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Dangerous And Ridiculous: Facebook Won't Let Sites Join Its Internet.org Program If They Encrypt Traffic
from the bad-move dept
Karl touched on this with his recent post on Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg defending his Internet.org and its walled garden of "zero rated" services, but it deserves a separate post. You see, part of Zuckerberg's announcement was that Internet.org was expanding to let in other sites, but there are serious restrictions, and there's a big "sorry, you're not welcome" for sites that use HTTPS to protect the privacy of their users:
To be fair, when confronted on this, Zuckerberg claims this is only a temporary situation, mostly driven by the fact that older handsets/browsers can't handle HTTPS, but frankly that's a weak excuse, given the risks associated with unecncrypted traffic.
You'd hope that the answer to this situation isn't "give them insecure internet" but "let's figure out how to secure things before we expose them to dangers online." Zuckerberg keeps going with the "better than nothing" argument here. To him, the limited, walled gardens are "better than nothing." And an security-disabled internet is "better than nothing." But given the risks, shouldn't he be striving for something better? Real access to the real internet in a way that protects the privacy of these users?
You could raise serious questions about all of these conditions, and the kind of walled garden that Zuckerberg is building, but keeping out HTTPS services at a time when the protection it provides is vitally important seems ridiculous.To qualify, they must meet three criteria:
- they cannot be data-intensive. Videos, high-resolution photos and internet-based voice and video chats are among the banned content
- they must be able to run on cheaper feature phones as well as more powerful smartphones. To ensure this is the case, the use of JavaScript, Flash, the secure HTTPS communications protocol and certain other web-based products are not allowed
- they should encourage the exploration of the broader internet if possible, to encourage users to ultimately pay for access
To be fair, when confronted on this, Zuckerberg claims this is only a temporary situation, mostly driven by the fact that older handsets/browsers can't handle HTTPS, but frankly that's a weak excuse, given the risks associated with unecncrypted traffic.
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Talk about hypocrites. Facebook itself uses the https protocol and they refuse to allow sites to join internet.org if THEY use it too? LOLS
Got something for Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook:
http://s12.postimg.org/hg9kwizbh/image.jpg
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I'd call Z a shithead
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New->OLD
1. Can't use broadband applications.
2. Can't use secure transmission
3. Pushes users to paid services.
Inspiration! He should name it AOL.
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Quite convenient, no? Let sites themselves use their own encryption so they can be SAFE FROM FACEBOOK as well.
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These aren't college kids in Missouri with MacBooks and fibre, this is deep Africa and an old Nokia.
The needs of the customers of Internet.org are not the needs of us, and it is an error to see them like that. It's a kind of cultural myopia.
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M-Pesa is the #1 app in many parts of Africa.
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Oh and it's used by any Android variant from version 2.1 upwards. Also it's been ported to Symbian as well.
Who made it you might ask? Well FACEBOOK themselves did.
How big is it? --- under 300 Kilobytes!
So this bullshit about not able to do SSl, Streaming, or data intense stuff is total BULLSHIT and is another reason why everyone needs to avoid internet.org like the plague and go with other things that are not reliant on a company with major ulterior motives.
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Zuckerberg's explanation is shaky at best. The more likely explanation is that they want to be able to examine all traffic to extract data they can monetize.
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An encrypted layer can be built on top of this
Those messages are encrypted blocks. The other end that you connect to has to understand them.
So that other end could be some sort of relay or gateway to the free internet and that gateway would be located in the free world (if there still is such a thing).
On your local end you would have a proxy that your browser connects to. That proxy encrypts traffic and pipes it back and forth between a gateway or gateways in the free world. In fact, the more gateways the better.
Perhaps the next anarchy protocol needs to support 'streams' where every packet of the stream can come from a different IP address. Think like a TCP stream, but each packet of the stream might come from a different TOR exit point. At the receiving end the 'anarchy protocol' support (think the TCP reassembly of packets into a stream) would reassemble packets from diverse IP addresses into the stream from which it started at the other end. This would not only allow encryption, but would significantly hinder traffic analysis. When sending, every packet of an outgoing stream would take a different route and might even go to a different TOR entry point.
Censorship and Spying are damage which will be routed around.
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Think about it...
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My assumption would be yes he is a hypocrite as sees himself as above the little people that helped make him worth so much
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Internet.org irrelevant
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Of course not
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But isn't it Facebook's own business
Like it - use it. Don't like - don't use.
To the point - Facebook's argument is "this is better than nothing". I fail to see counter-argument here. Does Mike think that in fact, this is worst than nothing? Why? Because Facebook may profit?
All this "abuse their power" BS is funny. Last time I checked, Facebook is just a website. It's not "Umbrella Corp.", you know. They don't have private army or black helicopters.
It's just a website. Get real.
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Re: But isn't it Facebook's own business
It's bad for the internet because it harms the effort to achieve net neutrality in a particularly pernicious way. It's also deceptive because it claims to be providing internet access when really it's just providing access to a limited set of websites. This is teaching the target audience all the wrong things and makes some of the worst abuses of big internet companies (like Facebook) seem normal and acceptable.
"Facebook's argument is "this is better than nothing". I fail to see counter-argument here."
The counter-argument is simple: that's a false dichotomy. The choice isn't between Facebook's approach or nothing.
"Last time I checked, Facebook is just a website."
You should check again. Facebook is a LOT more than just a website.
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Re: Re: But isn't it Facebook's own business
Facebook is private enterprise. That's up to _them_ what kind of choice to present to their users.
>> You should check again. Facebook is a LOT more than just a website.
You need a reality check. It _IS_ a website. Oh, you probably mean "it collaborate with another _websites_ to collect " - ... and it is still a website. All Facebook can do is to show me this or another ad. Everything else is your fantasies.
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Stupidos
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HTTP to HTPS
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