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That businessman/reality TV star who just won the New Hampshire primary is far from the only famous person addicted to sharing his current thoughts and mood on Twitter. When you do that, you're bound to eventually make a mistake that has consequences. This time it was Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist and co-founder of Netscape (and lead developer for the Mosaic Web browser before that), who got busted for tweeting a thought that shouldn't have left the hotel bar:
Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for the Indian people for decades. Why stop now?
Indians complained; evidently they've grown accustomed to having their own country. It was noticed that Andreessen sits on the board of Facebook, which has been unsuccessfully trying to peddle free Internet service (featuring Facebook, of course) to India for awhile. Oops. Mark Zuckerberg wasn't pleased.
Andreessen, a master of the multi-part tweet, quickly backpedaled. And the original tweet was deleted.
takyon: The Register's Andrew Orlowski has a partial defense of Andreessen's comments that you may find illuminating and/or entertaining.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 11 2016, @05:25PM
From The Register article:
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 11 2016, @05:27PM
The subtlety of Andreessen’s argument was lost on Twitter, which rarely needs a reason to be offended – when it wants to be offended. And logic can’t get in the way of a righteously indignant Twitterati. Because Andreessen had said anti-colonialist policies had been bad, he must think colonialism was fine and dandy. Right? Well, no.. but Andreessen rapidly retreated, vowing never to touch the subject again.
Ah, thanks. The Register beat me to it.
I should start reading these articles sometime...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 11 2016, @05:38PM
Reportedly Andressen's response to The Register article: "Oh, er, yeah, that's totally what I meant. That whole macroeconomic policy-thing he mentioned."
(Score: 2) by jcross on Thursday February 11 2016, @05:41PM
I think he's probably right by some standard of good and bad. Do we take it as an article of faith that rapid economic growth is good? If it is good, is it equally good for everyone? I think it's way too soon to say whether India's policy decision will be good for the citizens or not. For instance, allowing free Facebook could come at the expense of a future Indian rival that would serve the population better and keep more money in-country. What we can say is that the policy is clearly not good for him. Either way, linking Facebook with colonialism is stupid regardless of the subtlety of his point, because it's just too close to being true on a number of levels.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Thursday February 11 2016, @06:17PM
Having reread the article, I would say that MA has a point. The internet *may* be a lesser need for those of us with clean water, secure housing and western infrastructure.
But for rural indians in the poorest areas, surely it cannot be a bad thing to give access to medical, farming, maintenance, engineer and other crucial life improvement knowledge?
The fact that FB wants to promote their service - that's a bit scummy, but its what $CORPS do. But to declare it colonialism is the Goodwin of India's politics...
My INR 2....
(Score: 2) by jcross on Thursday February 11 2016, @06:36PM
I agree that it's not the same scale as true colonialism (a micro-colonialism, perhaps :P), but it does amount to sending money (or eyeballs traded for money or whatever) out of the country. India has a history of protectionism, but there are ways that it's been good for them. Imagine a thought experiment where the USA and India each entirely closed their borders. Which would be better off? I think what India has that we in the US don't is resilient and comprehensive local economies on all scales from micro to macro. The US is more brittle than many people realize or want to admit. I'm not saying India is perfect in any sense, just that their policies make different tradeoffs, and do carry some advantages.
And come on, how the hell does MA or any American have standing to criticize foreign governments for being "anti-citizen"? Indians still have a fair bit of Gandhiji in their political DNA. The closest analogy I can think of is if Americans had elected MLK president or something and actually took his thoughts on class seriously before shooting him and naming a holiday and some roads after him. If he were as widely revered a hero as George Washington, then we'd be talking.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Thursday February 11 2016, @07:23PM
perhaps we have entered an age of corporate colonialism. I mean Google, Apple, Amazon, FB etc....they are trying to be "life brands" to sell their stuff.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday February 11 2016, @06:53PM
Having reread the article, I would say that MA has a point. The internet *may* be a lesser need for those of us with clean water, secure housing and western infrastructure.
If they were delivering "the internet" nobody would have a problem with it. This was some Facebook-approved list of sites, which is why people are opposed.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by opinionated_science on Thursday February 11 2016, @06:59PM
so lobby the site list, but it is still an improvement no?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Thursday February 11 2016, @08:02PM
The fact is one way or another the poor communities they are talking about will have 'internet' soon. One way or another.
Facebook would very much like them to get a counterfeit internet, a walled garden where all these people will be captive eyeballs for facebook and friends to exploit. They're so eager to see this happen they are willing to invest some money and make it happen, on their terms. And if allowed to do so they probably WILL be able to bring SOME level of service to these communities a bit more quickly than anyone else.
BUT if they are allowed to do so, the will get that first mover advantage and probably wind up delaying the day that these same communities have real internet access, quite possibly by decades. That's WHY they are so willing to invest in this, of course. But there are plenty of other companies that are willing to provide real internet access and only make a fair profit for providing the service. Since they do NOT expect to make so much money off the deal as Facebook does, they don't have the same kinds of funds available, and they will likely do it more slowly, but it will certainly happen one way or the other.
If I was a resident of one of these communities, I could see being tempted by something now, but I still would probably rather wait a relatively short period of time and see real internet service come just a little later instead. The price of Facebook "free" - in the long term - is extremely high.
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