Stopping the "Free Basics" isn't enough

[Harsh Gupta]

Hello all,

I'm writing you because of your involvement in SaveTheInternet campaign. We all
have been outraged by Facebook's recent "Save The Free Basics" campaign and it
makes it very important to look at the implications of monopoly by Facebook
from a larger perspective. Facebook is not only the new TV and the newspaper
and but it is also the new Town Hall and the cafeterias. Facebook is now
dominating both the public and private spaces of our lives on internet. This
company which controls so much of the internet is fundamentally dishonest and
its power is increasing without checks and bounds. A world dominated by
Facebook is a deadly combination of George Orwell's "1984" and Huxley's "Brave
New World" where Facebook not only twists the facts so that it is never wrong
but also keeps us perpetually distracted so that we never stop to question the
"world" around us. Even if we stop "Free Basics" the internet won't be saved
unless we stop this giant Facebook which is becoming "the internet" for many of
the people around us, that's why I demand a all-out anti-facebook campaign.

First off all we need to understand and communicate the evils of Facebook. The
most comprehensive anti-facebook resource that I've found on the internet is
this personal page by Richard Matthew Stallman, the founder of the GNU project.

https://stallman.org/facebook.html
https://stallman.org/facebook2.html

Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam have organized conferences have
written a book named UnlikeUs. I'm half way through the book and it talks about
important theoretical and pragmatic issues concerning social media monopolies.

http://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/unlike-us-reader-social-media-monopolies-and-their-alternatives/

And for the record I've also written a blog post about the issue:

https://medium.com/p/leaving-the-evil-empire-of-facebook-7f7b1955bb37

Then I propose that we create a website to curate all this news and media a
publications to communicate the case against Facebook.

It should be clear by now that you cannot launch an effective campaign against
Facebook using Facebook. It can block your posts, delete your posts, block your
account, artificially suppress your posts and what not citing all sorts of
reasons from spam to trademark violation to simply a bug. In the worst cases
you won't even know that Facebook has done something wrong. The strongest
signal you can give to your friends and family is by deleting Facebook and
communicating why you did it.

* Those of us who have connections in big organizations and media houses should
  encourage them to delete their Facebook pages say their users can know why
they did it. Those of you who are involved in non profit should know that
Facebook is not good for them as it is known to suppress page reach to make way
for paid promotion. And it has been known to delete pages by activists and
protesters.

* Those of us who have friends who are lawyers and who have contacts in Legal
  firms should attack Facebook from the legal front by filing lawsuits and
Public Interest Litigation. I'm impressed by the "Europe vs Facebook" [1] case
and the recent legislation by Belgian court which stopped Facebook from
tracking non-facebook users [2].

Anyway I want to listen to your opinions of what should be done. And I'm keen
to meet those of you who are in Delhi/NCR this December.

I've got your email addresses through your github and twitter accounts and I have included local lugs. I
would like to reach out to more people who care about saving the free internet
(free as in free speech).

[1]: http://www.europe-v-facebook.org/EN/en.html
[2]: http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/12/facebook-bows-to-belgium-will-stop-tracking-non-facebook-users/

--
Harsh Gupta
Fourth Year Undergraduate IIT Kharagpur
http://github.com/hargup/