[Advocacy Advisors] Wikipedia Zero and net neutrality

[Erik Moeller]

On Fri, Aug 1, 2014 at 9:04 PM, Amgine <amgine at wikimedians.ca> wrote:

> Yana, here is my active voice ruler; please whack Eric with it for me.

I'm on the list now so feel free to whack to your heart's content :)

> (side note: is there a PR/Marketing review cycle for such blog entries?)

The post was drafted and reviewed in partnership with Yana, Katherine
Maher (Chief Communications Officer) and Carolynne Schloeder (Director
of Mobile Partnerships, head of the program).

> Look at the partners. Facebook? really, Facebook?

Facebook is not a Wikipedia Zero partner. Their internet.org
initiative is independent from the Wikipedia Zero program -- it
provides access to Wikipedia among other sites, but this is not done
under any agreement with us.

I don't think the discussion is well served by painting any initiative
with a broad brush. Their initiative seems overall well-intended, but
it suffers from a lack of transparency as to its operating principles,
including questions that are especially relevant (privacy of user
data, access to competitors like Twitter, etc.). We'll not directly
participate in a program like internet.org unless such questions can
be answered satisfactorily.

As for discussions on the list, it would not be a useful discussion
for this list whether the program should exist at all - we've made
that decision. Like any program it will continually be evaluated in
terms of its impact, but this list is not the place to do so. What is
useful, however, is for us to talk about how we communicate about it,
and how to best evolve the operating principles of the program in a
manner consistent with net neutrality policy objectives.

This is why the post gave significant emphasis to the current draft of
operating principles:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero_Operating_Principles

We hope those operating principles can serve as a useful starting
point for the kinds of discussions that people on this list have with
policymakers. If you have immediate reactions to these principles and
how we've communicated them here, I would very much love to hear them.
I'm paying attention and have read the archives.

Specifically, I believe the operating principles of "no exchange of
payment" and "no bundles" are very important ones that we should
emphasize in any policy-related discussions.

Erik
-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation