Free Basics is not Free

For the past few days, my notifications on Facebook are flooding with the fact that my friends have voiced their support for Free Basics. The way Free Basics is being advertised for the past few weeks, it seems like it’s the ultimate solution to the poverty and illiteracy problem faced in India! Overwhelmed by these notifications, I have had the urge to be a part of this patriotic spirit more than once, but my stubborn nature has prevented me from following the trend. Thank God!

The reason I am relieved is that I recently realized that Free Basics is nothing but a scam organized by none other than Facebook and it is conning people into believing that they are doing this to support Net Neutrality when actually they are doing the exact opposite! It took me a while to really understand how dire the situation is (and I’ve provided links of a couple of videos that explain this scam really well). I’ve also tried to explain it here:

• What’s the difference between Net Neutrality and the principle behind Free Basics as claimed by Facebook? Facebook says that EVERYONE should be able to access the Internet. True. Access to knowledge (which in today’s world is equivalent to the internet) is a basic human right. Net Neutrality on the other hand means that EVERYONE should be able to access EVERYTHING on the internet. That one word changes everything! In order to achieve Net Neutrality, all content on the internet must be treated as EQUAL and they should be accessible at EQUAL speed.
• Right now, Free Basics is an ad-free zone but this doesn’t ensure that it will remain an ad-free zone in future. Personally, for the sake of my nation, I wouldn’t mind watching a couple of advertisements, provided that the revenue collected from these ads is used to provide the free basic internet to masses. But that’s not going to be the case. What’s going to happen is that everyone will be provided with very basic internet facility (a collection of apps and websites handpicked by our TSP) free of cost. But whenever we’ll need to use apps and websites outside the available limited choices, we’ll have to pay extra money.
• Fledgling businesses and start-ups will suffer tremendously because they won’t have the financial capital needed to partner with TSPs and hence will never see the daylight. Ironically, Facebook itself started small and then became the Giant that it is today. If the current situation would have taken place before February 2004, then Facebook would have born and died without even creating the slightest stir in society! Even though Internet.org is open for third party developers to develop their services on the given platform, they have to adhere to Facebook’s rules and face major restrictions. Facebook isn’t trying to protect your rights; it’s only eliminating the competition and making sure that there’ll be no other such contender in the future, ever.
• In some cases our telecommunication service providers might partner up with certain services and make that free and available for us. Hypothetically, say your TSP has a pact with some hypothetical news website named The News. Hence its website will be available to you for free and will also load at a much faster speed. On the other hand, other news website, say Times of India, will load at snail slow pace and that too after we have specifically purchased the respective package. Over time we’ll always settle for the free and faster deals. Thus TSPs get to play God and any company or brand which doesn’t partner with it will eventually fade out.
• The Telecommunication Service Providers want to slice the services available on the internet into various packages and charge money to the customers as and when we use a package. So for example if the email facility is available in the basic package then nobody needs to pay extra money to use it. But suppose you want to use YouTube and that is not in the basic package, in that case customer has to pay extra. After that suppose you want to access Amazon which is in a different package altogether, customer has to purchase that package separately. Is it fair? It’s the digitization of television all over again; only worse because the Internet is the last frontier where everyone is equal!

 

If you too have been fooled into supporting Free Basics, well that can’t be undone. What you can do is visit SaveTheInternet.in and email TRAI, the deadline being 30^th December, 2015. Go through the email that you are sending (It’s long but not too long) if you want to make an informed decision. You can also check out their blog if you need more information on this. Be a responsible citizen and fight for your right: all you have to do is send an email to TRAI. Spectrum is a public utility and telecom operators should not be allowed use it to advance their business interests. As consumer, only we should have the right to decide which service or product we’ll use, not the TSPs. Please share this information and make sure that you email TRAI.

5 Bisexuality Myths BUSTED!

It’s been a long time since I posted on my blog; like more than two months! Had been caught up in final year college projects (still working on them), and then some sweet family drama followed by some more exam drama. Planned to attend the Pride March but couldn’t because it was BAM right in the center of the exam window! Suddenly woke up to the realization that my baby will be turning 1 today and yet it had been dormant for the past two and half months. So I’m back for good!

  

Today I want to write about the top 5 things that some bisexuals are simply bored of hearing. Here’s hoping that next time some fellow ignorant person opens their ignorant mouth to shoot an uninformed opinion at one of us, we can direct them here so that they realize that their thinking is very mainstream and nothing out of the box and so that they can educate themselves without our intervention:

1. Bisexual? That’s not even real! Most people can’t the digest the idea of sexuality where an individual is attracted to more than one gender. Often homosexual people claim to be bisexual when they are still unsure about their orientation. Sometimes when coming out gets real nasty, being bisexual is more palatable to the audience than downright homosexuality. That probably is the reason for the general opinion that bisexuality is just a phase. This however does not mean that being bisexual is only an intermediate step. For lots of people being bisexual is the ultimate concrete reality, it's a part of our identity.
2. Bisexuals are just confused… Most uninformed people truly believe that a person identifying as bisexual is just undecided about who they want to be with, whereas the truth is that, for us the gender isn’t just that big a deal! Some women only date men who are clean shaven; some women go only for the ragged beard look; whereas for some other women, facial hair isn’t a factor at all even though they might or might not have some preference. Some men always date younger girls; some men go only for the older women; whereas for some other men age isn’t a constraint at all. Similarly some people only date people from their own gender; some people only date people from the opposite gender; whereas for bisexuals...
3. Bisexuals are Cheaters and Poly-amorous. Cheaters are cheaters. Period! Alex can cheat on Ben with Chad. Alan can cheat on Betty with Carrie. Betty can cheat on Alan with Carrie. Betty can also cheat on Alan with Charles. Alice can cheat on Bob with Alan. Anybody can cheat, but that’s not because of their sexuality but because of their lack of loyalty. Same goes for poly-amorous. Note though: the most common form of poly-amorous behavior is polygamy. Going by that logic, straight (heterosexual) men should be considered the most poly-amorous of them all (even though it’s not true).
4. All women are bisexuals. That’s just plain wrong. Indeed a lot of women are extremely comfortable around other women. Some of them are even willing to test the waters to determine their sexuality. But that does not mean that all women are bisexual. Hell life would be so convenient and easy if every woman was bisexual! But I feel that it’s the most unfounded assumption ever!
5. Bisexuals Love Threesomes. It’s simply another one of those unfounded generalized assumptions. Yes, bisexuals love sex with men; they also love sex with women; but that doesn’t under any circumstance imply that they will definitely love a threesome. Let’s consider Arya. Arya loves to eat sushi. Arya also loves to eat biriyani. But Arya might or might not want to eat biriyani and sushi together! Some people, irrespective of their sexuality, believe that sex should happen between two people only.

I either cleared a few doubts or created more confusion, probably the latter! Bottom-line is that bisexuals are real people with real feelings and although you are free to judge them, they are not really under any kind of obligation to prove anything to you or to reflect your idea of what an ideal person should be like. If you agree with my point of view, hit a like, or a +1, or drop a comment or just share it with people who could help a nice doubt clearing session.