Facebook’s Internet.org program has become increasingly controversial and raises some pretty knotty problems about the meaning of “net neutrality” and the unusual nature of the market for Internet access around the world.
Here’s the basic idea behind the program. FB has developed a mobile phone app that gives users access to a small “walled garden” of Internet content — including a slimmed-down (no videos/photos/graphics, and no advertisements) version of Facebook itself. It then makes deals with ISPs in developing countries, under which the ISP agrees to eliminate its usual data transmission fees for all data that come in through this app — “zero rating” this content, in the current jargon. The idea is that there are hundreds of millions of people in the world who have cellphones who are not using the Internet because they’re unable or unwilling to pay the ISP’s additional Internet access charges, over and above the charges for basic cell service. The ISPs get to offer their customers a nice new offering at no additional cost to the customer, and Facebook gets to show people who are not now connected to the Net how much they’re missing.
