And these are the people whom Zuckerberg is targeting for the FreeBasics free internet program. Maybe, he thinks that socializing on FB or performing a quick google search on farming methods is going to help them, but that is far from reality and just fascinating thinking. All I know is that the millions that Mr. ZUckerberg spent on displaying FreeBasics ads in the Indian newspapers and TV channels would have been much better spent by actually donating that money to the farmers he intends to help.

*and it has nothing to do with politics. I am about as Left as it gets.

One of the things you might hope for connecting them is they could educate themselves, organise and fight back against being exploited. Maybe their kids can go online if they are illiterate themselves. That kind of thing is more likely to improve conditions than a modest amount of cash.

Basically, the recipient is the best positioned to identify what will help them improve, not some well meaning remote do-gooder.

Ref: 1. http://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/cas... 2. http://www.who.int/alliance-hpsr/alliancehpsr_dfidevidencepa...

For example, there are many in the US who are poor, but who often do not allocate the money in ways that serve their best interests, but this may largely be the result of advertisers manipulating what people think is in their best interest. But for the world's poorest, they don't have enough to be worth the investment to inundate with advertisements, so they may have better ability to decide what is in their own best interests.

Donating money directly almost never helps in the long run. I think Zuckerberg is doing what he thinks is good, and I don't think free internet to farmers will do any bad. It might help only a few and by a little amount, but that is still better than nothing. Who are we to decide how somebody else organizes their charity?

Change at a fundamental level is a good long-term goal, but do you want to make people wait 5-15 years for that, instead of getting help in the next week? Will getting free internet slow down the fundamental change?

I am not saying that donating money is always a good option, but it is better than giving free Internet least of all keeping whatsapp or facebook as a "basic" need.

Does it intend to serve ads? How does ads work? Isn't one aspect of ads involve creating needs where there were previously none? Does it involve injecting insecurities (Ex: You are a loser if you are not fair) into the minds of the gullible and make them buy buy buy...

So, what If the end result of this is that suddenly the teenage kids of these farmers starts to spend more amount of money on cosmetics (because of Ads or to make them look good in "selfies"). Will that do them good?

What? The debate about the benefits of direct cash-transfers vs. more managed forms of aid is alive and well in 2015.

> Do you think donating some money to farmers is going to help in any way? The government has been doing that for a long time (through subsidies and minimum purchase prices)

You're talking about two different things. Subsidies are different than unconditional cash transfers, the latter of which there has been recent promising research on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconditional_cash_transfer

https://www.princeton.edu/~joha/publications/Haushofer_Shapi...

Of course it would. They could buy new, better equipment, tools, fertilizers, seeds, animals etc. My country (Lithuania) joined EU in 2004 and started direct payments to farmers via projects, that helped A LOT. Now we have big, modern cooperatives and companies that sell products worldwide instead of small, inefficient farms. What I don't understand, how could Facebook (and friends) help them? I doubt that even an unlimited Internet would be useful without an extensive education, as most older/uneducated people struggle to use even a simple cell phone.

i doubt people would want to shift to free basics from a full internet and if they do then that's what they like, its their choice. We should continue using normal broadband. Now you can argue that telcos will then overcharge for normal broadband, but who knows, they might not and even if they do then TRAI can send them a notice to not do that, and they will stop like they did with the "fast lane" thingy.

1 million: Free Basics users in India in 2015 (source: FB press release)

5.8 million: Data users acquired by Reliance, FB's sole partner in India, in 2015 (source: IAMAI)

109 million: Data users acquired by all telcos in India in 2015 (Sep 2014-Sep 2015, source: same IAMAI report)

So if Free Basics converted 50% of their users to the full Internet, that's about 500k users, or less than 0.5% of the industry's success rate.

Asking for dangerous policy exceptions because your flawed scheme has an actual success rate of 0.5% and presenting this as 50% is disingenuous at best.

In fact, 80% of FreeBasics users are EXISTING Internet users, not NEW.

But if a foreign company offers a net subsidy to access a part of the Internet shouldn't that drive down the price of Internet access for everyone? I.e. you could access "free basics" and also have a complimentary Internet subscription that could be offered at a lower price since your Facebook traffic would be subsidized.

Facebook could just as easily offer a net neutral internet, but they're not - that's what people are upset about.