How India Pierced Facebook’s Free Internet Program

If you wanted to get a glimpse of how hard Facebook can fight when pressed against the wall — a hint of its war chest, the scope of its ambition to access and connect the developing world — take a drive around Mumbai, India’s financial capital, as 2015 turned into 2016.

Everywhere: the billboards. Along the freeway under the smoggy haze. Emblazoned on bus stops — “A Billion Reasons to Support Digital Equality” and an image of an outmoded cellphone. On a busy shopping street, a sign reading “A First Step Towards Digital Equality,” picturing two young women in saris, chatting while looking at a cellphone. The ads ran for two weeks in six cities. Also everywhere: the newspaper ads, full-page ads — double full-page ads! — featuring Indian farmers and henna-adorned hands and stories of Facebook allowing unconnected people to go online. A full-page op-ed in the Times of India by Mark Zuckerberg himself, in which he asked, “Who could possibly be against this?”