It is because of a "301 Moved Permanently" response code. The URL shows as "medium.com", because thats the URL saved in the HN database. However when you open it, your browser follows the redirect.
Re:How India Pierced Facebook’s Free Basics Program
by RodericDay on Friday February 12, 2016 @05:47PM
(#11091273)
The cynic in me (which is all of me) doesn't think it's an accident that it keeps getting portrayed this way. Same with a Bloomberg article the other day.
Re:How India Pierced Facebook’s Free Basics Program
by firasd on Friday February 12, 2016 @06:07PM
(#11091352)
When this first launched in India a couple months ago, the realization of what was going on really hit me. I was already opposed to it for net neutrality reasons, but in practice the program just rolled out Facebook and a few apps without data charges to everyone, not just the unconnected, which was extra flagrant. I wrote this: https://medium.com/@firasd/facebook-s-internet-org-free-basi...
Re:How India Pierced Facebook’s Free Basics Program
by firasd on Friday February 12, 2016 @09:50PM
(#11092216)
Okay…
1) When Free Basics launched India, the problems with it turned out to be even worse than I expected. I wrote about how the local marketing (‘Free Facebook’) and Zuck’s post (‘farmers getting weather information’) had completely different messaging.
2) I pointed to another article that dove into these issues about who actually uses Free Basics.
3) The reporter who wrote the article this HN thread is about (“How India Pierced…”) couldn’t find a single person who was introduced to the internet through Free Basics.
Curious how that happened.
It is because of a "301 Moved Permanently" response code. The URL shows as "medium.com", because thats the URL saved in the HN database. However when you open it, your browser follows the redirect.
Also see this: A data-driven argument on why Marc Andreessen is wrong about Free Basics https://medium.com/@sumanthr/a-data-driven-argument-on-why-m...
The reporter in the main linked article couldn't find one person using Free Basics who hadn't been on the internet before.
1) When Free Basics launched India, the problems with it turned out to be even worse than I expected. I wrote about how the local marketing (‘Free Facebook’) and Zuck’s post (‘farmers getting weather information’) had completely different messaging.
2) I pointed to another article that dove into these issues about who actually uses Free Basics.
3) The reporter who wrote the article this HN thread is about (“How India Pierced…”) couldn’t find a single person who was introduced to the internet through Free Basics.
Does that help?
If someone gave me free Internet, I'd probably check out their page.