Did you miss the news that Facebook is revolutionising life for 24 million people in Uganda who don’t have internet access?
I wouldn’t be surprised if you did, given that there’s only room for one narrative about the tech giant right now: the reckless purveyor of “fake news” that traps users in an echo chamber, mines their data and sells it on, all while refusing to pay tax.
Oh, and its egotist CEO is far too big for his boots, and considering a run for president.
But mingled with the tax efficiencies and the creepy quest to find out everything about its users, Facebook is doing some real good in the world.
The kind of good that has tangible results, rather than making social justice warriors feel smug about their e-petition. The kind of good, in fact, that NGOs and government aid budgets should have been doing a long time ago.
Take Uganda. On Monday, Facebook announced plans to lay 500 miles of fibre cable in the East African nation by the end of the year. This is a country where only 37.4% percent of the population have internet access and GDP per capita is $1,500 – one of the lowest in the world.
The Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL), an affiliate of the UN, estimates that digitalising the global economy could “yield $4.4 trillion in GDP for the world’s most vulnerable people”. But identifying a problem and fixing it are two very different things.
DIAL has a flashy website with lots of information about why low internet connectivity is a problem – but is it rushing to lay cable in Uganda? It is not.
Can you imagine if it tried? The project would be mired down in committees – internal arguments about where exactly the cable should go and who should supply it would rage until another shiny project was suggested and the cable plan scrapped.
In contrast, Facebook is just… doing it. The company has decided internet connectivity in Uganda is a priority, so by the end of the year, Ugandans will have it.
In 2016, the UN declared internet access to be a human right. That’s a lovely sentiment, but one wonders if maybe doing something to widen internet connectivity might have meant more to the world’s four billion non-internet users than a declaration.
The UK’s Department of International Development is no better. In 2013 it announced it would join the global Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) – another organisation with good intentions but slow results.
What is A4AI actually doing? To quote from its website: “we’ve signed formal memoranda of understanding with the government [in six countries], and have worked with a wide range of in-country stakeholders to build strong national multi-stakeholder coalitions”. Very helpful.
Contrast that to Facebook, which has already made free internet a reality in 21 countries and got 40 million people online. That’s 40 million people in developing countries who didn’t have internet access and now do.
Facebook’s Free Basics collaborates with local mobile networks to offer a package of websites that can be accessed without purchasing mobile data, including Facebook (obviously) but also Wikipedia, Bing Search and weather forecasts. Facebook is also building solar-powered drones to help provide consistent internet access to places where connectivity is poor.
This isn’t a gimmick, it’s a mission, and while rich Westerners can wring their hands over the outsized role one company plays in getting people online, users of Free Basics probably feel differently.
Of course, there have been setbacks. In 2015, Facebook tried Free Basics in India, where nearly two thirds of the population lack internet access.
Fears idea that Facebook might inadvertently become to the gatekeepers to the internet for millions of rural Indians meant the scheme was blocked by regulators last year.
Their concerns about net neutrality may have been genuine, but that will be little of comfort for the 87 million Indians who still can’t get online. The Indian government has its own scheme (along with the world’s most confusing website), which means increasing connectivity in India is now in the hands of the bureaucrats.
Given that India is renowned for having one of the slowest and most inefficient bureaucracies in the world (it takes twelve separate procedures just to start a business), don’t hold out hope of mass online access anytime soon.
So by all means worry about the prospect of President Zuckerberg, and feel free to delete your Facebook account if you don’t like the way it tracks you and only shows news you agree with.
But understand that even the freedom to spurn Facebook is a luxury millions of people don’t have. For them, Facebook is doing far more good than government initiatives and nice speeches at the UN ever have.