14 DAY TRIAL // Zuckerberg' humanitarian project has been met with public disapproval ever since it was launched back in 2013 and Facebook's CEO was forced to stick up for it on more than one occasion, denying claims that the campaign was an attempt to monopolize the Internet.
However, people are unable or unwilling to take his words for granted as the platform garners more and more reprovers who are rebuffing Zuckerberg's "altruistic" intentions.
The latest attempt to draw awareness on the issue is an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg signed by 67 members of activists groups around the globe.
The allegations that the petitioners have put forward in the joint letter are no different than the claims others have made before them. When India took the decision to pull out from the Internet.org initiative, the companies invoked similar arguments as the core reasons behind their recoil.
The activists addressed their complaints to the CEO
The idea that Internet.org is a walled garden where people have no control over the applications or the content that the initiators of the campaign have made available, although refuted by Facebook's CEO on multiple occasions, remains one of the main ideas advocated by the campaigners.
They also expressed their dissatisfaction with the zero-rating proposal that Internet.org has put forward, claiming that the initiators are using the fact that the underprivileged do not dispose of any other means to get Internet access to violate net neutrality principles.
Offering less fortunate people limited access to content, given that the "free Internet" mission statement endorsed by the project basically means that they are allowed to use 17 basic apps or so, is also a form of discrimination.
Activists disagree with the idea that Facebook and its partners are duping people into thinking that the social network is actually the Internet, a confusion which seems to have become quite frequent among participants in the campaign.
More initiatives of the sort are expected to follow as Internet.org slowly tightens its grip on the world. However, it is hard to predict whether these undertakings will hinder the platform from expanding.