Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg traveled to Colombia on Wednesday to bring his global Internet-access initiative to Latin America.
In an event with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, the billionaire said that even low-end mobile phone users in Colombia will now be able to access for free a limited number of Web sites thanks to a partnership with local cellular service provider Tigo.
Colombia is the fourth nation where Zuckerberg is rolling out Internet.org, which aims to bring Web access to the two-thirds of the world’s population who lack it. It is also available in Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania.
Photo: Reuters
It was Zuckerberg’s first time in Colombia and he used the one-day visit to hold his first “town hall” meeting with Facebook users outside the US.
The 30-year-old chief executive answered questions about free speech, Internet connectivity and what he sees as media misconceptions about his company.
The town hall in Bogota was closed to reporters, but streamed online on Facebook.
Asked how much he knew about Colombia before his visit, Zuckerberg said he has learned a bit about the nation’s biodiversity and that he is a big fan of Colombian pop singer Shakira.
“I’m a really big fan. Yeah I guess that’s about it. I don’t speak Spanish, but I like her Spanish music,” Zuckerberg said, laughing, before moving on.
He was asked about his recent Facebook post referring to last week’s terrorist attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in which he urged people to reject “a group of extremists trying to silence the voices and opinions of everyone else around the world.”
Zuckerberg said that all terrorist attacks are horrible, but added that he chose to address the Paris attack in particular because it was an attack on the freedom of expression and people’s ability to speak out.
He said he mostly speaks out on topics related to Facebook’s mission of connecting the world and giving everyone a voice — and this was one such case.
Facebook operates in most nations of the world, and more than 80 percent of its more than 1 billion users are outside of the US and Canada.
The social network follows the laws of the nations where it operates, which can mean not showing content that is banned in a particular nation, even if users outside that country can see it.
Asked if Facebook, in a bid to empower people, would break the law in a nation that does not permit freedom of speech, Zuckerberg said that if it did that, the country might just block the service entirely, depriving millions of the ability to connect with each other.
That said, he acknowledged that there are several countries where Facebook does not operate, “and our business is doing just fine. Believe me, we are good.”
He said a big misconception about Facebook is that it does things such as Internet.org for business reasons, to get more people on Facebook so it can make more money.
“I can promise you that if what I cared about was making more money, I would take the engineers and the people who are working on Internet.org and spreading connectivity around the world and have them go work on our ads product,” he said.
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