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Author here. I just realized someone had submitted this to HN. I spent a lot of time researching and writing this article, and am excited to read any feedback y

Author here. I just realized someone had submitted this to HN. I spent a lot of time researching and writing this article, and am excited to read any feedback you may have. Also, here's how you can contact the FCC directly: 1-888-225-5322 press 1, then 4, then 2, then 0 say that you wish to file comments concerning the FCC Chairman’s plan to end net neutrality Or on the web: https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express Under Proceedings, enter 14-28 and 17-108 Suggested script: It's my understanding that the FCC Chairman intends to reverse net neutrality rules and put big Internet Service Providers in charge of the internet. I am firmly against this action. I believe that these ISPs will operate solely in their own interests and not in the interests of what is best for the American public. In the past 10 years, broadband companies have been guilty of: deliberately throttling internet traffic, squeezing customers with arbitrary data caps, misleading consumers about the meaning of “unlimited” internet, giving privileged treatment to companies they own, strong-arming cities to prevent them from giving their residents high-speed internet, and avoiding real competition at all costs. Consumers, small businesses, and all Americans deserve an open internet. So to restate my position: I am against the chairman's plan to reverse the net neutrality rules. I believe doing so will destroy a vital engine for innovation, growth, and communication. This information is taken from this thread on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6894i9/heres_how_to_contact_the_fcc_with_your_thoughts/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6894i9/heres_ho...

bootload 9y ago
" I just realised someone had submitted this to HN." I did, important and a good read. Trivial Q. What search term did you use on google to get show the paid adverts google inserts above "freecodecamp"? Was the term generic? I get this result (no adverts, many links to freecodecamp): https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/34191703472 https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/34191703472
- quincyla 9y ago
  I just used the term "freecodecamp". I think they showed the ad based on geolocation.
  - bootload 9y ago
    "showed the ad based on geolocation." thx @quincyla, Google doing the, "your reality isn't everybody else's reality". So localised search hits harder with adverts.
pdonis 9y ago
I submitted a comment basically along the same lines, but focusing on rebutting particular claims in the FCC's notice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14215198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14215198
- bootload 9y ago
  thx @pdonis, comments are second class submissions. Would be an interesting experiment to have a page to submit HN comments as posts (add a title, get a few ppl to recommend).
  - pdonis 9y ago
    > comments are second class submissions Just to be clear, it's not an "Express Filing", it's a "Standard Filing", which allows attaching a document (express just lets you paste in text, with no formatting--not even line breaks). Those are the only two options on the FCC's site for submitting filings.
treymo 9y ago
Great article! My only feedback on the article is that you cite sources (maybe I missed it). I find the Western Union and Hayes espionage story emotionally appealing but I couldn't find any serious sources with a quick Google search. The Rutherford B. Hayes Wikipedia article mentions neither Western Union or any sort of spying/espionage.
- quincyla 9y ago
  This is explored in Tim Wu's book, which I strongly recommend reading. "The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires": http://amzn.to/2cjtFDH http://amzn.to/2cjtFDH
rustynails 9y ago
I thoroughly enjoyed your read. I have a few comments for you to mull over. The article should re-iterate the impacts of loss of net neutrality and a focus of power in the summary at the end. "They control politics. Facebook won the new president the election — even the president and his advisors acknowledge this.". This is really a stretch of the truth. Hillary surround herself with wealthy celebrities. She played the gender card hard (see her exit speech and look for "boys" and "girls" to see how transparent she was in her prejudice). Hillary lost (albeit by a small margin) by being out of touch with average people through arrogance, sexism, elitism. I would rewrite your section as it really doesn't reflect that I'd call truth. There is also a battle raging in the media. Extreme sexism (eg. Look at NYT's hiring page for a gender editor - and if that's been altered, look at my past analysis), or collusion on topics like domestic violence (ie. not one single media outlet will admit that many women are aggressors too - that's extreme collusion across all mainstream media). This collusion represents a loss of freedom we need to fight for. If there's no media integrity, there's no Internet worth fighting for. There has been almost no integrity from much of the Internet for a long time. Your cause is excellent. I hope we can build an Internet with more freedom.
austincheney 9y ago
To be clear, and I do agree with you, that net neutrality is only half the problem. You hint on this very directly several times, but don't actually acknowledge this out right. There are two warring trusts here, and both are equally evil in that they will abuse you as much as they can. On one hand there is the distribution problem, which is the ISP monopoly. With the recently media fallout around rolling back ISP data collection some of the big ISPs have openly promised to not resell this collected data... but if they own their own advertising networks they have less incentive to. On the other side there is the content provider mega-states, which actually bigger and scarier than the ISPs. As your facts indicate the top 8 apps in the Apple app store come from Google and Facebook. Using their ad networks they can track your browsing habits as a third party service on second party sites, which means they know who you are even when you have no account with them or are logged out. Remember the fallout of SOPA. SOPA scared the shit out of social media. If that law passed then social media would actually have to police the content of user submissions without motivation from multi-billion dollar law suits. On one hand the ISP army is kind of evil in that they force their authority upon the public and the public is often powerless to do anything about it. The benefit of that is that they don't have to be dishonest about it, which is some level of transparency... even if still an aura of corruption. The content provider side is scarier to me, because they can only gain wealth and influence if users lend it to them... and for convenience most users absolutely give up their privacy. They often don't need the same super-power lobby force the ISPs need if they can convenience their users to scream loudly enough together. Fortunately, they are each the solution to the other's problems. If you believe the content providers are the greater evil then prioritize distribution and diversify your content sources. If you believe distribution (the ISPs) to be the greater problem then consolidate your content consumption and receive it through alternate providers.
- guelo 9y ago
  The ISPs are not trying to help you diversify your content sources, they want in on the content provider's take. Ideally they want to be the content monopoly themselves. Barring that they'll insert themselves in the middle as the gatekeeper and kingmaker charging both sides of the market. Either way consumers lose.
mirimir 9y ago
What's your take on overlay networks, such as VPNs and Tor, as a workaround?
- corv 9y ago
  They're not much use in China and that's the direction the net is heading.
  - jononor 9y ago
    From a visit to Szhenzen, VPNs seem pretty common? Or are they all in kahotz with the government?
    - corv 9y ago
      They're intentionally throttled down.
cookiecaper 9y ago
If you don't have showdead enabled, you should enable it. There's at least one real comment currently marked dead (from user rustynails, whose account is almost 2000 days old and appears to have been autokilled after posting a MRA rant around 6 months ago). You said you're excited for feedback, so heads up.
studentrob 9y ago
Could certain cities make laws requiring last mile competition? Somebody in this thread mentioned that this is true in areas of Europe. In the US, maybe the easiest place to start doing that would be on a smaller scale and in urban areas. What cities are under a stranglehold of ISP monopolies? Do we have any maps of ISP coverage? If we had some data and a map we could pinpoint which areas have high density and low competition.
- rayiner 9y ago
  Cities don't have any leverage. I used to live in Baltimore (quite dense east coast city). Comcast has a de facto monopoly there. Verizon has fiber in most of Maryland, and all the surrounding suburbs, and wanted to build in Baltimore. Baltimore demanded full coverage of the city, and the numbers didn't work out so Verizon didn't build. Baltimore begged Google to build fiber but Google categorically doesn't agree to build out requirements.[1] What is Baltimore going to do? You can regulate all you want but you can't make companies build. The big dense cities best suited for fiber also tend to be broke, so municipal fiber isn't in the card either. There are no restrictions to municipal fiber here in Maryland--parts of Anne Arundel (heavily rural county around Annapolis) that don't have FiOS are getting municipal fiber. But Baltimore, like most larger US cities, is poorly managed and has no money. [1] Baltimore is in some ways a great candidate for fiber. The 740 miles of conduit under the city is owned by the city itself; utilities and telcos all rent conduit space per linear foot from the city. It's a significant east coast telecom hub. But fully 1/4 of residents are at or below the poverty line. Very few neighborhoods have enough higher income people who could afford to subscribe to $70/month fiber service. Outside of a handful of rich, heavily gentrified places like D.C., NYC, and SF, most of the dense cities (the ones best suited for fiber) in the US are also extremely poor. (That is in stark contrast to London or Paris, where wealthier people tend to live in the city while lower income people live in close suburbs).
  - studentrob 9y ago
    > Cities don't have any leverage I don't buy that. Cities have people with voting rights. Average income is higher in the US than in Asia, and coverage in Asia is pretty good. You can regulate to encourage a non-monopolistic system, particularly when businesses like Comcast are gouging to the sole benefit of investors who have already made theirs back. Two other commenters noted that competition is forced by law in the last mile of networks in Europe [0] [1]. Would ISPs really be put in dire straits if they were required to be a bit more competitive? I doubt it. It is very far fetched, particularly under this administration, that such regulation would happen. We can still discuss it now because we see a potential loss of quality in internet content. If that comes to pass, we can refer back to our earlier ideas and have another plan in mind. These days, I think we all see the need for less silos, not more. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14230705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14230705 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14231436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14231436

bootload 9y ago

" I just realised someone had submitted this to HN." I did, important and a good read. Trivial Q. What search term did you use on google to get show the paid adverts google inserts above "freecodecamp"? Was the term generic? I get this result (no adverts, many links to freecodecamp): https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/34191703472 https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/34191703472

quincyla 9y ago
I just used the term "freecodecamp". I think they showed the ad based on geolocation.
- bootload 9y ago
  "showed the ad based on geolocation." thx @quincyla, Google doing the, "your reality isn't everybody else's reality". So localised search hits harder with adverts.

pdonis 9y ago

I submitted a comment basically along the same lines, but focusing on rebutting particular claims in the FCC's notice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14215198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14215198

bootload 9y ago
thx @pdonis, comments are second class submissions. Would be an interesting experiment to have a page to submit HN comments as posts (add a title, get a few ppl to recommend).
- pdonis 9y ago
  > comments are second class submissions Just to be clear, it's not an "Express Filing", it's a "Standard Filing", which allows attaching a document (express just lets you paste in text, with no formatting--not even line breaks). Those are the only two options on the FCC's site for submitting filings.

treymo 9y ago

Great article! My only feedback on the article is that you cite sources (maybe I missed it). I find the Western Union and Hayes espionage story emotionally appealing but I couldn't find any serious sources with a quick Google search. The Rutherford B. Hayes Wikipedia article mentions neither Western Union or any sort of spying/espionage.

quincyla 9y ago
This is explored in Tim Wu's book, which I strongly recommend reading. "The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires": http://amzn.to/2cjtFDH http://amzn.to/2cjtFDH

rustynails 9y ago

I thoroughly enjoyed your read. I have a few comments for you to mull over. The article should re-iterate the impacts of loss of net neutrality and a focus of power in the summary at the end. "They control politics. Facebook won the new president the election — even the president and his advisors acknowledge this.". This is really a stretch of the truth. Hillary surround herself with wealthy celebrities. She played the gender card hard (see her exit speech and look for "boys" and "girls" to see how transparent she was in her prejudice). Hillary lost (albeit by a small margin) by being out of touch with average people through arrogance, sexism, elitism. I would rewrite your section as it really doesn't reflect that I'd call truth. There is also a battle raging in the media. Extreme sexism (eg. Look at NYT's hiring page for a gender editor - and if that's been altered, look at my past analysis), or collusion on topics like domestic violence (ie. not one single media outlet will admit that many women are aggressors too - that's extreme collusion across all mainstream media). This collusion represents a loss of freedom we need to fight for. If there's no media integrity, there's no Internet worth fighting for. There has been almost no integrity from much of the Internet for a long time. Your cause is excellent. I hope we can build an Internet with more freedom.

austincheney 9y ago

To be clear, and I do agree with you, that net neutrality is only half the problem. You hint on this very directly several times, but don't actually acknowledge this out right. There are two warring trusts here, and both are equally evil in that they will abuse you as much as they can. On one hand there is the distribution problem, which is the ISP monopoly. With the recently media fallout around rolling back ISP data collection some of the big ISPs have openly promised to not resell this collected data... but if they own their own advertising networks they have less incentive to. On the other side there is the content provider mega-states, which actually bigger and scarier than the ISPs. As your facts indicate the top 8 apps in the Apple app store come from Google and Facebook. Using their ad networks they can track your browsing habits as a third party service on second party sites, which means they know who you are even when you have no account with them or are logged out. Remember the fallout of SOPA. SOPA scared the shit out of social media. If that law passed then social media would actually have to police the content of user submissions without motivation from multi-billion dollar law suits. On one hand the ISP army is kind of evil in that they force their authority upon the public and the public is often powerless to do anything about it. The benefit of that is that they don't have to be dishonest about it, which is some level of transparency... even if still an aura of corruption. The content provider side is scarier to me, because they can only gain wealth and influence if users lend it to them... and for convenience most users absolutely give up their privacy. They often don't need the same super-power lobby force the ISPs need if they can convenience their users to scream loudly enough together. Fortunately, they are each the solution to the other's problems. If you believe the content providers are the greater evil then prioritize distribution and diversify your content sources. If you believe distribution (the ISPs) to be the greater problem then consolidate your content consumption and receive it through alternate providers.

guelo 9y ago
The ISPs are not trying to help you diversify your content sources, they want in on the content provider's take. Ideally they want to be the content monopoly themselves. Barring that they'll insert themselves in the middle as the gatekeeper and kingmaker charging both sides of the market. Either way consumers lose.

mirimir 9y ago

What's your take on overlay networks, such as VPNs and Tor, as a workaround?

corv 9y ago
They're not much use in China and that's the direction the net is heading.
- jononor 9y ago
  From a visit to Szhenzen, VPNs seem pretty common? Or are they all in kahotz with the government?
  - corv 9y ago
    They're intentionally throttled down.

cookiecaper 9y ago

If you don't have showdead enabled, you should enable it. There's at least one real comment currently marked dead (from user rustynails, whose account is almost 2000 days old and appears to have been autokilled after posting a MRA rant around 6 months ago). You said you're excited for feedback, so heads up.

studentrob 9y ago

Could certain cities make laws requiring last mile competition? Somebody in this thread mentioned that this is true in areas of Europe. In the US, maybe the easiest place to start doing that would be on a smaller scale and in urban areas. What cities are under a stranglehold of ISP monopolies? Do we have any maps of ISP coverage? If we had some data and a map we could pinpoint which areas have high density and low competition.

rayiner 9y ago
Cities don't have any leverage. I used to live in Baltimore (quite dense east coast city). Comcast has a de facto monopoly there. Verizon has fiber in most of Maryland, and all the surrounding suburbs, and wanted to build in Baltimore. Baltimore demanded full coverage of the city, and the numbers didn't work out so Verizon didn't build. Baltimore begged Google to build fiber but Google categorically doesn't agree to build out requirements.[1] What is Baltimore going to do? You can regulate all you want but you can't make companies build. The big dense cities best suited for fiber also tend to be broke, so municipal fiber isn't in the card either. There are no restrictions to municipal fiber here in Maryland--parts of Anne Arundel (heavily rural county around Annapolis) that don't have FiOS are getting municipal fiber. But Baltimore, like most larger US cities, is poorly managed and has no money. [1] Baltimore is in some ways a great candidate for fiber. The 740 miles of conduit under the city is owned by the city itself; utilities and telcos all rent conduit space per linear foot from the city. It's a significant east coast telecom hub. But fully 1/4 of residents are at or below the poverty line. Very few neighborhoods have enough higher income people who could afford to subscribe to $70/month fiber service. Outside of a handful of rich, heavily gentrified places like D.C., NYC, and SF, most of the dense cities (the ones best suited for fiber) in the US are also extremely poor. (That is in stark contrast to London or Paris, where wealthier people tend to live in the city while lower income people live in close suburbs).
- studentrob 9y ago
  > Cities don't have any leverage I don't buy that. Cities have people with voting rights. Average income is higher in the US than in Asia, and coverage in Asia is pretty good. You can regulate to encourage a non-monopolistic system, particularly when businesses like Comcast are gouging to the sole benefit of investors who have already made theirs back. Two other commenters noted that competition is forced by law in the last mile of networks in Europe [0] [1]. Would ISPs really be put in dire straits if they were required to be a bit more competitive? I doubt it. It is very far fetched, particularly under this administration, that such regulation would happen. We can still discuss it now because we see a potential loss of quality in internet content. If that comes to pass, we can refer back to our earlier ideas and have another plan in mind. These days, I think we all see the need for less silos, not more. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14230705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14230705 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14231436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14231436