‘Our aim is to get the majority on the Internet’

From being just a platform to network, Facebook is breaking out into new areas with initiatives such as free basic services and the newly launched rural Internet access project ‘Express Wi-Fi’. At the centre of this shift is founder Mark Zuckerberg’s mission to enable Internet access in the remotest corners of the world. India, with the second largest number of Facebook users, is not just a key market but also an important test bed for the company to launch new initiatives.

On Sunday, Zuckerberg hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the company’s headquarters for a town hall with Facebooks’ employees and their families.

On the sidelines of this event, BusinessLine met Zuckerberg as part of a select media round table, where he talked about a range of issues including philanthropy, cyber security and network neutrality. Excerpts:

There is raging debate going on, globally and in India, about net neutrality. On one hand Facebook has been supporting net neutrality; on the other it faces criticism of violating the same through projects like free basic services. What should the Indian Government do, in terms of policy, to get this right?

A number of countries are going through the process of putting in place regulations around net neutrality. The US regulator did just that, and did a pretty good job. They have put in place good regulations but have also made it clear that business models that spread connectivity, such as free basic services, are completely different.

In India, there is a big debate on how you balance these things. This is incredibly important because India has the most number of unconnected people. We believe in net neutrality strongly.

If someone wants to get access to a service and the operator charges more money to do so, then it isn’t fair. At the same time, if you have a student in a classroom getting access to information for free, it is hard to see why this is an issue.

We need have a regulatory framework that ensures net neutrality and at the same time the ability to build on new models for access. Say an apple is sold to men at $3 and to women at $1, then it’s not good.

At the same time, no law says that if you want to take your apple and give it to a food bank, it is wrong. We need to get the debate right. India has the most number of unconnected people and the world will benefit the most by connecting those people.

How is this debate over net neutrality affecting the way you plan and think about future products?

Yes it affects us. Let’s say we roll out free basic services everywhere in the world and are successful, but something goes wrong in India; we don’t get the debate right and the balance is not struck correctly. This will hold the whole world back. We have this great example of the Indian mathematician Srinivas Ramanujan who had just one math text book. What if he had access to the Internet? What if there are other Ramanujans out there who still do not have the Internet. It’s important to get this right.

There is criticism that Facebook is trying to be everything as it gets bigger. How do you respond to this?

We are still very small compared to the impact we aspire to have on the world. When we built Facebook, we used to say that someone would do something similar and take it to the world. We did not think that we ourselves would be the ones. There were companies like Google and Microsoft, and we were just college students.

But now when we look back, we realise that we did it because we thought about connecting people. The other companies had the opportunity, but did not venture into social media. . The next frontier is to get majority of the people on the Internet.

There is a feeling within governments that companies like Facebook do not respond fast enough when asked to take down content that could incite social unrest. Is this true?

We don’t want terrorist content on Facebook. We invest a lot in building tools that help people report such content. There’s too much content for us to police ourselves. We also work with the law enforcement to respond to such things.

Facebook is going on devices and locations where traditional Internet is yet to reach. Do you see yourself as a parallel Internet?

Not at all. We want to spread connectivity. In order to do so, we are doing things such as Internet.org. We are working on new technologies like solar power unmanned aircraft, satellites and new business models. We have rolled out free basic services in 20 countries, including India, with Reliance. Our hope is to roll it out wider. Beyond that, we are working on making Facebook a good experience on different networks. Not everyone has 4G or even 3G access. So we have launched Facebook Lite, which consumes less data.

The reality is that most companies building Internet services are reaching 1.5 billion people, while we are trying to push beyond that. If you are building for a few hundred million people, you can do that by using mainstream technology. But if you have to push boundaries to be able to reach the fringes, you have to invent in something like solar powered planes.

Are you making investments on the personal front, as part of philanthropy in India, to further the cause of Internet to all?

Absolutely. I have been fortunate to create wealth through Facebook and realise that it is my responsibility to give back to the society. I have travelled across villages in India, and you will hear about some of these initiatives soon.

(The writer is in Menlo Park at the invitation of Facebook)

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