Silicon Valley visit: PM Modi to take questions from Facebook employees, Mark Zuckerberg

BENGALURU: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his visit to Silicon Valley later this month to meet the chieftains of technology companies will take questions from Facebook employees and its chief Mark Zuckerberg at a townhall organized at the social networking company’s headquarters.

Facebook co-founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on Sunday that Modi will attend a townhall meeting at Facebook and asked users to post questions for the Indian Prime Minister on his maiden visit to the valley.

“Prime Minister Modi and I will discuss how communities can work together to address social and economic challenges,” said Zuckerberg on Facebook. Users posted questions relating to a variety of topics ranging from poverty alleviation to net neutrality.

Modi will take his 'Startup India, Stand Up India' call to the Silicon Valley and showcase some of India’s successful startups, ET reported on September 5. Officials have chalked out plans for him to visit the offices of Google, Facebook and Tesla and have dinner with tech honchos in San Francisco.

Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to get Internet.org, a partnership between Facebook and various telecom companies to offer services including Facebook free of data charges. However, the move has been criticised by many users citing that it goes against the principles of net neutrality.

Activists criticized Internet.org claiming that it violated the notion that all Internet traffic should be treated as equal by Internet service providers. However, Zuckerberg argued that free or subsidized data services can improve the lives of people using it.

At the crux of India’s net neutrality debate, is a term called zero rating, or the practice of allowing certain services to be accessed free of charge. Net neutrality backers argue zero rating will create an unfair Internet ecosystem where smaller competitors will have trouble staying ahead of deep-pocketed competitors.