Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday hosted a townhall at Indian Institute of Technology, where around 900 students attended the Q&A session. Speaking at the event, Zuckerberg said that his mission is to connect everyone in India to the internet.He said India has the second highest users of Facebook in the world which presents a good opportunity to develop the economy."Many people don't have access to internet. So, there is a great opportunity to develop the economy here. It is one of the countries where you cannot connect the world without connecting India. It is very important to connect the people in India," Zuckerberg said during a question and answer session at IIT Delhi. "Connecting people in India is one of the most important things we can do for the world. Our mission is to connect everyone in the world," he added. During his speech, Zuckerberg spoke about the recent Pak-Afghan earthquake that killed hundreds, saying Facebook is doing all to help the affected people.
Here are the Qs&As :
Q 1) Why are you so interested in India?
A.) Zuckerberg says Facebook wants to connect every person in the world and India is the world's largest democracy.
There are a billion people in India with no access to the internet. Facebook can provide access to a variety of amenities for people who lack these amenties, through the internet. (Cue Internet.org)
Connecting people in India is one of the most important things in the world. Ideas from students and entrepreneurs in India can be shared with the world.
Q 2) How will you connect with those who are not on Facebook or/and have no internet?
A.) We can look at the success of Internet.org to spread internet connectivity. It is live in 24 countries around the world. 15 million new people have access to the internet due to our efforts via Internet.org.
I have seen some cynical reporting on Internet.org, but I don't think that's good. The programme is in its early stages in India but we are sure it will work.
4 billion people in the world don't have access to internet. Three reasons - availability, affordability and the biggest one - awareness. Awareness means you have a phone and internet access but you don't know why you should spend on a data plan, for example. We want to break down all these barriers.
Investing in new age connectivity, through solar panels etc in rural areas. Second, we are trying to ensure that our apps use less data. So that it is more affordable to you. Also, providing people with basic information like employment news, health, educational opportunities and so on through a plan called free basics.
Q 3) I seriously don't want any more invitations for Candy Crush. How do I stop them?
A.) We are doing that! This is why this Townhall is very useful. Some old functionalities allow people to send invitations for games that people have never played. We are working to change that. I have spoken to the developers and others in Facebook.
Q 4) Will the Oculus Rift be integrated to social media and how can developers get involved?
A.) We have developer kits to help developers build things around the Oculus Rift. We are seeing a shift to video usage. But it still has limitations like small screen, 2D and so on. Making it better involves virtual reality, augmented reality and so on. Says me and my wife are expecting a daughter soon (Applause). Says thank you.
I want to click videos of my daughter taking her first step and then share it so my family and friends can see it. Social media is enabling richer and richer communication. People want a richer medium. This is what virtual reality and augmented reality can do. It will happen, may be 5 to 10 years.
Q 5) Facebook is investing a lot in Artificial Intelligence with the opening of a lab. What are the prospects here?
A.) We want to build computer systems in 5 to 10 years which can see, hear better and translate and understand language better than humans. That does not mean computers will be smarter than people any time soon. But the stuff we will see will be like increasing intelligence for a lot of different things we do.
For example, if you are blind and can't see a photo, the AI will make a description of the photo for you.
Second - safety check for natural calamities. Right now you can mark yourself or your friends as safe. In future you will be able to identify using sattelites etc as to who is in trouble and where. People look at maps today, computers will do that better in the future. They will save lives, make content more accessible etc.
Q 6) How can Facebook help people who are illiterate or uneducated?
A.) Interesting question. We have started a few projects, for example in New York, New Jersey. The graduation rate has increased in a few years by 13%.
We have taken other initiatives as well, creating new school models and funding the ones that work well in public schools as well.
We have a few international investments in creating new schools in Africa and hope to spread that to India. Access to internet is going to be important for this. We should be focusing on longer term investments to cure many diseases. Maybe this can be done in 2 generations from now.
Q 7) If Mark Zuckerberg is gifted some supernatural powers from an alien, what would they be and how would you use it for the world's benefit?
A.) Technology enables people to have supernatural powers. Eg Oculus will help you travel any part of the world with a headset, places where you could never go before. We could use an Oculus headset and a virtual table to play ping pong with people who aren't in front of you. Or simulate a game of ping pong with someone in space!
Q 8) Does internet.ord support net neutrality, for 100% of people without any filtering?
A. Yes. Internet.org and Facebook 100% support Net neturality. But you can't provide the whole Internet for free.
In terms of regulation, countries are just figuring out what regulations they want on their internet. The US has made some very clear net neutrality rules that we supported last year. In terms of open platform, there have been reports that there will be a small set of internet services that people can use, and everyone can't access everything.
That's wrong. We know internet is not cheap. Internet.org is a neutral platform. We have this free basics platform, where you get a lot of simple stuff, without the videos and all that uses a lot of data.
Zero-rating is necessary to ensure that we are able to connect everyone to the Internet.
Most who are pushing for net neutrality have access to the net already. For the people who are not on the internet, like many in India, can't push any online petitions. We all have a moral responsibility to see that the rules that benefit us should not be twisted by operators.
Q 9) Did people recognise you at the Taj?
A.) I really enjoyed it. It's after all a monument of love. No matter what city you go to in the world, conference rooms look similar. The Taj is one of the few places in the world that look better than in the pictures. The Taj is unique. I am really lucky to have the opportunity to go to Agra and visit the Taj.
One girl tried to take a photo of me and fell off the sidewalk into a bush. I gave her a pat on the back.
Q 10) What was your Eureka moment that helped you found Facebook? How do you keep on the straight path with so many challenges?
A.) It wasn't so long ago that I was a student like you, listening to Bill Gates talking at Harvard. I was wowed. But the media likes to sensationalise this, as if you are some singular person who built this on your own.
In school I just liked to build things. I didn't have this dream that I would be building something like Facebook. You start off building something that you care about. I did not think FB would be so big when we started.
We just kept going and going as a team, taking the next steps. Many people thought social media doesn't make any money. Soon we had a service that was bigger than any other. It's no magic.
Q 11) Everyone comes up with a random new app and considers himself the next big thing. What according to you are the elements of an ideal start-up?
A.) People just start with a company without having an idea of what they wanna do. Building a company is hard. As you decide to start a company and hire some people, you lose flexibility. First begin to do something you care about, and then start a company only when things are better.
Focus on what you want to do for the world and not the decision to start a company It can get a lot bigger than you think it was going to be.
Q 12) How do you face tough situations in life when you have lost hope and cannot be consoled by friends and family?
A.) I faced a lot of challenges at Facebook. No one person can handle that. We need partners and cofounders who can help us and guide us.
People say that I built Facebook, Steve Jobs built Apple, but that's not true. No one person can do that.
Companies with more cofounders are more successful, because they are resilient. No one person can do everything needed for a startup. But if you are 3-4 people, you can build a team and power through all the challenges. There are a lot of hard days when I dunno what to do next, and that's when the team is important.
Q 13) What was the decision that you took in the early days of Facebook that you regretted later?
A.) One mistake? I have made a lot of mistakes. The reason why FB exists today and is serving 1.5 billion people is because we are helping people do something very important in life - connect with friends and family. They then forgive us for our mistakes. We will make mistakes in future as well because we are human. It's not about the mistakes we don't wanna make, but just to do as much good as I can?
Q 14) Can we do something for missing people like we do for marking people safe during earthquakes and such calamities?
A.) We have something like that it US. We have alredy launched Amber Alerts for missing children in the US.
We have launched it a year ago. If a child is lost then we put up the picture in Newsfeed and ask people to report to the police and so on. At least one child has been found like this. We need to work with government to expand this. As a community we need to develop initiatives for things like organ donation and so on.
So this is currently the end of the Questions and Answers section.
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