Bringing Facebook to the Poor: Internet.org and the ongoing debate over Net Neutrality in Brazil
On April 10, 2015 the President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, met with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas in Panama to discuss a Facebook-led global initiative called Internet.org that is aimed at extending Internet access to poor communities in the developing world. According to the Internet.org website, it is an “initiative bringing together technology leaders, nonprofits and local communities to connect the two thirds of the world that doesn’t have Internet access.” After the meeting, Zuckerberg announced what appeared to be a tentative agreement with the Brazilian government for a pilot project in the urban shantytowns of São Paulo. Yet, this seemingly benevolent initiative quickly sparked a heated debate in Brazil among Internet freedom activists about corporate influence over the Internet and the technical principle of net neutrality.
Internet.org and Extending Internet access to Low-income Neighborhoods
Zuckerberg announced details of his meeting with Rousseff on his personal Facebook page:
“One project we announced today is a trial connectivity program in the Heliopolis favela in São Paulo. This is a low income neighborhood of around 200,000 people in Brazil’s largest city. We’re going to deliver fast free wifi to everyone in this community so they can access basic internet services on their phones — including free services around health, jobs, education and communication…I’m excited for Facebook to help more Brazilians connect with their loved ones and create greater opportunities around the world.”
What Zuckerberg left unmentioned in this announcement was that his own social media behemoth, Facebook, would be among these “free” web services that poor Brazilians would be given access to. This could potentially mean thousands of new Facebook users along with their lucrative personal information, which would be valuable in the growing developing country. It was this potential business motive behind the professed poverty reduction initiative that raised eyebrows. Indeed, a number of Brazilian Internet freedom activists, a group that I have been studying for the past 4 years, immediately raised concerns about whether or not this Facebook-led digital inclusion project was, in fact, the best way to increase access to the Internet among the poor or whether it was merely a way for Facebook to gain competitive advantage in the country.
Net Neutrality — Creating an Open Internet for All
At the heart of the debate about Facebook’s Internet.org initiative is whether or not providing access to some websites for free, but not providing access to other websites, violates the principle of net neutrality. Net neutrality “is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication.” In essence, it means that people who are connected to the Internet should have access to all the Internet, not just parts of it that are corporate or government sponsored. Thus, on its face, providing access to Facebook and a small number of other websites selected by Facebook to poor Brazilians seems to run counter to this logic.
Net neutrality is something that Internet freedom activists worldwide contend is essential for an open and democratic Internet. Just last year, Brazil enacted a pioneering Internet freedom bill referred to in English as the Brazilian Civil Right Framework for the Internet that encoded net neutrality in Brazilian law. My own research examines the role of a group of politically active Brazilian Internet freedom activists who were able to command the attention of policymakers to push through one of the most progressive Internet laws in the world. Interestingly, Facebook, along with other US Internet giants like Google and Microsoft, lobbied on behalf of the law. They contended that net neutrality is fundamental to an open Internet market where all companies, big and small, are able to compete and innovate. The Brazilian law was hailed worldwide as a victory for Internet freedom.
Yet, instituting net neutrality policies does not address the larger issue of how to provide Internet access to those who are still without it. According, to Facebook’s Internet.org initiative, more than two thirds of individuals worldwide do not have Internet access. Even when the individuals in poor communities have Internet-ready cell phones, they often do not have the money to pay for often quite expensive commercial Internet access. One solution is to have corporations or organizations sponsor access to websites. This is often referred to as zero-rating, or toll free data or sponsored data. For example, the Facebook Zero initiative, an agreement between Facebook and mobile phone based Internet providers in 50 countries, provides a stripped down version of Facebook to users without a cost. It is not just corporations that are using this model. The Wikimedia Foundation also launched the Wikipedia Zero initiative in hopes of increasing access to the online encyclopedia. Zero-rating has thus been proposed by corporations and non-profits alike as a potential solution to increasing Internet access to poor communities.
Zero-Rating: Corporate “Walled-Gardens” or an Efficient way to Increase Internet Access
Brazilian Internet freedom activists are not in agreement about whether or not zero-rating violates the concept of net neutrality. On the one hand, Ronaldo Lemos, a prominent legal scholar and one of the initial proponents of the Brazilian Internet Civil Rights Framework, seemingly came out in favor of zero-rating in a Tweet earlier this year. In February, when the Center for Technology and Society at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas, where Lemos had been director until 2013, released a statement saying that zero-rating was incompatible with Internet Civil Rights Framework law, Lemos tweeted the following:
The Brazilian Internet Civil Rights Framework was not made to hinder the access of millions of people, I am totally against this position.
Here, Lemos seemed to endorse the idea that corporations like Facebook could sponsor Internet access without violating net neutrality. Providing some Internet access, albeit limited to corporate sponsored content, appeared to be better than nothing in his estimation.
On the other hand, the majority of Brazilian Internet freedom activists have been quite concerned about Facebook’s motives with the Internet.org initiative. For them, being connected to Facebook is not equivalent to being connected to the entire Internet and all the possibilities it offers. The Brazilian Civil Rights Framework of the Internet they fought for recognized the Internet as a “human right.” Thus, they wondered whether relying on a US corporation to provide access to poor communities in Brazil made sense. They doubted that providing access to Facebook and a handful of other websites is really going to increase the quality of life of individuals in poor neighborhoods, and asked whether it will merely make more people dependent on Facebook for access to information.
João Carlos Caribé, an Internet freedom activist and digital entrepreneur from Rio de Janeiro posed this rhetorical question on his Facebook page:
What would you think about a hunger eradication program promoted by McDonald’s using exclusively junk good? That is the same thing as digital inclusion promoted by Facebook.
Think about it …
In this quote Caribé highlights Facebook’s potential conflict of interest in terms of the Internet.org initiative. It is undeniable that increasing the number of Facebook users is good for Facebook’s bottom line. Thus, distinguishing between the humanitarian and business rationales of this initiative is quite difficult. Also, whether or not becoming a member of Facebook’s proprietary social network will substantially improve the lives of the urban poor is far from clear. At present concerned Brazilian Internet freedom activists, like Caribé, are demanding more details about any potential projects between Facebook and the Brazilian federal government.
What’s next? — The Details
The Rousseff administration has stated that no official agreements have yet been made with Facebook. Likewise, Facebook has not publicly released specific details about the project in São Paulo. However, in a private letter to the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee about the project reported in the Brazilian press, Facebook’s chief lobbyist in Brazil Bruno Magrani argued that Internet.org is not technically zero-rating because data is not sponsored. Also, since users will be able to access other Internet content, Internet.org does not constitute an Internet “fast-lane” that would violate net neutrality. Yet, while specific content may not be sponsored, it is undeniable that Facebook is positioning itself as the corporate benefactor responsible for increasing access to the Internet in poor Brazilian neighborhoods.
Next week President Rousseff will embark on a state visit to the US. She will reportedly visit Silicon Valley, and will potentially make a stop at Facebook headquarters to meet Zuckerberg again. During her visit Rousseff and her advisors should press the him for more specifics about Facebook’s proposals. Here are a few key questions that they should ask:
- How will Internet access be provided in Heliopolis? Which Internet Service Provider (ISP) will Facebook be teaming with to provide service?
- Will individuals and organizations be able to access the Internet without using any of Facebook services or providing their personal information to Facebook?
- What content or services, if any, will users be restricted from accessing and why? How might other companies and organizations go about partnering with the Internet.org project?
Until these questions are clearly addressed it is difficult to definitively judge Facebook’s proposal.
What is at stake here is the type of Internet that potentially millions of low-income people around the world will have access to in the future. Will it be an Internet where they have access to the full panoply of human knowledge or will it be a highly limited, Internet-lite version that promotes business interests and is drastically different from the Internet their counterparts in wealthier areas have access to?
With the passage of last year’s Internet Civil Rights Framework, Brazil became a trailer blazer in the global battle over net neutrality. Now the debate over Internet.org and the Brazilian government’s potential collaboration with Facebook is exposing another layer in this complicated issue.
