Mark Zuckerberg Changes His Profile Pic. But I Won’t #NetNeutrality

Mark Zuckerberg has changed his profile pic in the support of government’s Digital India’ initiative.

I changed my profile picture to support Digital India, the Indian government’s effort to connect rural communities to the internet and give people access to more services online. Looking forward to discussing this with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Facebook today [Mark Zuckerberg]

For Facebook, India is an extremely important market – not just in terms of size, but also revenue. But then that’s not the reason why Mark is changing his profile pic.

It is for Facebook’s Internet.org initiative, which is anti net neutrality and will potentially kill the Internet freedom in the country.

Facebook’s Definition of Digital India, Internet.org And Net Neutrality

For those living under the rock, here is a quick primer on Facebook’s Internet.org initiative.

The internet.org is a partnership between Facebook and other technology leaders to provide basic Internet access for health, education, communication, jobs and local information purposes at absolutely no cost.

Though this sounds great, it also gives Facebook control over what you (the consumer) sees and browse, which gives an unfair advantage to participating services.

There is very little social focused agenda, as is clearly seen from this ad.

This not just kills innovation, but will build a walled garden approach to the Internet – which is worrying.

Facebook Is Desperate About Internet.org

Facebook wants to *own* the Internet through Internet.org initiative. Take a look at how they have been conducting polls  – you either like ‘Internet.org’ or you ‘like later’.

There is no option to say ‘No’.

For Facebook, supporting ‘Digital India’ directly translates to marketing of Internet.org in the country. This ain’t any novel initiative – a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

So think twice before changing your profile pic – it amounts to supporting Facebook’s initiatives and in the process, stiffling innovation in the country and nothing else.

UPDATE :

For Facebook, this is business as usual. Nothing less / nothing more.