Facebook promised poor countries free internet: People got charged anyway

Facebook says it’s helping millions of the world’s poorest people get online through apps and services that allow them to use internet data free. Internal company documents show that many of these people end up being charged in amounts that collectively add up to an estimated millions of dollars a month.

To attract new users, Facebook (FB) made deals with cellular carriers in countries including Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines to let low-income earners use a limited version of Facebook and browse some other websites without data charges. Many of the users have inexpensive cellphone plans that cost just a few dollars a month, often prepaid, for service and a small amount of internet data.

Because of software problems at Facebook, which it has known about and failed to correct for months, people using the apps in free mode are getting unexpectedly charged by local cellular carriers for using data. In many cases they only discover this when their prepaid plans are drained of funds.

In internal documents, employees of Facebook parent Meta acknowledge this is a problem. Charging people for services Facebook says are free “breaches our transparency principle,” an employee wrote in an October memo.

In the year ended July 2021, charges made by the cellular carriers to users of Facebook’s free-data products grew to an estimated total of $7.8 million a month, when purchasing power adjustments were made, from about $1.3 million a year earlier, according to a Facebook document. 

Facebook calls the problem “leakage,” since paid services are leaking into the free apps and services. It defines leakage in internal documents as, “When users are in Free Mode and believe that the data they are using is being covered by their carrier networks, even though these users are actually paying for the data themselves.”

A costly affair

• Facebook made deals with cellular carriers to let low-income people use a limited version of Facebook and browse some other websites without data charges

• Because of software problems, people using the apps in free mode are getting unexpectedly charged by local cellular carriers for using data

• In internal documents, employees of Meta Platforms acknowledge this is a problem

• In the year ended July 2021, charges by cellular carriers to users of FB’s free-data products grew to an estimated $7.8 million a month