DEMOCRACY DISCONNECTED: SOCIAL MEDIA’S CAUSTIC INFLUENCE ON SOUTHEAST ASIA’S FRAGILE REPUBLICS Facebook in particular has gained widespread favor as the social media platform of choice for many living in Southeast Asia. The company’s entry into the market was largely made possible by its partnership with the Israeli startup Snaptu, which it acquired in 2011. Facebook relied on Snaptu’s technology to make its platform operable on the basic feature phones that are prevalent in more impoverished countries.14 Using a streamlined app, individuals are provided with the basic functionality of Facebook, but in such a way that data usage and the associated costs are minimized. Facebook’s availability in a multitude of languages, including several of the more esoteric dialects spoken in the region, has also contributed to its mass appeal.15 While some locallanguage social media sites have emerged in recent years, such as MyMingalarbar in Myanmar and Pantip in Thailand, they are not used at the same scale as Facebook. Consequently, for many people in Southeast Asia today, Facebook essentially is the internet.16 Another consequential factor that has helped facilitate Facebook’s penetration in the region stems from a controversial program with ostensibly altruistic intentions. In August 2013, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly announced the launch of Internet.org, an initiative among several large technology firms to provide low-cost basic internet service to the approximately two-thirds of the world’s population for whom online access is prohibitively expensive.17 The program essentially functions as a partnership between Facebook and local internet service providers in select underdeveloped countries around the world. Within Southeast Asia, Internet.org is currently collaborating with telecoms in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand.18 Service subscribers are able to access Facebook and a limited number of partner websites that provide information on essential issues such as health, employment, and education through an application called “Free Basics” without being charged for data usage, a practice known as “zero rating.”19 While the stated intention of the Free Basics program may be to improve the livelihoods of the world’s underprivileged by expanding their access to information, it has restricted the breadth of knowledge they receive on the basis of what they can afford to pay, effectively segregating them from the general internet population. In addition, Free Basics has drawn fierce criticism from supporters of net neutrality, who argue that the program serves as a form of “digital colonialism” because it provides users with deliberately curated Western corporate content, all the while harvesting vast amounts of their data.20 Free Basics garnered further negative publicity worldwide following India’s decision in 2016 to ban the program after its regulators determined that it had led to the levy of discriminatory charges on the basis of content. While Free Basics users 14 Charles Arthur, “Facebook Buys Mobile Startup Snaptu,” The Guardian, March 21, 2011, https://www.theguardian. com/technology/2011/mar/21/facebook-buys-snaptu. 15 Jessica Guynn, “Does Facebook Speak Your Language?” USA Today, September 29, 2016, https://www.usatoday. com/story/tech/news/2016/09/29/facebook-translation-new-languages-corsican-fulah-malta/91268284/. 16 James Massola, “Facebook is the Internet for Many People in South-East Asia,” The Sydney Morning Herald, March 22, 2018, https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/facebook-is-the-internet-for-many-people-in-south-east-asia20180322-p4z5nu.html. 17 Stan Schroeder, “Zuckerberg Wants to Bring the Whole Planet Internet Access,” Mashable, August 21, 2013, https://mashable.com/2013/08/21/mark-zuckerberg-internet-org/#uGbjaZSRDGqq. 18 “Where We’ve Launched,” Internet.org by Facebook, https://info.internet.org/en/story/where-weve-launched/. 19 Devin Coldewey, “WTF is Zero Rating?” Tech Crunch, April 16, 2017, https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/16/wtf-iszero-rating/. 20 Olivia Solon, “‘It’s Digital Colonialism’: How Facebook’s Free Internet Service Has Failed its Users,” The Guardian, July 27, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/facebook-free-basics-developing-markets. 6 | Foreign Policy at Brookings