maniac Posted February 11, 2016 Posted February 11, 2016 (edited) Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t had the best week.First, Facebook’s Free Basics platform was effectively banned in India. Then, a high-profile member of Facebook’s board of directors, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, sounded off about the decision to his nearly half-a-million Twitter followers with a stunning comment.“Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades,” Andreessen wrote. “Why stop now?”After that, the Internet went nuts.Andreessen deleted his tweet, apologized, and underscored that he is “100 percent opposed to colonialism” and “100 percent in favor of independence and freedom.” Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, followed up with his own Facebook postto say Andreessen’s comment was “deeply upsetting” to him, and not representative of the way he thinks “at all.”The kerfuffle elicited a torrent of criticism for Andreessen, but the connection he made—between Facebook’s global expansion and colonialism—is nothing new. Which probably helps explain why Zuckerberg felt the need to step in, and which brings us back to Free Basics. The platform, billed by Facebook as a way to help people connect to the Internet for the first time, offers a stripped-down version of the mobile web that people can use without it counting toward their data-usage limit.“I’m loath to toss around words like colonialism but it’s hard to ignore the family resemblances and recognizable DNA, to wit,” said Deepika Bahri, an English professor at Emory University who focuses on postcolonial studies. In an email,Bahri summed up those similarities in list form:1. ride in like the savior2. bandy about words like equality, democracy, basic rights3. mask the long-term profit motive (see 2 above)4. justify the logic of partial dissemination as better than nothing5. partner with local elites and vested interests6. accuse the critics of ingratitudeTo read the full articlehttp://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/02/facebook-and-the-new-colonialism/462393/ Edited February 11, 2016 by maniac
Debutant Posted February 12, 2016 Posted February 12, 2016 Liked the comments section.Is it mandatory to Sign Up to read the comments ??I am being sent to sign up screen when I click 'Jump To Comments'
BlueBee Posted February 12, 2016 Posted February 12, 2016 Is it mandatory to Sign Up to read the comments ??I am being sent to sign up screen when I click 'Jump To Comments'No it's not mandatory. I can see the comments without signing in.
Crookbond Posted February 12, 2016 Posted February 12, 2016 A data-driven argument on why Marc Andreessen is wrong about Free Basics https://medium.com/@sumanthr/a-data-driven-argument-on-why-marc-andreessen-is-wrong-about-free-basics-c472184b9682#.fpy0ftaq7
Recommended Posts