Not just that. Here in Greece, a decade ago at least, Facebook had a separate url (I think 0.facebook.com, instead of www.) which you could connect to even without having paid anything for mobile internet, completely free.
Facebook had a deal with our national provider to keep that connection free, for the cheapest, student-targeting plans specifically.
Many students, very often of junior high age, that had their own phones (not even necessarily smart phones), even when they didn’t have money for data, they were using Facebook. And only Facebook. Children growing up confusing “the internet” with Facebook, and being on it for loooong hours, even before we all got immersed in our phones 24/7
I bet they’re doing something similar, making Facebook dirt cheap or free, to get poor nations hooked.
I don’t think you’re totally wrong but I know that WhatsApp, and Instagram to a lesser degree, are the primary means of communication for a massive number of people worldwide. I agree that it’s a problem for one organization to have that much of a critical mass insofar as being able to communicate with your friends and family effectively, but at the same time it’s not really feasible to try to uproot all of your loved ones and mass migrate to another service.
Well, they can access the Internet to get to Meta, they just don’t do much beyond that.
It’s like the old AOL days, if you can get to AOL, you can do more than JUST AOL.
Not just that. Here in Greece, a decade ago at least, Facebook had a separate url (I think 0.facebook.com, instead of www.) which you could connect to even without having paid anything for mobile internet, completely free.
Facebook had a deal with our national provider to keep that connection free, for the cheapest, student-targeting plans specifically.
Many students, very often of junior high age, that had their own phones (not even necessarily smart phones), even when they didn’t have money for data, they were using Facebook. And only Facebook. Children growing up confusing “the internet” with Facebook, and being on it for loooong hours, even before we all got immersed in our phones 24/7
I bet they’re doing something similar, making Facebook dirt cheap or free, to get poor nations hooked.
I don’t think you’re totally wrong but I know that WhatsApp, and Instagram to a lesser degree, are the primary means of communication for a massive number of people worldwide. I agree that it’s a problem for one organization to have that much of a critical mass insofar as being able to communicate with your friends and family effectively, but at the same time it’s not really feasible to try to uproot all of your loved ones and mass migrate to another service.