Internet.org
The ethics of research is a minefield.
"There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on."- Mark Zuckerberg
With billions of dollars in personal wealth, not to mention command of the Facebook platform, Zuckerberg has to decide what his legacy will be. He's only in his early 30s, and will unlikely be inclined, or able, to replicate the commercial success of Facebook, but that doesn't mean he is unable to make world-altering changes in other fields. We will talk about his charitable giving in the section titled Philanthropy, but potentially far wider reaching is his Internet.org initiative.
Internet.org is a partnership between Facebook and Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera Software, Qualcomm, and Samsung. It was launched in August 2013, and Zuckerberg issued a 10-page white paper and gave a detailed video interview for TechCrunch, elaborating on the idea.
If you achieve a position of dominance in any given market, you can leverage that position to bring on board partners to help you achieve more than you would be capable of doing alone.
Put simply, Zuckerberg believes that "connectivity is a human right," and that basic web servers should be available worldwide for free. The first Internet. org summit was held in October 2014 in India, where Zuckerberg met with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss the project.
Internet.org provides free internet services through an app called Free Basics. Although on the face of it, it is an admirable initiative with much to recommend, it has its detractors, and their concerns do have some basis.
No idea is without flaws.
Firstly, critics argue that Internet.org violates net neutrality. Facebook is, in essence, an unregulated gatekeeper to the Free Basics platform, deciding which services will and will not be provided on it. Facebook's rivals might well be discriminated against.
To date, more than a dozen countries are offering Free Basics, delivering it through approved mobile network providers. The service was launched in India in October 2015, but Zuckerberg was, perhaps unfairly, accused of targeting India's poor with Facebook proxies. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) banned the service in the country just a year after its launch on the grounds that Free Basics' commercials were misleading, and they had masked the identity of its supporters in a manner nicknamed "astroturfing" (the deceptive practice of presenting an orchestrated marketing or public relations campaign in the guise of unsolicited comments from members of the public).
You need to tread carefully with regulatory bodies, carefully researching their remit, and building relationships with their decision makers.
To date, the Internet.org project has brought an estimated 19 million new Internet users online. Kids are able to do their homework and enhance their education, entrepreneurs are able to establish, expand and market their businesses, and more people are able to learn about keeping healthy, their rights, and the world around them. Any app can be offered on the platform so long as it meets Free Basics' guidelines, granting developers access to vast new markets in the developing world.