Subject: [gaia] Free Basics in USA

From: Richard Dent <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Oct 2016 16:44:53 +0100

Free Basics may launch in the USA. This has regenerated the inevitable 
tyranny of the 'walled garden" debate with Susan Crawford from Harvard 
weighing in. Gizmodo sensationalising as usual 
<http://gizmodo.com/facebooks-sneaky-plan-to-rule-over-americas-internet-is-1787492534?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow>. 

I've always wondered about a good counter-argument to Crawford.

Captain Jack, from the comments section of above article. offers this:

"Many years ago, poor people down on their luck could rent tiny little 
rooms that were practically the size of a closet, some, to meet fire 
codes didn’t even have walls that went all the way to the ceilings. They 
called these places Cage hotels. They were viewed as horrible and 
treating the poor as 2nd class citizens.

Cage Hotels were banned. Now those that could have afforded a small 
closet sized room, and would have paid for it, are now crashing in 
homeless shelters with worse living conditions, because closing down 
cage hotels was the “moral” thing to do.

Of course those homeless shelters want to curb any issues with cramming 
people into their shelters, so they forbid anyone that is intoxicated 
from staying the night, and they also boot everyone out every morning, 
so they can clean.

This leads the people that want a permanent place for their possessions, 
or those with substance abuse problems to instead live in tents under 
overpasses. Because it is the “Moral” thing to do.

What does this have to do with Free internet for the poor? Sure 
Facebook’s plan benefits Facebook. But it also benefits the poor. Some 
internet, is better than no internet. So people can get on their moral 
high horse all they want, but if they are actively making it so the poor 
can’t get the access to the services they need in the name of 
“morality”they are just making things worse for the poor people they 
claim to be protecting.

Sometimes the poor don’t want to be protected from cheap and free stuff.

If you want to protect the poor, protect them from all those sketchy 
pre-paid phone services that sell “minutes” at the checkstand. I saw one 
the other day for 120 minutes of airtime for $30! All because the 
customers are too poor to afford a competing service that requires 
paying with credit card instead of cash. But a company that is offering 
free service in exchange for a little advertising. Stop protecting the 
people, they don’t want protecting."

-- 
PhD Researcher, Department of Sociology
Affliated researcher, Networking for Development Lab
CSAP network member
University of Cambridge

http://www.richardjdent.com
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as2330/n4d
http://www.csap.cam.ac.uk/network/richard-dent/
@richarddent
Tel: 07827 537537