Millions of Facebook users are not aware that they are on the Internet

Three years ago, a survey was conducted in Indonesia. People said that they did not use the Internet , but they enthusiastically talked about the time spent on Facebook. For these people, the Internet simply did not exist, but there was a social network. In Africa, faced with the same trend. Researchers thought that an error crept into the calculations - the number of Facebook users greatly exceeded the number of Internet users.



But everything goes according to plan. According to the Facebook plan.

')





To verify the results, the research company Geopoll interviewed by phone five hundred people in Indonesia and Nigeria. The question is simple: have you used the internet in the last thirty days? And the same thing about Facebook. The survey showed that more respondents use the Internet. But in Indonesia, 11% said they did not use the network, but sat on Facebook. In Nigeria, this figure was 9%. And these were not retirees, the average age of respondents was 25 years in Indonesia and 22 years in Nigeria.



At least several million people worldwide from 1.4 billion Facebook users are mistaken in these matters.











More than half of people who do not know that they are on the Internet, they say that they never follow links from Facebook. And a quarter of those who use the Internet, do not click on such links. The more users remain inside the social network, the better performance the network can provide advertisers.







In developing countries, many simply do not share the concept. Below are the survey results: do you agree that “Facebook is the Internet”.







Telecom operators use the confusion to offer special rates. For example, in India, for $ 2.5 a year, you can buy a tariff to access only Facebook, at the lowest cost of an Internet tariff of ten dollars a year. In the Philippines, this rate is twenty percent of the normal price. In the Republic of Ghana sell qwerty phone with the letter "F" in the center. Even in the USA there is a tariff plan for Facebook and Twitter.







Since 2013, Facebook talks about the desire to give access to the Internet around the world . But Chief Operating Officer Cheryl Kara Sandberg notes that people confuse the Internet and Facebook. They go to the store for a smartphone and say “I want Facebook”. And ultimately it helps the social network to evolve. The Internet.org application , discussed in the context of network access in developing countries, in six countries provides access only to Facebook, Facebook messenger and several other useful applications. Only Wikipedia helps to go beyond the limits of a closed information system. There is also a search from Google, but you should click on the result - and you will be offered to buy a tariff .



So the available Internet is a bit like a fiction. This is not an open platform, but a proprietary offer that allows Facebook to show better results and make more money.