Zuckerberg: Good Intentions or Self-Publicity?

It’s great that Mark Zuckerberg – the young multibillionaire and founder of Facebook – declares that the internet is “a human right” and wants to contribute to its availability, so that every citizen on the planet can have access to it. After all, it is this universal availability that digital freedom activists have been advocating all along. In the 21st century, the literacy problem is very much related to the digital divide of those who do and do not have access to the internet. However, be careful not to let yourself be confused by a clever advertising campaign.

The same debate always flares up concerning the Internet. “What is the internet about?” asks, among many, lawyer Marco Ciurcina, fellow of the Nexa Centre for Internet and Society. Is the internet something that allows free communication at neutral to very low cost around the globe, or something that is controlled by private companies, which at the request of governments give, or even sell, personal data without respecting the rights of users? “The right to the internet is the right to a system of communication, which Facebook has nothing to do with,” Ciurcina commented. Facebook has never clearly denied having given the NSA access to the data of its users and, therefore, to have participated in the ‘Datagate’ scandal. Thus Facebook has earned a poor reputation which is cannot be obliterated by such beautiful words as “human rights” and “global access”.

To have the trust of its users, present and future, we need a more transparent, verifiable commitment to the protection of data and ‘net neutrality,’ or the principle that all data on the Internet should be treated as equal. Currently, about one in seven people in the world use Facebook, which earns money mainly from advertising revenues. It is evident that its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg sees an opportunity in broadening access to almost 5 billion people who are not on Facebook by founding the initiative Internet.org with six other multinationals. Note the absence in the project of giant competitors like Google and Twitter, which carry out other more or less philanthropic initiatives of their own, in order to grow in the world. Business is business, and the growth opportunity in continents such as Asia, Africa and Latin America is obviously enormous.

29 year-old Zuckerberg, serving as head of the international coalition with the Internet.org initiative, seems to want to take the place in the tech world once held by Bill Gates, former head of Microsoft. For now, Internet.org has simply announced that it will improve and simplify applications, components and networks so that they transmit more data and consume less battery power. As if anticipated, in a cover interview for ‘Business Week,’ Gates (who supports philanthropic missions with his foundation) declared that it is not with the internet that one will combat illnesses in poor countries. Instead of new initiatives, it would have more of an impact if giants like Facebook adhered to existing ones. For decades there have been organizations which promote global internet access, such as Isoc.org: “They do a lot, as well as being the organization that in a certain sense has control of the Internet, since it has the copyright of standard,” commented Stefano Quintarelli, an internet pioneer in Italy. In summary, we should applaud Internet.org for declaring the good intentions of some Western multinationals, while reminding us about who they are.