Michelle Rial / BuzzFeed News

On a Tuesday afternoon in May 2010, a Facebook program manager named Sid Murlidhar published a blog post announcing “another way for people to access Facebook anytime, anywhere.” It was called 0.Facebook, literally a URL you could type into your mobile phone’s browser that called up a stripped-down, quick-loading, text-only version of Facebook — accessible only as long as you were using a participating mobile operator.

It was a big deal, much bigger than most people realized at the time. The fast, bare-bones version of Facebook made it more usable for people living in the poorly connected locations it rolled out in — countries like India, Uganda, and Bolivia. More importantly, 0.Facebook could be accessed for free in those countries, without any associated data costs, thanks to deals Facebook made with carriers. The internet? That would cost you —but 0.Facebook was free of charge.

“We hope that even more people will discover the mobile internet with Facebook,” Murlidhar wrote that day. They certainly did. And from that moment on, it’s been Facebook’s policy to work with mobile operators to offer some form of its site for free.

Over time, the seeds planted with 0.Facebook grew into a much more ambitious fruit, called Internet.org. Internet.org includes an array of technology solutions to bring the world online — things like drones to bring connectivity to rural regions where there is no infrastructure, and affordable smartphones. But its best-known element is something called Free Basics, which serves up versions of Facebook and other services, like Wikipedia and the weather, that don't count against a person's mobile data plan. It is very much the progeny of 0.Facebook.

Yet more than five years later, the policy Murlidhar helped introduce is at the center of a global backlash. When Internet.org launched, it was lauded for bringing the world online. A New York Times headline from August 2013, for example, proclaimed, “Facebook Leads an Effort to Lower Barriers to Internet Access.” Yet just two years later, in October 2015, another headline from the Times would note that “Facebook’s Internet for All Is a Tough Sell in India."

Indeed, Free Basics is in grave peril in India, where it has already been suspended and now faces a permanent ban. Egypt has already pulled the plug on Free Basics entirely, for reasons that remain unclear. A host of international partners — including Samsung, Qualcomm, and Ericsson — have essentially disappeared from the Internet.org site. Meanwhile, partnerships with competing companies like Google and Twitter — which would have lent credibility to Facebook's argument that Free Basics is open to everyone — never materialized. In short, Facebook's massive push to bring the world online has hit a wall of activists and government regulators who argue that its free service violates basic principles of an open, free, and fair internet.

Here’s how it all went down.

The Zero in the Beginning

0.Facebook, also known as Facebook Zero, was hatched by a team within Facebook in charge of growing the platform, along with its mobile partnership team. By mid-2010, the company had moved from college campuses to the general American public and then to Europe. And though Facebook was not yet close to its current 1.5 billion monthly active users, its addressable market in the developed world had started looking saturated. So when Facebook began seeing people in emerging markets join the platform via low-cost phones and plans, operating on slower speeds and thinner wallets, it realized it needed to find some way to tap this immense pool of potential new users. The answer was 0.Facebook.

The introduction of 0.Facebook, a product clearly geared toward growth, was uncontroversial. TechCrunch was characteristically optimistic about its prospects: “This mobile site could play a big role in Facebook’s growth going forward, especially given the predictions that browser-equipped mobile phones will be more abundant than PCs in the not-too-distant future,” Jason Kincaid wrote.

Riding on smooth seas, 0.Facebook reached more than 50 operators in dozens of countries, without causing much of a stir. But there was another fundamental problem that Facebook still needed to address. Most of the new users it saw coming online weren’t doing so with Android or iOS handsets, where you could just download the Facebook app from an app store, but on so-called “feature phones.”

These feature phones might be best thought of as the Nissan Versa to the iPhone’s Tesla Model S. These handsets often had very limited memory and processing power — which meant there wasn’t enough horsepower for robust applications. What’s more, they came in a thousand different varieties, with custom interfaces that often required specialized builds. In short, you couldn’t just build a one-size-fits-all app for feature phones.

Enter Snaptu

Facebook addressed this feature phone problem with an acquisition. On March 20, 2011, Israeli newspapers Calcalist and TheMarker reported that Facebook agreed to acquire Snaptu, a small Israeli technology startup. Snaptu had mastered development for feature phones by figuring out how to run applications largely on the server side, with just a thin layer on the handset itself. Months earlier, Facebook had completed a feature phone app launch in partnership with Snaptu, which built the app to work across more than 2,500 devices. To keep expanding within the very large feature phone market — which then accounted for 80% of mobile phones — Facebook decided to bring the master builders in house.

The Snaptu-built app.

An article about the Snaptu acquisition in The Guardian noted how important the Snaptu-built app was for Facebook’s global expansion plans. The app, it said, “brought Facebook capabilities to feature phones in countries as diverse as Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Poland, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Tunisia, Dominican Republic and Romania, with carriers in Canada, India, Mexico, Brazil and Bulgaria also planned.”

The Snaptu acquisition was a critical component of Facebook’s strategy to grow in emerging markets. But it wasn’t enough to just enter these markets: Facebook needed to get people, many of whom had limited means and had never used the internet previously, to download and try its app. So when Facebook launched its Snaptu-built app, it enlisted 14 mobile carriers to offer 90 days of free use.

After the acquisition, Snaptu’s CEO, Ran Makavy, moved to Facebook with the title of growth manager. His LinkedIn profile offers a preview of what came next: “Started internet.org, looking at connecting the next 5 billion people to the Internet.” (A Facebook spokesperson confirmed Makavy was part of the team that started Internet.org.)

Snaptu Meets Zero Rating

By November 2012, Facebook began posting a new free data offer every month or so on its page for Facebook for Every Phone (or FB4E), the enhanced and renamed version of the Snaptu-built app. In a message geared to Kenyans, for instance, Facebook pitched: “Tell your friends and family on Safaricom to join Facebook and they can access it for free for 90 days.” Offers to people in India, Guatemala, Mexico, and others followed.

An image advertising free Facebook posted to the FB4E page.

It’s worth noting that Facebook did not actually pay for the waived data charges for FB4E promotions and 0.Facebook. Operators provided the data free of charge, viewing Facebook as a gateway to customers who might, after getting a taste of free data, opt to pay for the full meal. And clearly, FB4E was a hit: By early 2014, it had more than 100 million active users.

Facebook wasn’t the only company engaged in such efforts. Google, Twitter, and others were launching their own zero-rated (meaning no data charge applied) apps at the same time. In November 2012, for instance, Google introduced the Google Free Zone, providing free data access for search, Gmail, and Google+.

The Google program rolled out first in the Philippines in partnership with operator Globe Telecom. Months afterward, Facebook began working with Globe as well, developing the groundwork for a more ambitious program.

“We started some experiments in the Philippines, with Globe, and we quickly iterated, and we decided that what we were going to do was we were going to give people access to an entire set of free basic services,” Facebook product VP Chris Daniels told BuzzFeed news in a phone interview.

Internet.org Is Born

Throughout their history, Facebook’s zero-rating initiatives had been both uncontroversial and unabashedly self-serving. But on Aug. 20, 2013, that all changed, even if it wasn’t immediately obvious. That’s when Facebook announced Internet.org. Its stated goal wasn’t platform growth, but “making internet access available to the next 5 billion people.”

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With Internet.org, Facebook had added ennobling traits to its raw ambition. Its zero-rating programs, which had previously been nakedly aimed at attracting new users, were now part of a larger effort to build out the infrastructure and lower the costs associated with bringing the world online. The effort was cast in altruistic terms and included a global coalition that could have come right out of Colin Powell’s playbook.

In fact Facebook was the only American partner at Internet.org's launch. Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm, and Samsung all signed on as founding members, their logos prominently displayed on its site. A blog post on Facebook’s website said these companies would work to connect the next 5 billion people via a number of methods, citing everything from decreasing data use requirements from apps, to building new hardware like low-cost smartphones. A zero-rated program was to be included as well.

“Everything Facebook has done has been about giving all people around the world the power to connect,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced. “Internet.org brings together a global partnership that will work to overcome these challenges, including making internet access available to those who cannot currently afford it.”

Two factors contributed to Facebook’s broader efforts. First, pushing into emerging markets made Facebook aware just how massive a problem connectivity was in many regions of the world. Zuckerberg himself became invested in solving the issue, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. The Facebook CEO knew the problem was bigger than the company could solve on its own. Second, Facebook realized a significant lift was required to get operators across the world to offer data for free. These operators were still making money from text messaging fees, for example, and they did not see much incentive to offer access to a communication platform like Facebook Messenger at no cost. A global, strongly branded initiative with a number of powerful partners had a better chance to help Facebook win that argument.

“For Facebook it was always known that the company alone couldn't tackle this issue, that we had to find a way to work with the ecosystem to bring down the barriers to access,” the person with knowledge of Internet.org’s origins said. “It was always meant to find out how we can bring the ecosystem together to spread connectivity. And for that reason, it had to have a greater mission.”

From this point on, Facebook’s free internet efforts took on a more evangelical tone. Facebook wasn’t out to simply grow its own platform, the company would say; it was out to help the world. (And sure, what would help the world would also help Facebook.)

Today, Internet.org is behind a number of different connectivity initiatives, from a discounted Wi-Fi program, called Express Wi-Fi, to Aquila, a drone that can fly for months and beam down internet to those below. Yet its most prominent initiative is its zero-rated app, now called Free Basics, which contains the “entire set of free basic services,” Facebook's product VP Daniels said. Both Facebook and Facebook Messenger are included.

From Org to App

In October 2013, less than two months after Internet.org was announced, Facebook acquired Onavo, another Israeli startup working to make data use more efficient.

The Internet.org app.

Nine months later, Onavo co-founder and CEO Guy Rosen — now a Facebook product management director whose LinkedIn profile reads “Internet.org, Growth, Onavo and more cool stuff” — wrote a blog post, in July 2014, introducing the Internet.org app. The app included zero-rated access to a handful of sites and services, including AccuWeather, Go Zambia Jobs, and Wikipedia. Facebook and Facebook Messenger were, of course, included as well. The app launched first in Zambia.

“By providing free basic services via the app, we hope to bring more people online and help them discover valuable services they might not have otherwise,” Rosen wrote.

After the app launched in Zambia, Facebook’s Internet.org team spent the rest of 2014 rolling it out in more countries — Kenya and Tanzania — and building support in India, Facebook’s second-largest market. In October 2014, Facebook held its first Internet.org Summit in India, with Mark Zuckerberg keynoting. While in India for the summit, Zuckerberg met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “discuss the importance of connectivity in India,” according Internet.org’s Facebook page. Modi, in a Facebook post of his own, called the meeting “wonderful.”

In February 2015, the Internet.org app (which would be subsequently renamed Free Basics by Facebook) came to India. An intense backlash soon followed.