There’s an important difference between “right” and “good”. Providing free basic internet access is clearly good, and internet.org is doing that. Many people argue, validly, that the manner in which they’re doing so is not right.
But that’s as if I were to tell you that giving anti-malarial drugs to people is wrong, because the right thing to do is to eradicate malaria itself. That’s probably true, but the practical thing to do right now is what’s good, not necessarily what’s right. And you can work on both fronts at once: they’re orthogonal.
I don’t pretend to understand the massive logistical challenges involved in implementing this, and it makes me sigh when others no more knowledgeable than myself make armchair proclamations about what should or should not be done.
> Providing free basic internet access is clearly good, and internet.org is doing that.
If it were only so. I would have no issue with internet.org if they provided free basic internet access. They do not, and this is a VERY important distinction. Internet.org is a gated community with a gatekeeper and no security. It is like AOL or an intranet. It is by definition limited, excluding and discriminatory. It is very much not free basic internet.
> But that’s as if I were to tell you that giving anti-malarial drugs to people is wrong, because the right thing to do is to eradicate malaria itself.
The malaria analogy is a straw man. The resources and effort required to eradicate malaria are vastly larger than the effort and resources required to distribute anti-malaria drugs to a group of infected people. If they were the same it would obviously be both good and right to eradicate malaria. However, they are not.
The effort and resources to provide a gated internet.org and the effort and resources to provide an open internet.org are the same. Thus it is both good and right to provide an open internet.org.
> I don’t pretend to understand the massive logistical challenges involved in implementing this, and it makes me sigh when others no more knowledgeable than myself make armchair proclamations about what should or should not be done.
Unlike you, I do know what I am talking about having made a career in the telecoms industry.
Feeling good about internet.org is about as smart as feeling good about price dumping. All short turn gain for long term loss. Or if you feel like a more concrete example, it's about as smart as pissing in your pants when you are cold.
There is no "basic" Internet access with a limited number of sites in the same sense that one can get "basic" cable with a limited number of channels. That's not Internet access. Calling it Internet access is disingenuous on the part of Internet.org, and providing it in the first place is destructive to the long-term interests of the intended beneficiaries.
What's both "good" and "right" is providing bandwidth-limited access to the entire Internet, subsidized if necessary by the local ads shown on a non-prioritized, low-bandwidth-friendly localized version of Facebook.
But that’s as if I were to tell you that giving anti-malarial drugs to people is wrong, because the right thing to do is to eradicate malaria itself. That’s probably true, but the practical thing to do right now is what’s good, not necessarily what’s right. And you can work on both fronts at once: they’re orthogonal.
I don’t pretend to understand the massive logistical challenges involved in implementing this, and it makes me sigh when others no more knowledgeable than myself make armchair proclamations about what should or should not be done.