The Economist has added its two pence to the drones and loons matter in a recent blog post. Author M.G. writes: "Presumably it does not intend to use the drones to spy on people, which would be pointless given that some 1.2 billion folk already tell Facebook so many intimate details about their lives voluntarily."
"Instead, Facebook is said to be keen to use the drones to get even more people online — a cause that it has championed via internet.org, a group that brings together companies and community groups."
I agree to some extent. In a time where users are leaving Facebook in their droves and awareness of NSA/PRISM spying is at a feverish level, it’s obvious Zuckerberg is fishing for the new market, and more data means more money. But what constitutes as spying? Harvesting users’ personal data to gain income could once have passed as such, but now we’ve all become slaves to the small print.
Furthermore, it’s just so hard to see this as a purely humanitarian effort, but rather the next step in an American internet hegemony.
Zuckerberg image credit: Jason McELweenie
