Facebook calls this Internet.org (or Free Principles, after some hurried rebranding); the bigger online community calls it opportunistic capitalism.

The answer lies in the bigger picture; this isn’t a discussion about that which we’re eager to let the business do for the greater good but about what it will soon be permitted to get away with in the future. The stress here, besides the free, rational temperament of the Internet being endangered, is the domino effect this initiative could activate.

Facebook, Google, Microsoft; all these businesses build products that have revolutionised how we live, and it’s simple to forget that at the close of the day, businesses have to earn money as we reap the fruits of their labour. Their use of Google services supply precious data (browsing settings, place, apparatus details etc.), which enable it to tailor advertising for individual users and make sales. Facebook and return provide us a method to attach with buddies as well as post wacky selfies on our walls and all of the details we put on our public profile to target us with advertising, so making money, respectively. See a pattern?

All these businesses would be only too pleased to exploit into developing markets like Asia, that teeming mass of billions they could bring to their stages to bring in even more sales. But when a big section of their market is cash strapped and cannot afford their services, the giants of the information age have to get creative.

Basically, Internet.org is being viewed as Facebook’s manner of striving to steal a piece, (or rather the entire cake) from the contest.

Coming to the other motive Facebook is becoming dragged through the mud, the response is straightforward – that argument which raged across all media stations a couple of months ago when Airtel attempted to provide select services free of charge to its customers through Airtel Zero, net neutrality. The thought behind web neutrality is the fact that users of the web should have accessibility to the entire Internet with no prejudice. This really is what caused the uproar that resulted in the push for web neutrality laws in India, so that a decade from now, we will not be requested to pay different fees for getting our favourite sites, all determined by our Internet Service Provider (ISP) or mobile operator.

For all the good it might or might not think, this really is precisely what Facebook is replicating with Internet.org, offering free access to pick select services, picked and chosen by it just for Reliance customers, with any of these services clearly being Facebook. Zuckerberg clarifies that such ventures are just being embraced in the early period, and that all services and all network operators are welcome to participate. He also says that Facebook is not going to show advertisements on the stage, but it will restrict access to video and images mentioning bandwidth constraints.

It is a predicament that throws up as many issues as it does alternatives. While the aim of the initiative is allegedly to introduce the ‘unconnected’ to take part in the World Wide Web, the ‘Internet’ that they participate in will just be a fraction that is protected that Facebook holds the keys to. And while other colossi and Google have so far largely steered clear of such extreme measures, enabling Facebook to work unchecked could cause more such services, leading web neutrality in India, to slip down a slick, incline that is irredeemable.

Probably the Menlo Park-based firm does have great goals, but in a time when India is creating its digital identity and entrepreneurs are flourishing thanks to the free Internet all of US know and adore, the move of Facebook is bound to be seen with suspicion.

Zuckerberg ‘s unconnected stay unable and ignorant to weigh in, while businesses and empowered netizens from halfway across the entire world attempt to determine what is best for them.