I just had a weird thought about cell phones;<p>I think that going forward, communications are a basic need. There was a startup in ~2008 that was attempting to provide &quot;free&quot; cellular service to its users who agreed to watch ads on their phones. If they interacted with the ads, they would get more service time...<p>The Facebook phone was an utter flop - however, if they wanted to surveil the population, they may have done better by creating a cell service company and allow people to be spied on in exchange for a free phone....<p>That damages my DNA saying that -- but it would be a workable model for the long tail of poor people that love facebook.