Freedom of Speech and prevention of a “walled garden” have been one of the prime arguments for network neutrality since the inception of the contest. Expanding on this argument, a side note to also be taken into consideration is the information manipulation which has come to be highlighted since the election of Donald Trump, where the particulars of the information “allowed” to be brought in front of you “help” you to make “your” decision accordingly.

Facebook can be an excellent example to help understand this argument for two reasons. Firstly, it came up with the extremely controversial (but still operational in some countries) FREE BASICS programme. Secondly, it is without a doubt one of the, if not THE most accessible websites on the internet (Google may be the only serious rival, but since Google in my opinion can today be considered a full fledged platform integrated over multiple websites as well as the Android OS rather than just the regular Google website, we’ll stay out of this debate for now and keep it simple.)

Facebook has of course been facing flak in the U.S. over its alleged contribution to last years presidential election, but what it actually more of a worry is the abuse of it’s service in communities outside the U.S., particularly Asia. We’ve partially discussed such issues before on this Blog (see here and here), but the latest example is that of Myanmar, where the rise of Anti-Rohingya sentiment seems to have coincided with a huge boom in the use of social media, a large chunk of which is attributable to Facebook itself. Why ?? Because in 2016, Facebook partnered with MPT, the State run telecom company, to give users access to its Free Basics Programme.

This is not to insinuate that Facebook is directly attempting to control the world and actively working with state regimes to incite hatred against minorities and in all fairness, the issue is excruciatingly complicated, but since Facebook dominates the Social Media space (along with Instagram and WhatsApp), the potential for abuse of its Free Basics programme becomes all the more potent. To quote from a recent article:

“Facebook is not directly responsible for violent conflict, of course, and viral
misinformation is hardly unique to its services. Before social media, there were email hoaxes and urban legends passed from person to person. But the speed of
Facebook’s growth in the developing world has made it an especially potent force
among first-time internet users, who may not be appropriately skeptical of what they see online.”