 |
| Facebook's free data app prefers its services |
Last year, Facebook launched a program called Discover, based on its Free Basics internet access service.
This software provides users in some countries/regions a daily amount of free data to access any website via mobile networks and Android apps.
Discover simplifies web pages by running web pages through proxy servers. It deletes videos, audio, and some photos.
However, a new document indicates that Discover favors Facebook and Instagram.
Researchers from the University of California, Irvine and the University of the Philippines looked at how the service delivers content from popular websites.
This study was conducted last summer in the Philippines, a country with a high internet use.
The researchers found that Discover demonstrated almost all the capabilities of Facebook and Instagram. Other websites are down or difficult to use.
The post does not work on Instagram, but it does on Facebook. These images appeared on Facebook and Instagram, and most or all of the images were edited from other sites, the researchers wrote. On some websites, these images are used only for advertising purposes.
According to the research paper, Facebook is fully operational, as are Google, the Philippine Department of Education website, the job portal Jobstreet and the World Health Organization website.
Instagram, YouTube, and Yahoo are listed as semi-functional sites. Netflix, Twitter and Roblox not working.
It is not possible to create an account or connect to some websites. Part of this is because Discover often blocks images in CAPTCHA.
Facebook prefers its services:
Facebook said this does not imply endorsement of its services. She attributed it to a technical glitch that I thought had been fixed. She noted that the site's sheer size makes it impossible to verify that each site is correctly represented by Discover.
She added, "There was a proxy error in the Discover app that caused images to load inconsistently on many websites. Images sent by those sites contained HTTP redirects. The technical bug has since been fixed and all works as expected. Create an agent.”
Whether or not Facebook intentionally favors its services, net neutrality advocates have similar questions about Discover, as do those who have suggested the company is using it to increase the number of Facebook and Instagram users in developing countries.
India banned Free Basics in 2016 due to concerns about net neutrality. Shortly after Facebook refused to allow the service for government monitoring, Egypt followed suit.
Free Basics was criticized by organizations in 2017 for not performing well in multilingual countries and for supporting a limited set of sites.
Users cannot access local information and services that are most useful to them.