here is a good article about this: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-cor...
Re:Mark Zuckerberg's Free Basics argument doesn't address co... by andreyf on Friday January 01, 2016 @05:45AM (#10821572)
Interesting. In this particular case, though, Free Basics is designed in a way that allows Facebook to track what content is being accessed, without any explanation as to why, aside from the obvious incentive of being able to use that browsing data to create user models.

An advertising giant offering "free internet" with the ability to MITM and track https connections is hardly charity.