Big shot Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, also one of Facebook's directors, caused a rumpus on Twitter on Wednesday with his adverse comments on India's decision to prohibit differential pricing of data services. He withdrew his remark and apologised later.
Andreessen, who founded Netscape, the wildly-popular online browser of the 90s, tweeted during a discussion on Free Basics. "Anti-colonialism has been economically catastrophic for Indian people for decades. Why stop now?"
The 44-year-old venture capitalist deleted the tweet afterwards. A few hours later, he also issued an apology over a series of tweets praising India's "amazing people" and the "profoundly positive effect" its "companies" have had on the "Internet and world."
But the damage had already been done. His colleague Benedict Evans spent most of Wednesday afternoon responding to those who found the comment "racist" and "imperialist."
"East India Company" emerged as a sarcastic response to the earlier post and the phrase began trending on Twitter in India by Wednesday afternoon.
Andreessen's venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has its fingers in most highly-valued Silicon Valley pies such as Facebook, Twitter, AirBnB, Buzzfeed, Pinterest, and other A-listers of the tech world.
Andreessen's controversial tweet was a riposte to entrepreneur Vivek Chachra's tweet that the Free Basics argument "some internet is better than no internet" sounded like "a justification of internet colonialism". Facebook's Free Basics, a zero-rated service, gives its subscribers a selection of internet services without charging them for data used to access them.
Services such as these are now effectively banned in India after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) disallowed discriminatory pricing of data services on Monday. Facebook had mounted a high-voltage campaign in India in the run-up to the TRAI decision. Several activists, academics, and entrepreneurs found Facebook's program to be "anti-net-neutrality".
Nitin Pai, who runs a Bengaluru-based think-tank The Takshashila Foundation, said both Andreessen and Evans were "misinformed" on Indian history, economy, and growth goals. "The idea that the (TRAI) decision prevents poor people from getting internet access is just wrong. The 'anti-colonial' remark was out of place," Pai told TOI on phone.
Andreessen had argued on the microblogging site, "Denying world's poorest free partial Internet connectivity when today they have none, for ideological reasons, strikes me as morally wrong," and, "Leap of net neutrality from 'carriers shall not charge some content more' to 'poor people shall not get free partial Internet' = astounding."
The investor is known for his frequent "tweetstorms" - long series of several tweets - pontificating on Silicon Valley start-ups, technology, and economy, among other issues. However, a strong backlash to his Wednesday tweetstorm had him quickly delete his post and step back from the brouhaha. "I hereby withdraw from all future discussions of Indian economics or politics. Carry on," he wrote and soon added: "And for the record, I am opposed to colonialism, in any country."
Meanwhile, Evans was busy defending Andreessen's remarks online repeatedly stating that his colleague did not really say that he supported colonial policies.
Osama Manzar, whose NGO Digital Empowerment Foundation works in areas of low internet penetration, said that TRAI had "saved" the country from another "invasion". Responding to the tweet, he quipped, "It looks like Free Basics was an American invasion strategy to get into a country for large scale data collection!"
Freecharge founder Kunal Shah cautioned against taking offence. "I believe being offended is a sign of weakness and demonstrates insecurity. We should focus on proving people wrong with actions versus being sensitive," he said.
