Facebook promised free users got charged, Facebook has been offering a free text-only version of its browser in collaboration with select carriers and phone operators since 2013. The social media company stated that the service wouldn’t use up any mobile data for users, which was incredibly beneficial to those living in developing countries with poor connectivity. Just last October, it was revealed that there are more than 300 million users taking advantage of this offer. However, internal documents show proof that people using the free version were charged unexpectedly at some point or another. What’s even worse is that Facebook doesn’t know how much money these individuals spent because of thehidden fees.
Facebook promised free users got charged
In many low-income nations where face-book had offered a free version of its services in collaboration with local telecom operators, users were unexpectedly charged sums face-book has no record of, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. According to WSJ estimates, the total amounts might reach millions of dollars each month.
The service was designed to expand user-base and accessibility globally. However, carrier charges for an ‘ad-free’ text only version of Face-book caused more harm than good in countries where many people have tight budgets for internet usage. According to WSJ, by July 2021 users were being charged $7.8 million monthly for a service that was advertised as free.
This ‘leakage’ of videos into the text-only Face-book is apparently caused by a software glitch, and face-book is already aware of it. Videos shouldn’t be appearing in this version of Face-book at all, but due to this bug, they are–and they’re racking up data usage on people’s mobile devices.
According to WSJ, Facebook is trying to fix the issue of its nonexistent data on who was charged and how much. However, this presents a difficult problem because charges are made to carriers instead of Facebook itself. Therefore, not only doesFacebook have no trace of these funds, but it also violates the company’s Transparency Policies.
The free service was launched in Bangladesh November 2021 by three local carriers. No data is available to review on how many Bangladeshi users, if any, were charged similarly.
Another Facebook product, called Discover, had been introduced in many nations including Bangladesh. Customers of mobile phone companies could use Discover to search the internet for free with a daily data allowance of 15MB. According to Facebook, Discover is meant to provide low-bandwidth access to any website; just photos and icons are permitted.
However, according to the Wall Street Journal’s analysis of Facebook’s internal papers, a study conducted by a team at the University of California revealed that discover appears to discriminate between material available on Facebook and content accessible elsewhere. That has yet to be addressed.