Facebook’s Free Basics captured data from already-connected users rather than bridging the divide

Evidence

One need only consider Facebook’s Free Basics project. According to its own PR, Facebook is “helping people around the world access impactful local services, including health resources, education and business tools, refugee assistance sites, and more.” But the NGO Global Voices calls the program an instance of “digital colonialism” that, under the guise of bringing “free” internet to underdeveloped countries, locks its fifty million users into the company’s extraction model. The Global Voices report43 looked at the success of the program in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan, and the Philippines and found that Free Basics is not always customized to feature local content or use local languages. Additionally, the program breaks net neutrality principles by preventing users from browsing the internet openly, and, more importantly, it collects data about all the activities of users (restricted as they are), not just those conducted on Facebook. Because most users of Free Basics are people already connected to the internet who merely want to lower their data-plan bills, the report concludes that the program is motivated more by the desire to capture new audiences and less by a desire to help people bridge the digital divide. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 316

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Digital colonialism’ is given concrete empirical content here through the Free Basics case, useful for pinning down the contested definitional scope.
• ADDENDUM: Bears on the extraction logic of platform power; Free Basics is a sharp instance of data extraction wearing a humanitarian mask, complementing infrastructure-themed arguments.
• XREF: connects to: Facebook’s Open Graph program captured user data across third-party platforms — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 114; Apps collect data beyond user control while framing collection as enhanced experience — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 517; Privately controlled data extraction produces social classifications that entrench inequality — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 443 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Apps collect data beyond user control while framing collection as enhanced experience #exemplifies (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 517
• Privacy and data-ownership debates miss why experience becomes behavioral data at all #corroborates (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 731
• Privately controlled data extraction produces social classifications that entrench inequality #complicates (0.72) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 443