Opinion: Internet.org Is About Profit, Not Philanthropy

Internet.org, the Facebook-led effort to bring online access to billions of low-income people in the developing world, is “business dressed up as charity,” according to an opinion article in technology and culture news site The Verge.

Verge co-editor Ben Popper argues that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg engaged in “clever dissembling” in announcing the project this week, couching Internet.org in the language of a nonprofit human-rights campaign to spread connectivity. He says the effort, which also involves some smartphone makers, will serve primarily to expand Facebook’s user base, from which it earns revenue through advertising.

“The idea that Facebook and these other public companies are working to spread the Internet without any thought or promise of eventual profit seems unlikely, to say the least,” Mr. Popper writes. “Facebook has already saturated the industrialized world, so developing countries have created Facebook’s fastest growing source of revenue.”