At the start of this year I started working for an employment service company that covers the Indo-Asia-Pacific and South American markets.
I was amazed to discover how pervasive Facebook, Inc. has become in the developing world for conducting business and navigating everyday life.
For a lot of people in developing nations such as the Phillipines and Indonesia, Facebook is synonymous with the internet. This has been buoyed by their push to bundle uncapped/free data for Facebook with mobile plans in markets with high growth of mobile internet access.
It's interesting, because I'm always reading articles about how "Western teens aren't using Facebook any more", which is true, but it's also irrelevant, because they're not really a profitable market, teenagers have short attention spans and no money. Facebook's growth strategy is to become the one stop shop (in lower income nations) for everything you want and need.
A lot of people simply don't care. I've met people who've worked for casinos and tobacco companies in management and decision making roles, and they are fully aware that they are trying to make people addicted and maximise profit on their habits.
I've asked them about the morality of it, and they're apathetic. It's not like some Wolf of Wall Street attitude where they enjoy ripping people off or making addicts, but just corporate apathy. The job pays well and they get to enjoy the finer things in life, so why should they care?
My lowest points are when life becomes too easy. When I start to miss the point of living.
I quit my job and moved to a new country because I was becoming complacent, repeating the same thing every day.
It's the moments closest to death when we are truely alive. Whether it's being struck by a disease, as Stephen Hawking tragically was all those many years ago, or climbing a mountain (and in my cause, getting stuck).
There's a lot of countries where it's not normal to keep going to school until you are 18.
In New Zealand, you can leave school when you're 16 and start an apprenticeship. I think that by 16, most people will know if they're definitely not going to be going to university, and I think that 11 years of schooling is enough to set people up with the basics for life. It's the point where (at least in New Zealand) you start specialising, picking specific subjects that are going to help you with, or be required for, university
I picked up Messenger Lite when I was in Fiji. My phone isn't very good and struggled with normal Messenger.
With Messenger Lite, not only does it take a lot less space, it's a lot faster, and feels less bloaty. It's a lot like what Messenger was a few years ago, nice and simple.
I don't want to use Messenger to play games, or send giphys, or any of that other rich interaction stuff. The only thing I miss is the ability to send a pin of your location to someone, which is actually a really useful feature.
Ironically, the ISPs in the USA are doing this at the same time ISPs in other countries where caps and exemptions have been the standard are becoming more free and open.
About 5-10 years ago, most ISPs in New Zealand didn't offer an unlimited option, or if it was, it wasn't the standard and cost a lot more. Plans started at about 20 GB (or lower, depending on how far back you go) and went up from there. There was also unmetered data (usually to servers hosted by the ISP, very useful for Counter Strike).
Now I think that all ISPs offer an unlimited plan, which is usually about $15 or so more than the capped plan, and capped plans usually offer about 60 GB as the base amount, which is fine for a lot of light users, who only check their email and read the news.
Contract free ISPs are also becoming a lot more common, where you don't have a fixed term contract, and instead just pay monthly.
Another nice thing is that fibre installation is free, as it's paid for by the government. The NZ government is doing a great job of getting New Zealand world class internet, we just need more overseas cables now (ones that the NSA hasn't literally tapped into would be nice too, our main cable literally goes through an airbase).
I was amazed to discover how pervasive Facebook, Inc. has become in the developing world for conducting business and navigating everyday life.
For a lot of people in developing nations such as the Phillipines and Indonesia, Facebook is synonymous with the internet. This has been buoyed by their push to bundle uncapped/free data for Facebook with mobile plans in markets with high growth of mobile internet access.
It's interesting, because I'm always reading articles about how "Western teens aren't using Facebook any more", which is true, but it's also irrelevant, because they're not really a profitable market, teenagers have short attention spans and no money. Facebook's growth strategy is to become the one stop shop (in lower income nations) for everything you want and need.