New Delhi: Finally chickens have come home to roost for media houses on net neutrality. Media groups which were raising a huge hue and cry on net neutrality only on Wednesday realised that they were too happily violating its basic principles.
Following criticism from netizens, domestic e-commerce company Flipkart had on Tuesday pulled out of Airtel zero as it was seen violating net neutrality in the country. Cleartrip, a travel portal on Wednesday came out of Facebook’s promoted platform internet.org.
In a blog Cleartrip said that it took the step after at various points in time, it had been questioned about its stance on net neutrality. Cleartrip move brought internet.org under focus of the netizens, which till now were targeting Airtel for its Zero plan.
RCom had partnered with Facebook’s internet.org in India to offer around three dozen websites free of cost to users. Cleartrip was one among those three dozen websites.However, soon it dawn on people that over a dozen news websites too were part of internet.org and some of these were supposedly vocal supporter of net neutrality in the country. “Partners of internet.org included Times of India, NDTV, Amarujala, BBC News, Daily Bhaskar, IBNLive, India Today, Jagran, manorama news and Reuters Market Lite,” a statement issued by internet.org in February 2015.
Soon a stumble started to get out of internet.org. NDTV started flashing on its screen that it was pulling out of internet.org and was all for net neutrality. Late night Times Group issued a statement that Maharashtra Times, where its competitors are not on zero-rate platforms will pull out of internet.org. However, it said Times of India itself will withdraw from internet.org if its competitors, India Today, NDTV, IBNLive, NewsHunt, and BBC, also pull out.
