Things get even worse when you look at the actual offers. The telcos only whitelist the specific URLs for FB and YT, so on FB those users can only read the headlines, they cant access any link they click. That’s only possible with paid data.
It’s a populist’s and demagogue’s dream.
:/
The world that we have created is crazy.
It's crazy to realize that this beautiful new thing, the www: the information highway, access to knowledge for everyone, became the most powerful dumbing tool in less than 25 years since its creation.
I guess you dont necessarily mean to say this because of Telco's filtering content, or only whitelisting some content and services. In countries where filtering is not allowed and happening, I see a growing group of people who just believe whatever a group of people are shouting about, ie Fake news become Reality very quickly. This shows how stupid people are in fact. How little the mass question what they get served. That is what worries me the most. We want to be free and at the same time we simply follow those who shouts the loudest without questioning.
Anything I publish online I mean to say and want to express.
The internet was an amazing thing and well-meant and has been hijacked from us for malicious manipulation. Irrelevant whether by state operators, marketing crews, or tinfoil hats.
I fully stand behind that statement and I will fight until I die for everyone to understand how algos manipulate. This is a general issue not a country specific problem. The Netherlands get as dumbed down by FB as they got by Veronica TV.
Fact.
Agree! Nice touch the reference with Veronica TV. Fact is: This is what the mass wants, since without the mass going for Veronica TV, all the shit shows now on TV, or mass adoption of FB, there would be no Veronica TV, shit shows, or FB. Therefore one can argue the case: Because of the mass wanting to be stupid, we have all these services; Not the other way around. Thats how I look at things. I meant to say: people want to be manipulated therefore we have services that manipulates people. Therefor we may need to blame people instead of the services itself :)
I can imagine the Telco's act like this for money reasons, ie they filter traffic in order for companies like Facebook to be whitelisted when they pay money to be whitelisted. Other, smaller companies dont have the money to pay for such, therefore they keep blacklisted. I remember back in the days when I was in the Telco industry the paid internet access was under discussion in ALL countries in the world; All Telco's including Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile etc etc wanted to be able to charge for internet services bundles, ie Social Media bundle, Banking bundle etc etc. Many western countries created rules against internet filtering, therefore we dont see those offerings in eg Europe. But a rich country like Dubai, has the filtering offering. They even filter all the chat apps like WhatsApp. The only way to use VoIP and data chat app, is by paying for the incumbent VoIP/chat app of the Telco operators. In Dubai this is all about money/revenues for the Telco and much less to do with controlling information flows and public. I have the feeling (I dont have proof) this is the same for many other countries minus a few.
Plenty of bandwidth here, that's not the issue. Quite some of the available bandwidth also coming from FB undersea cables project.
The main issue: only two telcos so no competition. They're BFFs instead and rather than a race to the bottom they maintain a healthy baseline. Also, the local telco oversight commission is populated for a majority of ex-telco directors.
Additionally, like any third world or development nation this is a dual SIM phones country.
Promos... Free FB/YT defines the network the poor buy SMS credits for. Which defines with whom they KYC (old school ID verification) for mobile money transfers (only Kenya transfers more money via mobile). Which defines the network almost the whole family prefers.
Free FB/YT are loyalty strategies for when those people eventually can get a postpaid plan. Which happens a lot nowadays since we are a development nation, actually even were a tiger economy until after some years of Duterte.
Lastly, Philippines always were one of the leading social media countries. Pioneers preceded only by Nigerian users in early adoption numbers.
yea, seen all this as well. that makes me to conclude its more a money thing then to withhold public from information. in Nigeria many run around with 3 to 4 mobiles. they use whatever is the cheapest at time of day, day of week, or even location. even in Netherland we've seen price agreements between telco's years ago, eg with SMS service, like in many other countries, the prices where kept really high between all the telco's, it was for them a goldmine... though a goldmine they needed to keep since profits on voice calling was already negative for a long long time.
Here it's pure money strategy.
When more than half a decade ago Vodafone, as foreign company, was given authorization to assess the market and a small size telco (critical utility) four days later that telco was acquired by the largest local operator. You don't get on their turf, you may cost them money. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The data filtering happens on FB's end, but of course can be nudged to filter some gov opponents out by showing gov agencies and "spokes people" more. FB is much closer to any Administration than any private entity should be (read link I dropped in reply to Romanian commenter).
Government and private companies shall not be closest at all, I think a big wall needs to be in between. But we allow unlimited growth of companies, therefore we allow companies to at least influence government, and even worse, drive regulations and laws. I'm a big opponent of free growth to be honest. Free market is fine up to a certain limit. Last decade we see what free market can do.
Certainly FB is close to governments, I do agree. Especially with government where FB wants to gain market share and where they can win a lot, like in countries where they offer free internet. None of this will happen when government won't allow this, so deals are made. FB is not its own though. They whole media is kinda controlled by others, than the media channel owners and managers. This could be advertisers, this could be homeland security, this could be any stakeholder. I'm subscribed to a advertisement free journalist platform paying 60 Euro/yr, mostly to support them since I dont use the service too much. When they launched, they grown a lot in a very short time, but since the initial rapid growth hardly any subscriber uptake. They stuck at around 60k users in NL. I guess a mini minority wants to 1) pay for news 2) news independent from the forces of those who pay for the news, advertisers. The rest wants all for free, but this goes with a huge cost, namely news and information filtering by default. We all know the later; But we dont want to change the system. In NL we could, we could en mass subscribe to De Correspondent (they have an English version also, The Correspondent), and stop buying the trash newspapers and stop watching the sh*t sponsored news shows, and move away from FB; But by far the majority doesn't change although they know what this means for them.
Tbh De Correspondent are tech luddites. :D
Which is surprising given that one of their founders was also a co-founder of The Next Web.
Really? You think they are luddites? Thats not my impression at all. I follow mostly Rob Wijnberg and read a few of his books. Very phylosophical this guy as well as someone who does want to bring news objectively, with a 360 degree and doesnt like soundbites and influencers on what news to bring, like advertisers. I actually think some of the journalists doing a great job talking about tech and impact it has and can have: good and bad.
That is also why the Philippines has the most number of subscribers in VPN apps, free uncapped data offers or even unauthorized tunneling. It's a total fcked up when it comes to internet access but I hope DITO or NOW, the third telco will rearrange and solve these issues.