Facebook gives staff slow internet to understand the developing world

Many have accused Silicon Valley of being out of touch, and for good reasons: among other things, it acts as if the entire planet has access to super-fast, always-on internet connections. Facebook, however, wants to give its employees a wake up call. It's starting up "2G Tuesdays," an optional initiative that slows down its office internet access to speeds you see in rural India and other developing areas. It's a blunt reminder that even an ordinary web page can take minutes to load on a basic connection, and that anything Facebook can do to save data will make a huge difference. While it only subjects people to pokey internet access for an hour, that might be enough to ground staffers in reality.