A note on the methodology:
The surveys of Indonesia and Nigeria used through this piece were administered by GeoPoll, which uses SMS to conduct real-time surveys without the need for face-to-face interaction in remote areas.
This survey was conducted in late December in Indonesia and Nigeria, with 500 respondents from each country, equaling a margin of error of 4.38% at the 95% confidence level.
For more information on this methodology visit research.geopoll.com.
In addition, Quartz also commissioned surveys of India, Brazil, and Indonesia from Jana, whose members are reached via smartphone.
Quartz asked Jana respondents, “Do you agree with the statement ‘Facebook is the Internet’?”
Quartz also asked a representative sample of Americans the same question using SurveyMonkey.
I think this comes down to education at some point doesn’t it? Or maybe technological experience. I would assume many of these people are poor and can’t afford to delve deep into the world of technology and just know small parts of it.
From watching NHK, smartphones are extremely cheap over in parts of Asia and Africa. And many people use smart phones to access Facebook. Which I guess from these polls makes me think that they think that Facebook is the internet, because maybe that’s the only or one of the only things that they can access on their phones, without experiencing slow downs and stuff. Because with a low price tag you can’t expect to get much.
Someone should go over their and blow their minds with the internet and what it can do. And teach them that it can be used for more stuff then just talking to friends or family over Facebook.
That’s really not too surprising when you think about how many people don’t even know the difference between the internet and the web. When facebook is all you use then, for all intents and purposes, it’s the internet.
Reminds me of AOL and how they inadvertently hamstrung the youngsters that grew up with that with key words. Until real search engines became a thing it was hard to explain that, “If you are using Netscape or IE, just add WWW. and .com around Yahoo and you can still get there.”
This also makes it even more blatant that what Zuckerberg was trying to do was actually exploit those in the developing nations with his Facebook Blimps piping Facebook Internet to the Facebook phones that he was trying to give out for reduced cost/free as a humanitarian effort because the internet is a right.
Haven’t looked at the full piece, but
If this is the question they asked then I’m unsurprised that they got the results they did.
Many relatively tech-savvy people barely make a distinction between the world wide web and the internet.
Regardless this sets a dangerous precedent as pertains to online regulation and access.
And demonstates why many people are/were potentially easily sold on Facebooks free basics program.
