Facebook, one of the largest and the richest companies existing on the planet, has turned its focus on providing free and basic internet to Africa. Mark Zuckerberg himself has agreed that this movement to bring free internet to Southeast Africa will connect 1 billion people to the world via Internet.org. For countries such as Malawi, the connection to the outside world is very slim, and the only way to repair that is by giving free internet and access to social websites. Facebook is working with Telekom Networks Malawi and Airtel Malawi to give free basic Internet services to a country with a population of around 16 million. These services include Ask, Bing, UNICEF, Wikipedia, the local Nyasa Times, and, of course, Facebook. “This development has come at the right time,” says Airtel Malawi, chief commercial officer Charles Kamoto. Many people, especially other companies competing with Facebook, point out that Facebook is breaking the basic principles of net neutrality by choosing what apps and websites are available to the people.

Mohammad Tauheed, an architect in Bangladesh where Internet.org was recently launched, says calling Internet.org free Internet is “cheating and a gross violation of net neutrality.” He defines the internet as a virtual place with no restrictions and if someone were to put a restriction, they are breaking the net neutrality principles.  Mohammad Tauheed says he will not stand and wait while Internet.org breaks the net neutrality rules by providing access to only select websites. He states that it is better to give a few people actual internet, than giving many what is known as fake internet. Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg defended himself in the latest Q/A session by stating that some internet is better than none. He informed the public that Internet.org and its partners can’t afford full and free internet for everyone. He also informed that mobile operators spend tens of billion of dollars to support all of internet traffic, and if internet was free to everyone, they would all go out of business, which not only would affect the employees and their families, but also the world economy, and could possibly put us in a major unrecoverable recession.