Читать книгу Facebook - Taina Bucher - Страница 12

Facebook fully entered Myanmar around 2014. People had been using Facebook well before that, but they were only a tiny fraction of the population, early adopters and those who could afford a SIM card. Up until then, the military junta had imposed artificial caps on access to smartphones and SIM cards. In 2014, the cost of a SIM card suddenly dropped from a staggering 1500 GBP to 0.7 GBP. Mobile shops were swamped and the telecom industry expanded from one state-controlled operator to several new competitors, including the Norwegian Telenor. The thing you need to understand about Facebook, Nyan, a former employee of an international NGO that collaborated closely with the government and now funder of a local NGO, tells me, is that for most people in Myanmar, Facebook was introduced to them as a pre-installed app on their new mobile phones. Once the cost of SIM cards dropped, people went into one of the many mobile phone shops that had started to pop up all over the country to purchase a phone with a data plan. Most shop owners not only pre-installed Facebook and Viber, a messaging app, but also made sure they opened up a new Facebook account on the customer’s behalf. Because of the country’s restrictive communications policies and access to the internet, it wasn’t as if people knew how to use the internet, or even had a clear understanding of what the internet, or social network sites, were for. So it only made sense that shop owners had a stack of email addresses and pre-made Facebook accounts at the ready. Nyan says that there are many stories of people who got their new Facebook accounts already equipped with pre-installed friends, and in many cases celebrities and a collection of hot girls, so as to get their Facebook experience going from the very start. In Myanmar, for the millions of people who were able to buy a SIM card, Facebook was not a social network site, or even the internet, but something called Facebook, Nyan says. When talking about the role Facebook has played in Myanmar, about its role in the recent genocide and Facebook’s response or lack of response, Nyan says that there is one fundamental thing that Facebook needs to get right and understand. They act as if they are a social media company, but in Myanmar, Facebook is everything, Nyan says. Facebook is Facebook.