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I'm not sure Wheeler's turncoat, pro-consumer behaviour was predictable (or, for that matter, predicted) by anyone, you or otherwise. I think it's both more lik

I'm not sure Wheeler's turncoat, pro-consumer behaviour was predictable (or, for that matter, predicted) by anyone, you or otherwise. I think it's both more likely and more rational to assume duckness if walking and talking are both ducklike. Put another way, this sure looks like a Bad Thing, and until a Wheeler-like situation arises and transforms it into a Good Thing, I don't think the HN hoi polloi can be blamed for reacting to the Bad Thing.

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rayiner 10y ago
I'm not saying I told you so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713588.
- justratsinacoat 10y ago
  Firstly, I'm glad you're not, as you can't! I wasn't an HN member that long ago! :P Secondly, I'm glad you're not, because even 800 days ago when you posted that, someone brought up the extremely inconvenient fact of Wheeler's 12-year tenure at the "Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association", a lobbyist group for telcos, starting in '92. The perception that he was a lobbyist who ascended to a regulatory body seems to hold up! ...although the truth of the statement "no one could have seen that coming" is clearly disputable. :P
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  - rayiner 10y ago
    Cable, cellular, now cloud: Wheeler started backing each of these industries when they were the underdog. His policies as Chairman are not a surprise.
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dsharlet 10y ago
When Wheeler was nominated, he had a blog on the topic of telecom public policy, going back several years, with a lot of very deep and nuanced commentary on issues like the natural monopoly that arises in telecom infrastructure. I read a lot of it. It was obvious that he was not a last minute "turncoat". Wheeler's behavior was very predictable, if people only read primary sources instead of letting themselves get led around by the nose by clickbait/outrage farms.
- justratsinacoat 10y ago
  Consider me having been led around by the nose by clickbait/outrage farms. I wish you'd been around to provide the link to Wheeler's blog when this was news. If you follow the other subthread, you'll find another HN user who's provided a link to his commentary when all this was going down, and if the HN of that time didn't have access to Wheeler's blog's information (do you have a link, btw?), I feel I'm in pretty reasonably poorly-informed company. This outlines a particularly pernicious problem with redditalikes as platforms for news and commentary -- if the parent is telling the truth about Wheeler's public musings about how he couldn't abide by the monopolistic behaviours of American telcos, how and why did reddit/HN/etc not jump on it and shout it loudly from the commentthreads, riding the (perhaps more reddit-y) trope of the top comment being a stringent correction of the incorrect info in the actual submission? The only thing redditalike media platforms like more than being right is being able to correct someone, after all...
  - dsharlet 10y ago
    Amusingly, it seems that he allowed his blog's domain/hosting to lapse. You can find some of it on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20110206171653/http://www.mobilemusings.net/2010_12_01_archive.html http://web.archive.org/web/20110206171653/http://www.mobilem... I've only been able to access a subset of the posts, and I can't find the particular post that really convinced me that he wasn't the example of lobbyist/regulator revolving door that everyone was saying he was. I wasn't on HN at the time. However, I did post links to his blog on reddit in the relevant threads, my posts linking to his blog just didn't get much traction. They got mildly upvoted and started a few small conversations, but absolutely nothing compared to the witty one-liners and ranting about lobbyists, shills, and Obama being a sellout.

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rayiner 10y ago

I'm not saying I told you so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7713588.

justratsinacoat 10y ago
Firstly, I'm glad you're not, as you can't! I wasn't an HN member that long ago! :P Secondly, I'm glad you're not, because even 800 days ago when you posted that, someone brought up the extremely inconvenient fact of Wheeler's 12-year tenure at the "Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association", a lobbyist group for telcos, starting in '92. The perception that he was a lobbyist who ascended to a regulatory body seems to hold up! ...although the truth of the statement "no one could have seen that coming" is clearly disputable. :P
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rayiner 10y ago
  Cable, cellular, now cloud: Wheeler started backing each of these industries when they were the underdog. His policies as Chairman are not a surprise.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

dsharlet 10y ago

When Wheeler was nominated, he had a blog on the topic of telecom public policy, going back several years, with a lot of very deep and nuanced commentary on issues like the natural monopoly that arises in telecom infrastructure. I read a lot of it. It was obvious that he was not a last minute "turncoat". Wheeler's behavior was very predictable, if people only read primary sources instead of letting themselves get led around by the nose by clickbait/outrage farms.

justratsinacoat 10y ago
Consider me having been led around by the nose by clickbait/outrage farms. I wish you'd been around to provide the link to Wheeler's blog when this was news. If you follow the other subthread, you'll find another HN user who's provided a link to his commentary when all this was going down, and if the HN of that time didn't have access to Wheeler's blog's information (do you have a link, btw?), I feel I'm in pretty reasonably poorly-informed company. This outlines a particularly pernicious problem with redditalikes as platforms for news and commentary -- if the parent is telling the truth about Wheeler's public musings about how he couldn't abide by the monopolistic behaviours of American telcos, how and why did reddit/HN/etc not jump on it and shout it loudly from the commentthreads, riding the (perhaps more reddit-y) trope of the top comment being a stringent correction of the incorrect info in the actual submission? The only thing redditalike media platforms like more than being right is being able to correct someone, after all...
- dsharlet 10y ago
  Amusingly, it seems that he allowed his blog's domain/hosting to lapse. You can find some of it on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20110206171653/http://www.mobilemusings.net/2010_12_01_archive.html http://web.archive.org/web/20110206171653/http://www.mobilem... I've only been able to access a subset of the posts, and I can't find the particular post that really convinced me that he wasn't the example of lobbyist/regulator revolving door that everyone was saying he was. I wasn't on HN at the time. However, I did post links to his blog on reddit in the relevant threads, my posts linking to his blog just didn't get much traction. They got mildly upvoted and started a few small conversations, but absolutely nothing compared to the witty one-liners and ranting about lobbyists, shills, and Obama being a sellout.