Facebook's New Discover App Will Let People Browse The Internet For Free

Dhir Acharya - May 07, 2020

Facebook is testing a new app, Discover, which allows people to browse text on all mobile sites for free within a certain period of time.

Facebook is testing a new app, Discover, which allows people to browse text on all mobile sites for free within a certain period of time. This move indicates the social giant’s attempts to expand internet access to every part of the world.

Facebook holds the vision of connecting the world but that has been difficult in countries like India where the Free Basics program got banned in 2016 due to concerns that it favored several networks like Facebook over others. However, the company denied this and let developers access the platform so they could add more sites.

As in the trial of the new Discover app, the biggest difference between this and Free Basics is that Discover lets users browse all websites with a daily amount of free internet data from their operators. The app is currently being tested in Peru only.

According to the social giant, the new app will help those without consistent internet access. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of connecting people on the internet as we are relying more and more on the internet for work, study, as well as other things. The chance of getting reliable access to the internet in rural areas seems even smaller, especially for low-income families. A Facebook product manager, Yoav Zeevi, said:

“Many internet users around the world remain underconnected, regularly dropping off the internet for some period of time when they exhaust their data balance. Discover is designed to help bridge these gaps and keep people connected until they can purchase data again.”

Facebook explained that the free data amount differs among mobile operators and users will be able to use that on Discover on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. While the test is currently in Peru only, the company will expand it to other countries like Iraq, the Philippines, and Thailand, expecting operators to offer 20MB of data per day.

Facebook also said that mobile operators in participating countries can choose to offer the app and it does not pay operators to provide free data. However, as of now, it doesn’t have any plans to launch the app in India.