this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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Facebook was extremely aggressive in getting their software preloaded on all hardware sold in developing areas over the last 20 years. So countries like India (with one and a half billion people by itself) have a large segment of users that think Facebook is the internet. It's Zucks ultimate walled garden.
3 billion of those people likely access Facebook for everything that we think of as online. Commerce, social networking, music, videos, it's all on Facebook.
Just like how people thought AOL was the Internet 20 years back.
Exactly. We've come full-circle. The likes of AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve were practically eradicated by the open internet, and it's taken 30+ years to get even close to clawing it back into some kind of walled garden. But it looks like they're making progress.
I remember that, about a decade ago, Facebook including free access to their services on cell phones in India; there was concern and pushback about creating this walled garden monopoly, obviously to no avail.
My guess is that is why many memes from India from back then involved screenshots of the older generations using Whatsapp as a sort of social network, the subcontinent's own version of "ok boomer" humor.
The free access to Facebook scheme was killed due to protests, and we now have a net neutrality principle. The workaround FB found was to get smartphone manufacturers to include Facebook as a pre-installed app. And now the government is cracking down on pre-installed apps, so I don't know what they'll do next.
This really hurt to read somehow. I mean you're right, but it's still shit.
Also old people use Facebook a lot here. It was their first social media and they have settled on that. There are some set of people who are switching to Instagram day by day but the rate isn't any threat to Facebook.
This the right answer.