How NASSCOM went soft on Facebook's biggest mistake

Facebook seems to be in a fix. Although it’s plateaued in more ways than one, it’s easy to notice how the company is trying all sorts of tricks to gain more users on to its social network that is expected to never have a satiation point. One of these efforts began a long time ago when Mark Zuckerberg came up with a massive plan to get all of those millions of users who had no access to the internet on, to his social networking site. You may have guessed it by now, it was called internet.org. While Facebook’s biggest fans blindly supported the “generous” initiative that the website they visited the most was doing as a favour, there were plenty others who read between the lines and understood that Facebook’s plan was not just to get users online, but simply drag them to Facebook and its close pals who would make millions getting users on to their services. TRAI certainly appeared hell bent on not giving Facebook what it wanted and thanks to a number of pleas and requests , TRAI had to stand up to all of this, more so because it had to look the part as well. Zuckerberg even made friends with the PM using emotional tales during his visit to the Silicon Valley so indeed all the buttering did not go to waste. But little did anyone else know that Zuckerberg had been making plenty of visits to India and meeting individuals long before Internet.org even went public. A report in the Guardian briefly outlines this secret journey that hit a roadblock. Turns out India’s software lobby NASSCOM was a part of it. According to the report, Zuckerberg made an offer to the software lobby since he was facing plenty of opposition from both TRAI and the nation. According to a detailed and documented conversation, the Facebook founder found a friend in NASSCOM and got the support, but held back on a promise stating that he would allow any company to participate in his anti-net neutrality plan only in internet.org 2.0. That deal would be giving NASSCOM the power to decide, who gets to open shop on Facebook’s internet.org. Soon enough, NASSCOM was out there telling TRAI that it supported net neutrality but was OK with “short-term business promotions” like Facebook’s Free Basics. While there are no limits to corruption, Free basics was a close call indeed. https://twitter.com/diptaraj23/status/682133216166199296 Meanwhile Indians (on Facebook) were divided into two groups, those who were for Facebook’s Free Basics and thought that it was a thoughtful initiative by the social media giant and the second who were simply against the idea of someone controlling access to the free internet. https://twitter.com/nileshtrivedi/status/686613411547856896 At this time, Facebook was desperate for supporters. Supporting Facebook was as easy as giving a missed call. Facebook went all out putting up billboard ads requesting and reminding users that they had to support Facebook’s initiative that would help get millions of Indians online. The company went as far as spending Rs. 300 crore on ad campaigns, which was strangely an astounding amount considering that it was for a philanthropic cause. [caption id=“attachment_314478” align=“aligncenter” width=“238”]  Facebook ran an elaborate campaign to push Free Basics, for which it came under criticism in India. Source: Imgur[/caption] All of Facebook efforts despite the NASSCOM’s sudden change of tone fell flat. And Marc Andreessen’s anti-colonialism comments certainly added fuel to the fire. India soon realised that it was indeed being treated like a country that was in need of Zuckerberg’s free internet, when it already had world’s biggest tech companies. More so, the PM’s Digital India campaign also saw plenty of interest with many companies worldwide, promising to set up shop and push for technology penetration. So it did appear a bit odd when Facebook was gunning for a closed internet where its philanthropic efforts now suddenly seemed like well-focussed business plan. Sadly, though instead of banning Facebook entirely, Indians still access the social networking website today that at one point in time almost took the entire country for a ride. Facebook should stick to what it does best, help its users communicate and stay in touch with one another and not get into philanthropic efforts. Because no matter what Facebook does going forward, it will always be viewed in suspicion thanks to this one bad move (and a lost opportunity) called Free Basics.