Hello, All!!!
I’m back from annual leave, which I spent running after (and barely keeping up with) the three active, insatiably curious and insanely opinionated small people that my husband I made. I’m happy to be back at work to have easier conversations. ;-)
So-I think that reasonable people can absolutely differ on how they feel about Facebook’s campaign to get Indian users to engage in the policy conversation about Free Basics and zero rating. From Facebook’s perspective, it was an attempt to engage the
very people who would be most affected in the debate, and to get them to participate. Again, I certainly think that people can disagree on whether/how people should have been directly engaged.
BUT. Facebook did NOT orchestrate a distributed denial of service attack against TRAI, and insinuating that this is the case, per the original article posted here means the writer doesn’t have an understanding of what DDOS attacks actually are. For info,
please see here-http://www.digitalattackmap.com/understanding-ddos/ or here- https://www.stateoftheinternet.com/faq-what-is-ddos-denial-of-service-attacks-definition.html.
DDOS attacks are technical attacks that overwhelm a target by building networks of infected computers, known as ‘botnets’ and then spreading malicious software through emails, websites and social media. Once infected, these machines can be controlled
remotely, without their owners' knowledge, and used like an army to launch an attack against any target. Some botnets are millions of machines strong. Botnets generate huge floods of traffic, by sending more connection requests than a server can handle, or
having computers send the victim huge amounts of random data to use up the target’s bandwidth.
That is not, at all, what happened in India, and the fact that citizens sent both pro and con messages to policy makers seems, to me, to be exactly what we want citizens to do-engage with policy makers. In my view, even if they sent messages to TRAI saying
no to Free Basics, that’s a win, because it’s citizens engaging in policy issues, and making their views known. Using the Interwebs and social media. ;-)
So, again-fine to disagree with FB asking citizens to engage, but completely factually incorrect to say that TRAI was DDOSed. Words mean things, and that’s not what DDOS means.
Happy new year, all-we really look forward to engaging with and learning more from this community in 2016!!
Best, Ebele
Ebele Okobi | Head of Public Policy, Africa
m. +44 (0) 771 156 1315
2 Stephen St | London | W1T 1AN
ebeleokobi@fb.com