SAN FRANCISCO
Following a storm of Indian critics charging Mark Zuckerberg’s Internet.org project violated net neutrality, the Facebook chief executive posted a lengthy repudiation Friday supporting his Web accessibility initiative.
Indian advocates for net neutrality argued this week that Internet.org, a campaign to connect remote or impoverished regions around the globe to the Internet, will lead telecommunication companies to decide the websites and applications users can access as well as the speed of the connection – decisions that will all be based on how much different tech businesses pay the operators.
In response to the accusations, large Indian tech companies including travel website Cleartrip.com and media behemoth Times Group withdrew from Internet.org this week.
“We fully support net neutrality,” Zuckerberg noted in Facebook post. “We want to keep the Internet open. Net neutrality ensures network operators don’t discriminate by limiting access to services you want to use. It’s an essential part of the open Internet, and we are fully committed to it.”
Zuckerberg and wireless operator Reliance Communications launched the initiative in India in February, bringing free Internet to more than 100 million users through an app which connects smartphones to the Web without adding expensive mobile data charges. The app is aimed at connecting India’s billion person population to the Web, especially those living in rural and low income communities.
“Internet.org doesn’t block or throttle any other services or create fast lanes—and it never will,” Zuckerberg continued. “We’re open for all mobile operators and we’re not stopping anyone from joining.”
In a rapid response to Zuckerberg’s post, India’s Save the Internet campaign wrote in the Hindustan Times that Internet.org conflates Facebook, a for-profit company, and the Internet, which is now rapidly becoming essentially a human right.
The open letter called the Internet.org initiative “Zuckerberg's ambitious project to confuse hundreds of millions of emerging market users into thinking that Facebook and the Internet are one and the same.”
