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Facebook Slows Staff’s Internet So They Know What 2G Browsing Feels Like

Many of Facebook’s more than 1.5 billion users aren’t browsing Facebook with the same lightning fast (heh) speed as you are. In many countries, like India for example, Facebook users must ...
Facebook Slows Staff’s Internet So They Know What 2G Browsing Feels Like
Written by Josh Wolford
  • Many of Facebook’s more than 1.5 billion users aren’t browsing Facebook with the same lightning fast (heh) speed as you are. In many countries, like India for example, Facebook users must suffer through 2G speeds.

    With that in mind, Facebook is instituting something called “2G Tuesdays”. Many on Facebook’s engineering team visit places in India and Africa to see how Facebook is used in emerging markets. But not everyone can up and go to India. So they improvise.

    From Business Insider:

    But because not all employees get to go on international trips, Facebook is instituting “2G Tuesdays.”

    When a Facebook employee logs on any Tuesday morning, they’ll see a prompt at the top of their News Feed asking whether they want to try out the slower connection for an hour.

    “For that next hour, their experience on Facebook will be very much like the experience that millions of people around the world have on Facebook on a 2G connection,” Engineering director Tom Alison says. “They’re going to see the places that we need to improve our product, but they’re also going to see the places where we have made a lot of progress.”

    Speaking of India, Mark Zuckerberg is there now. He recently visited the Taj Mahal and said “it’s incredible what love can motivate us to build.

    Screen Shot 2015-10-27 at 2.06.31 PM

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