India's Prime Minister and Facebook CEO at Facebook HQ, November 2015. Wikicommons/ Narendra Modi. Some rights reserved.India’s decision to uphold the principle of net neutrality and outlaw Facebook’s Free Basics service, suffused with symbolism and irony, has highlighted the emerging digital empires and features of neocolonialism.
“Free Basics” are two words that are unpacked differently by different sections. The critics point out that these do not mean what the FB wants these to mean. To put simply, this controversial service offers free data usage but only to the websites prescribed by this social networking site.
The two most seductive words “free” and “basics” failed to work their magic in India despite Facebook’s massive advertising campaign. India’s telecom regulators ruled that such a service violates the principle of net neutrality and disallowed any discriminatory pricing for accessing data. So the Free Basics service was wound up and India’s poor, in whose name Facebook had campaigned, did not protest.
