After launching the service in Zambia and Tanzania, earlier this year, Facebook has announced on Monday the availability of its Internet.org app for Airtel subscribers in Kenya. The app provides cellphone owners with free access to basic internet services related to health, education, finance, employment, communication and local information services.
This means that consumers will be able to browse Wikipedia, read the BBC News, check the weather forecasts with AccuWeather, access the Unicef online hub for Ebola-related information, chat with Facebook and more, all without data charges.
As Facebook puts it, providing free basic services is "one way to demonstrate the value of the Internet", and to reach this goal the social network is signing a number of deals with cellphone operators in several parts of the world. In Kenya, it reached an agreement with
According to a report released by Deloitte last February, allowing people in the developing world to access the Internet, could result in 140 million new jobs and 160 million of people lifted from poverty. On the other hand, it will help the social network expand its customer base, that in other parts of the world has reached by now the saturation point. Not everyone's happy, of course.
In August, an Op-Ed by Evgeny Morozov in the Sunday Review of the New York Times, called the Internet.org app a "gateway drug", the last in a number of "venture humanitarianism" initiatives that, while pursuing a laudatory goal, do it with arguable methods. Specifically, while the apps from partners of the Internet.org coalition can be accessed for free, to the others normal data charges are applied and this, according to Morozov (and others) could have some unpleasant consequences.
First, users will not access to the Internet, but only to a certain subset of it, which is clearly in contrast with the idea of an Internet equal and free for all. Secondly, if the want more, they'll have to pay and one might wonder if it's ethical to tempt people who might as well be on the border of starvation (in Kenya, for instance, according to a 2013 report, at least 3.5 million go hungry or are malnourished) to spend the little money they have on the Internet.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, at the last Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, made clear why he thinks that it's rational and good for them: in his view, it's a matter of increasing access to jobs, healthcare and other basic opportunities. He might have a point: in Zambia, for example, the Asikana Network, a women’s rights non-profit, is using the Internet.org infrastructure to help women learn about their legal rights through a dedicated app. The verdict is still out, but it's very much likely that in the end, the benefits of the initiative will largely outshine its darker sides. Only, do not call it "philanthropy". Philanthropy is, or should be, unselfish. Facebook, by its own admission, is also looking for new markets.
