It’s easy to get behind the intentions of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to bring the Web to billions of people. The language he’s using to sell it may be a bit more contentious: the social media giant called Internet access “a human right.”
In a lengthy paper posted to his Facebook page on Tuesday — titled “Is Connectivity A Human Right?” — Zuckerberg wrote that all people are inherently entitled to online access.
“There is no guarantee that most people will ever have access to the Internet,” he wrote. “It isn’t going to happen by itself. But I believe connectivity is a human right, and that if we work together we can make it a reality.”
Mr. Zuckerberg announced Wednesday that he is partnering with technology companies Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung for Internet.org, a campaign to bring the Web to all corners of the world.
“We want to make it so that anyone, anywhere — a child growing up in rural India who never had a computer — can go to a store, get a phone, get online and get access to all of the same things that you and I appreciate about the Internet,” he told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
“They’re going to use it to decide what kind of government they want, get access to health care for the first time ever, connect with family hundreds of miles away that they haven’t seen in decades.”
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• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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