Facebook Faces 'Digital Colonialism' Issue
Since Marc Andreessen's highly controversial "anti-colonialism" tweet, the Facebook board member created a firestorm that attracted a barrage of criticism. He intended to criticize recent Indian government's decision to ban the social network's Free Basics program for violating net neutrality.
Free Basics was supposedly launched to democratize access to internet by giving lightweight mobile data connection to 5 billion people who lacked internet access. But his controversial tweet only aggravated Facebook's legal challenges in India and elsewhere in the world.
"Does he really think this way? Does he really believe that colonialism is a good thing for a lot of countries in the emerging markets? Or did he just say that as a comment that was uninformed and off the cuff on Twitter?" asked Microsoft strategy director Mukund Mohan as quoted saying by NPR.
Analysts point out that Facebook may need to do more on establishing ties with the leadership establishment in countries where it wants to do business or at least rethink its current global strategy.
"Facebook is in the early stage of a global maturity curve that others such as Microsoft, Google have gone through. [One lesson] is to have a strong, empowered country leadership that understands and connects to government officials, bureaucrats if not political leaders. Facebook has failed miserably there, and can't afford to do that again," remarked tech analyst Prasanto K. Roy as mentioned in a report by The Washington Post.
In another development, Facebook just pledged to amend its "real-name" policy amid complaints raised by several advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation accusing the social media giant of being insensitive to its users' unique circumstances.
"We are working on several improvements, with two goals in mind: First, we want to reduce the number of people who are asked to verify their name on Facebook, when they are already using the name people know them by. Second, we want to make it easier for people to confirm their name if necessary," wrote Facebook's VIP of growth Alex Schultz in an open letter as stated in news article by the Washington Times.
