14 ms·

FCC Filings Overwhelmingly Support Net Neutrality Once Spam Is Removed

380 points by xparadigm 9y ago

hhw 9y ago
It would be naively optimistic to think the FCC is going to just remove the spam from their counts willingly. At best they may remove from their counts any cases where someone's name was confirmed to have been used fraudulently. But how many of those 440,000 comments would that end up happening for? Unless the FCC fears public backlash, I think they're going to aggressively exercise plausible deniability on the spam counts, and push through their agenda using those counts as justification.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  They'll probably say none of the comments can be reliable and throw them all out and push through their agenda.
  - IshKebab 9y ago
    Yeah if they wanted the comments to be reliable they would have spent 5 minutes to add a CAPTCHA. This way they get to easily ignore the public comment.
ccvannorman 9y ago
1: No informed citizen in their right mind wants this to pass 2: Big telecoms are making a lot of spam to force democracy to their whim 3: People become aware of this and its talked about in news, "Well I heard the count was neck in neck, 'Oh well I heard that Comcast paid spammers'", deepening public hate of Comcast-esque companies 4: Comcast et al will get their way as usual and next week no one will care
- geogra4 9y ago
  aren't there big players on the other side. Why aren't the big VC houses fighting this? This seriously hampers their ability to have their startups have equal access to the open internet.
  - ccvannorman 9y ago
    VCs are way more interested in investing in 10 companies that might give them a 100x return than meddling in politics. Historically, regressive ideologies have funded think tanks at an order of magnitude higher than progressives. Good luck fighting old money dollar for dollar.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  It will all implode eventually. And as the tech world likes to recycle things, we'll see some form of the late BBS early internet years again. Then it will all start over. At least that's my hope. Just kind of clean house and start over.
  - ccvannorman 9y ago
    If a bunch of techies did this, I could be a part of it, and I wouldn't mind that 90% of the general population didn't follow suit immediately and were stuck with Comcast throttle. "Save yourself before saving the passenger next to you when the plane is going down"
cdevs 9y ago
I was pretty prepared for this when I noticed this is one of places I wouldn't have minded a captcha for once.
- pharrlax 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure they knew there would be a flood of opposition, and they left it insecure intentionally, in order to delegitimize the overwhelming consensus by lumping genuine filings in with spam filings and declaring the entire process tainted.
  - eli 9y ago
    It's a non binding public comment period. I think you overestimate how much they care.
meddlepal 9y ago
Anyone who thinks the FCC is going to change course under this administration based on public comments can buy the bridge I am selling in NYC.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  Anyone who thinks that these bodies ever change their mind due to the public comment periods is gullible. The public comment period is mandatory, and it's not like the FCC commissioners are dying to know the public's thought process and need their input. They have already made up their minds. The value provided by the public comment process is a) an opportunity for the public to get their comments on the record, not because it will change the outcome, but just for the historical value of having their viewpoint officially represented somewhere and b) the opportunity for FCC commissioners to be surprised by a higher-than-normal flood of replies and realize they may need to back something out for political expediency. This is the same way it works when you call your Congresspeople or do almost any other citizen interaction with the government. It's not like your Senator actually cares about your specific opinion and may find it convincing. The proposals supported or opposed by politicians are much larger than any single person's opinion or ideology (including the representative's own). Since Oliver did a segment on net neutrality under the Obama administration (in which he analogized cable lobbyist and then-FCC chair Tom Wheeler to a dingo hired to babysit a child), it really probably doesn't surprise them that a large volume of comments would be directed from that type of source again. It's also probably not surprising that people more likely to fill out an FCC comment form are generally pro-net neutrality.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - JustSomeNobody 9y ago
    > Anyone who thinks that these bodies ever change their mind due to the public comment periods is gullible. If people didn't believe things like this we wouldn't have staunch Democrats and Republicans who never vote across party lines.
  - deleted 9y ago
roflchoppa 9y ago
Strange to see the net becoming a weapon against public interest. More so to see it be used to push politics.
- East902 9y ago
  The exact opposite of what it should be.
Apreche 9y ago
Shouldn't we be spamming them right back? Fight fire with fire. Also, all these congresspeople and FCC folks have been paid off by Verizon/Comcast/etc. If the likes of Google, Apple, Netflix, etc. are really on our side, how come they aren't getting in on that bribing action? Google is multiple times the size of Verizon. Just buy the whole damn company. Hostile takeover. In our entire society the good guys are losing to bad guys at every turn, despite having the advantage in numbers and money because we refuse to play dirty. The time for fighting fair has past. If the ref isn't going to throw the flag, you need to cheat to beat a cheater.
- wordupmaking 9y ago
  Unless the whole point of the exercise is to beat cheating, as it were. Burning the village to "save the village" comes to mind. And seeing how muddying the waters, blurring the lines, seems to be tool numero uno, why help with that? Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oJ9w0x_dzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oJ9w0x_dzo
devwastaken 9y ago
Thats how democracy dies. It doesn't have to change it explicitly, it has to incite tact, and leave a trail. Every day, we are making history. If we do not speak, then the future will think we weren't talking.
- ccvannorman 9y ago
  Corollary: The more people that comment, the higher the budget of the think-tank whose job it is to make counter-comments (either via bot or shill). It's a difficult fight when any effort you put forwards can be matched with a few dollars.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Dollars have the disadvantage that they can only be coarsely targetted. A timely, laser focused argument will always beat whatever keywords Kellyanne Conway happens to be spamming millions of viewers with today. Campaigns at that scale just can't scratch the same itch. The trouble is laser targetted arguments take much more time to formulate, so you have to use them sparingly. The tau comes in handy.
- tn135 9y ago
  Sorry. I do not think people commenting on some document has anything to do with democracy that might be mob or troll rule but it isn't democracy (not that I am a fan of democracy either). Personally I agree with FCC's stand and keeping governments and elites who want everyone else to pay more for their "fair use" out of the equation looks like a good thing for me. I don't have time to comment on that document because I agree with administration.
  - nerdponx 9y ago
    It's a shame you're being downvoted for sharing your opinion. Personally I think you're delusional, but it's not like downvotes are going to change your mind.
    - 9y ago
East902 9y ago
Can't see why anyone wouldn't support net neutrality, especially consumers. If only the administration would listen, our opinion doesn't mean much.
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  Depends on the consumer. The ones getting zero-rated video from AT&T would hate to see net neutrality rules. To them, it's bad.
  - mattnewton 9y ago
    Then they are short sighted (or it is a tragedy of the commons). Zero rating is being done at the expense of allowing a free competitive market, and they will have no one to blame by themselves when service get crappier and there are fewer options in the future.
  - DiNovi 9y ago
    Well, not really, because it's not that the video is zero-rated, it's that everything else has an upcharge, which would go away due to competition
newsat13 9y ago
It's obvious to the tech community that net neutrality is a good thing. Let me pose a counter view in any case: what if verizon/comcast said they will give consumers a 75% discount should they be implement the anti-net neutrality way? After all, this is what Google/Facebook does. Give things away for free and their version of net-neutrality is they get to decide who pops up in the first page results above all (ads).
- smt88 9y ago
  Google and Facebook are not monopolies, as ISPs are in many cases. You have options. Internet service is also far more vital than Facebook.
  - newsat13 9y ago
    > Internet service is also far more vital than Facebook. Yes. So by lowering prices, more people will get access. I feel like you are adding a +1 here to the anti-net neutrality view (cue the internet.org initiative by facebook).
    - wavefunction 9y ago
      You're overlooking the fact that open access to the full internet would not be what a 75% price-reduced 'offering' would entail. We've already been over this argument in fact watching Facebook's 'free basics' attempt to lock India down. Paying less for something different is not really a reduction in price, either.
    - tw04 9y ago
      That's extremely doubtful. There are already programs in place for low income households to get broadband for almost free.
    - kortex 9y ago
      When Google Fiber rolls into a town, prices from entrenched ISPs drop drastically. There's nothing stopping ISPs from providing cheaper and better service - except for the moral hazard of monopolistic control, free from the normal pressures of supply and demand.
lutostag 9y ago
I saw similar. Data for those that want to do their own analysis here: https://github.com/lutostag/gofccyourself-data/releases https://github.com/lutostag/gofccyourself-data/releases
revel 9y ago
I, for one, am shocked to hear this. Shocked I say
kharms 9y ago
That caveat, yikes! >there is some evidence of botting/spamming on the pro-NN side as well (though likely not to the same degree), which is not investigated in this post, and could shift conclusions.
- jobigoud 9y ago
  Yeah, he took a lot of liberties to support the title statement. The fact that many thousands of pro-NN are variations on the same sentences, because the template was provided by J. Oliver, also means implies that part of the anti-NN bulk could have been registered by humans working off a template as well. I would like to know the number of unique sentences and the stats on these. The only sane conclusion from this debacle is that these things are highly unreliable and better ways to get the population opinion are desirable.
  - croon 9y ago
    > Yeah, he took a lot of liberties to support the title statement. The fact that many thousands of pro-NN are variations on the same sentences, because the template was provided by J. Oliver, also means implies that part of the anti-NN bulk could have been registered by humans working off a template as well. I agree that it's possible, but seeing as the anti-NN template was used 440k times, and the top pro-NN template was used 26k times, I think it's fair to say that it's highly unlikely. Think about how viral that John Oliver clip/story got, and it doesn't even contain a template (IIRC), and then try to think of an anti-NN template that somehow got 17 times more viral/engagement. It's also relevant to consider who benefits from what side.
unityByFreedom 9y ago
Did anyone else catch Ajit Pai's first public comment since we flooded the FCC with pro-net neutrality comments? [1] If he thinks that is hip or cool, he's completely out of touch. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBt84HNAGwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBt84HNAGwU
speedplane 9y ago
I am hoping (perhaps wishfully) that 5G wireless technology will make much of this conversation moot. The reason why broadband companies are even theoretically able to get away with throttling certain sites is because there is so little consumer choice in broadband; few in this country have a choice at all. Assuming 5G delivers on its promise of broadband quality internet (far from assured), most US consumers will immediately have far more options. Competition between service providers will be a much better check than regulation.
- viraptor 9y ago
  Assuming that opposition to net neutrality is based on technical limitations rather than a money grab - you're right about 5G. But really... if people can be offered tired access, why wouldn't they?
  - azernik 9y ago
    Parent wasn't saying it was based on technical limitations - they were talking about the market leverage that broadband providers have in monopoly markets. By that view, 5G is important for how it changes the market rather than how it changes the technology.
    - viraptor 9y ago
      I get that it changes the monopoly. But if the rules allow tired access, there's nothing guaranteeing that mobile providers won't do the same.
      - problems 9y ago
        In Canada our regulator recently discussed this and one of the largest monopoly ISPs went to bat in favor of net neutrality. I suspect this is in large part due to the great increase in competition from the leased lines being enforced. If all the other companies aren't doing fast lanes and are doling out more bandwidth, well, you better compete, because that's something people will notice pretty quick.
wfo 9y ago
What we really need to be concerned about is how a party that runs entirely on being completely opposed to everything the American people want has taken control of the entire government and how it intends to maintain said control. I'm encouraged that now that the Republicans are trying to kill women, children, and the elderly by taking away their healthcare, that some people are finally losing patience. A few people. Mobilization behind net neutrality is still a million miles away from now, where people face the united Republican political and propaganda machine literally trying to murder them and say "well, we probably deserve it". A secondary concern is whether it's appropriate to use the word 'democratic' to describe anything about the United States government. Happily that concern is easily dealt with: the answer is 'no'.
- jack9 9y ago
  > being completely opposed to everything the American people want has taken control of the entire government That's not remotely true. That's what the media portrays, however. Don't try to spread FUD to an audience who has grown up learning to separate sensationalism from fact cough MS cough. They were GIVEN control (despite the pervasive belief that campaign money would win the day for the presidency, but maybe it did?) and there are many aspects of the Republican party that continues to support what the American people want via the status quo and initiative that people in blue states tend to not like. That's not the same thing.
  - JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
    >They were GIVEN control (despite the pervasive belief that campaign money would win the day for the presidency, but maybe it did?) The fact is, the majority of the voting public did not vote for Trump. Whether by gerrymandering or by unfortunate coincidence, Trump had a deficit, but the minimum votes needed in the areas that mattered. He's not opposed to -everything- the American people want, but he is the less popular of the two least popular candidates of all time. So yeah, he goes against the majority of America on a huge amount of policies. > there are many aspects of the Republican party that continues to support what the American people want via the status quo and initiative that people in blue states tend to not like. Aspects yes, but the I'd wager most of the decisions made have nothing to do with what the electorate actually want, and are more to do with what their corporate donors are pushing for. There are a lot of "safe" areas where it really doesn't matter what they do, voting repub/democrat is a way of life, not a choice.
Frogolocalypse 9y ago
Shame it won't make any difference.
dingo_bat 9y ago
> in this post I use the term “spam” to connote an identical bit of text that was repeatedly filed many times Wow! Nice definition of spam. Remove the most popular opinion, and hey look! everybody supports NN. > there is some evidence of botting/spamming on the pro-NN side as well (though likely not to the same degree), which is not addressed in this post, and could shift conclusions. IMO, this is just a blatantly biased attempt to delegitimatize any anti-NN feedback. Many people send their comments thru websites with boilerplate text, but they do it in support of what they believe. The author has presented no evidence that the comments he removed from consideration are actually spam and no evidence that the second most popular phrase (in favor of NN) is not spam.
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  I mean the below section of the post is fairly contradictory to your claim. > To further investigate this hypothesis, I randomly sampled 1000 filings that used the repeated text and queried the HaveIBeenPwned API to retrieve a list of known data breaches that the associated emails were involved in. I found that ~76% of emails associated with the repeated comment had been involved in at least one data breach, and ~66% were part of the RCM breach specifically:
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    My email address has also been part of multiple breaches. But I have changed my passwords quick enough that I am sure my email was not used to spam in this instance. The author's hypothesis would be stronger only if the breaches are fairly recent. Anything > a few months ago is likely not compromised anymore. Also, we need to know the same number for the most popular repeated pro-NN comment. Edit: apparently the RCM breach occurred quite recently. So I guess there is some legitimacy to the hypothesis. I would still like to see the same number for the pro-NN repeated comments too.
    - Chaebixi 9y ago
pvnick 9y ago
Corporate interests currently support net neutrality regulations for whatever reason. So you get entertainers like John Oliver pushing young folks who don't know any better to submit comments. Free market solutions are rarely in vogue. Thus the discrepency.
egypturnash 9y ago
I like the part where he "supported" his thesis that a certain class of comments is "spam" by checking a random sample of the associated email addresses against HaveIBeenPwned and finding that 75% of them showed up in there, but did not bother to make sure this is actually a real signal by checking a random sample of "real" comments as well.

380 points by xparadigm 9y ago

hhw 9y ago

It would be naively optimistic to think the FCC is going to just remove the spam from their counts willingly. At best they may remove from their counts any cases where someone's name was confirmed to have been used fraudulently. But how many of those 440,000 comments would that end up happening for? Unless the FCC fears public backlash, I think they're going to aggressively exercise plausible deniability on the spam counts, and push through their agenda using those counts as justification.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
They'll probably say none of the comments can be reliable and throw them all out and push through their agenda.
- IshKebab 9y ago
  Yeah if they wanted the comments to be reliable they would have spent 5 minutes to add a CAPTCHA. This way they get to easily ignore the public comment.

ccvannorman 9y ago

1: No informed citizen in their right mind wants this to pass 2: Big telecoms are making a lot of spam to force democracy to their whim 3: People become aware of this and its talked about in news, "Well I heard the count was neck in neck, 'Oh well I heard that Comcast paid spammers'", deepening public hate of Comcast-esque companies 4: Comcast et al will get their way as usual and next week no one will care

geogra4 9y ago
aren't there big players on the other side. Why aren't the big VC houses fighting this? This seriously hampers their ability to have their startups have equal access to the open internet.
- ccvannorman 9y ago
  VCs are way more interested in investing in 10 companies that might give them a 100x return than meddling in politics. Historically, regressive ideologies have funded think tanks at an order of magnitude higher than progressives. Good luck fighting old money dollar for dollar.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
It will all implode eventually. And as the tech world likes to recycle things, we'll see some form of the late BBS early internet years again. Then it will all start over. At least that's my hope. Just kind of clean house and start over.
- ccvannorman 9y ago
  If a bunch of techies did this, I could be a part of it, and I wouldn't mind that 90% of the general population didn't follow suit immediately and were stuck with Comcast throttle. "Save yourself before saving the passenger next to you when the plane is going down"

cdevs 9y ago

I was pretty prepared for this when I noticed this is one of places I wouldn't have minded a captcha for once.

pharrlax 9y ago
I'm pretty sure they knew there would be a flood of opposition, and they left it insecure intentionally, in order to delegitimize the overwhelming consensus by lumping genuine filings in with spam filings and declaring the entire process tainted.
- eli 9y ago
  It's a non binding public comment period. I think you overestimate how much they care.

meddlepal 9y ago

Anyone who thinks the FCC is going to change course under this administration based on public comments can buy the bridge I am selling in NYC.

cookiecaper 9y ago
Anyone who thinks that these bodies ever change their mind due to the public comment periods is gullible. The public comment period is mandatory, and it's not like the FCC commissioners are dying to know the public's thought process and need their input. They have already made up their minds. The value provided by the public comment process is a) an opportunity for the public to get their comments on the record, not because it will change the outcome, but just for the historical value of having their viewpoint officially represented somewhere and b) the opportunity for FCC commissioners to be surprised by a higher-than-normal flood of replies and realize they may need to back something out for political expediency. This is the same way it works when you call your Congresspeople or do almost any other citizen interaction with the government. It's not like your Senator actually cares about your specific opinion and may find it convincing. The proposals supported or opposed by politicians are much larger than any single person's opinion or ideology (including the representative's own). Since Oliver did a segment on net neutrality under the Obama administration (in which he analogized cable lobbyist and then-FCC chair Tom Wheeler to a dingo hired to babysit a child), it really probably doesn't surprise them that a large volume of comments would be directed from that type of source again. It's also probably not surprising that people more likely to fill out an FCC comment form are generally pro-net neutrality.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  > Anyone who thinks that these bodies ever change their mind due to the public comment periods is gullible. If people didn't believe things like this we wouldn't have staunch Democrats and Republicans who never vote across party lines.
- deleted 9y ago

roflchoppa 9y ago

Strange to see the net becoming a weapon against public interest. More so to see it be used to push politics.

East902 9y ago
The exact opposite of what it should be.

Apreche 9y ago

Shouldn't we be spamming them right back? Fight fire with fire. Also, all these congresspeople and FCC folks have been paid off by Verizon/Comcast/etc. If the likes of Google, Apple, Netflix, etc. are really on our side, how come they aren't getting in on that bribing action? Google is multiple times the size of Verizon. Just buy the whole damn company. Hostile takeover. In our entire society the good guys are losing to bad guys at every turn, despite having the advantage in numbers and money because we refuse to play dirty. The time for fighting fair has past. If the ref isn't going to throw the flag, you need to cheat to beat a cheater.

wordupmaking 9y ago
Unless the whole point of the exercise is to beat cheating, as it were. Burning the village to "save the village" comes to mind. And seeing how muddying the waters, blurring the lines, seems to be tool numero uno, why help with that? Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oJ9w0x_dzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oJ9w0x_dzo

devwastaken 9y ago

Thats how democracy dies. It doesn't have to change it explicitly, it has to incite tact, and leave a trail. Every day, we are making history. If we do not speak, then the future will think we weren't talking.

ccvannorman 9y ago
Corollary: The more people that comment, the higher the budget of the think-tank whose job it is to make counter-comments (either via bot or shill). It's a difficult fight when any effort you put forwards can be matched with a few dollars.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Dollars have the disadvantage that they can only be coarsely targetted. A timely, laser focused argument will always beat whatever keywords Kellyanne Conway happens to be spamming millions of viewers with today. Campaigns at that scale just can't scratch the same itch. The trouble is laser targetted arguments take much more time to formulate, so you have to use them sparingly. The tau comes in handy.
tn135 9y ago
Sorry. I do not think people commenting on some document has anything to do with democracy that might be mob or troll rule but it isn't democracy (not that I am a fan of democracy either). Personally I agree with FCC's stand and keeping governments and elites who want everyone else to pay more for their "fair use" out of the equation looks like a good thing for me. I don't have time to comment on that document because I agree with administration.
- nerdponx 9y ago
  It's a shame you're being downvoted for sharing your opinion. Personally I think you're delusional, but it's not like downvotes are going to change your mind.
  - 9y ago

East902 9y ago

Can't see why anyone wouldn't support net neutrality, especially consumers. If only the administration would listen, our opinion doesn't mean much.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
Depends on the consumer. The ones getting zero-rated video from AT&T would hate to see net neutrality rules. To them, it's bad.
- mattnewton 9y ago
  Then they are short sighted (or it is a tragedy of the commons). Zero rating is being done at the expense of allowing a free competitive market, and they will have no one to blame by themselves when service get crappier and there are fewer options in the future.
- DiNovi 9y ago
  Well, not really, because it's not that the video is zero-rated, it's that everything else has an upcharge, which would go away due to competition

newsat13 9y ago

It's obvious to the tech community that net neutrality is a good thing. Let me pose a counter view in any case: what if verizon/comcast said they will give consumers a 75% discount should they be implement the anti-net neutrality way? After all, this is what Google/Facebook does. Give things away for free and their version of net-neutrality is they get to decide who pops up in the first page results above all (ads).

smt88 9y ago
Google and Facebook are not monopolies, as ISPs are in many cases. You have options. Internet service is also far more vital than Facebook.
- newsat13 9y ago
  > Internet service is also far more vital than Facebook. Yes. So by lowering prices, more people will get access. I feel like you are adding a +1 here to the anti-net neutrality view (cue the internet.org initiative by facebook).
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    You're overlooking the fact that open access to the full internet would not be what a 75% price-reduced 'offering' would entail. We've already been over this argument in fact watching Facebook's 'free basics' attempt to lock India down. Paying less for something different is not really a reduction in price, either.
  - tw04 9y ago
    That's extremely doubtful. There are already programs in place for low income households to get broadband for almost free.
  - kortex 9y ago
    When Google Fiber rolls into a town, prices from entrenched ISPs drop drastically. There's nothing stopping ISPs from providing cheaper and better service - except for the moral hazard of monopolistic control, free from the normal pressures of supply and demand.

lutostag 9y ago

I saw similar. Data for those that want to do their own analysis here: https://github.com/lutostag/gofccyourself-data/releases https://github.com/lutostag/gofccyourself-data/releases

revel 9y ago

I, for one, am shocked to hear this. Shocked I say

kharms 9y ago

That caveat, yikes! >there is some evidence of botting/spamming on the pro-NN side as well (though likely not to the same degree), which is not investigated in this post, and could shift conclusions.

jobigoud 9y ago
Yeah, he took a lot of liberties to support the title statement. The fact that many thousands of pro-NN are variations on the same sentences, because the template was provided by J. Oliver, also means implies that part of the anti-NN bulk could have been registered by humans working off a template as well. I would like to know the number of unique sentences and the stats on these. The only sane conclusion from this debacle is that these things are highly unreliable and better ways to get the population opinion are desirable.
- croon 9y ago
  > Yeah, he took a lot of liberties to support the title statement. The fact that many thousands of pro-NN are variations on the same sentences, because the template was provided by J. Oliver, also means implies that part of the anti-NN bulk could have been registered by humans working off a template as well. I agree that it's possible, but seeing as the anti-NN template was used 440k times, and the top pro-NN template was used 26k times, I think it's fair to say that it's highly unlikely. Think about how viral that John Oliver clip/story got, and it doesn't even contain a template (IIRC), and then try to think of an anti-NN template that somehow got 17 times more viral/engagement. It's also relevant to consider who benefits from what side.

unityByFreedom 9y ago

Did anyone else catch Ajit Pai's first public comment since we flooded the FCC with pro-net neutrality comments? [1] If he thinks that is hip or cool, he's completely out of touch. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBt84HNAGwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBt84HNAGwU

speedplane 9y ago

I am hoping (perhaps wishfully) that 5G wireless technology will make much of this conversation moot. The reason why broadband companies are even theoretically able to get away with throttling certain sites is because there is so little consumer choice in broadband; few in this country have a choice at all. Assuming 5G delivers on its promise of broadband quality internet (far from assured), most US consumers will immediately have far more options. Competition between service providers will be a much better check than regulation.

viraptor 9y ago
Assuming that opposition to net neutrality is based on technical limitations rather than a money grab - you're right about 5G. But really... if people can be offered tired access, why wouldn't they?
- azernik 9y ago
  Parent wasn't saying it was based on technical limitations - they were talking about the market leverage that broadband providers have in monopoly markets. By that view, 5G is important for how it changes the market rather than how it changes the technology.
  - viraptor 9y ago
    I get that it changes the monopoly. But if the rules allow tired access, there's nothing guaranteeing that mobile providers won't do the same.
    - problems 9y ago
      In Canada our regulator recently discussed this and one of the largest monopoly ISPs went to bat in favor of net neutrality. I suspect this is in large part due to the great increase in competition from the leased lines being enforced. If all the other companies aren't doing fast lanes and are doling out more bandwidth, well, you better compete, because that's something people will notice pretty quick.

wfo 9y ago

What we really need to be concerned about is how a party that runs entirely on being completely opposed to everything the American people want has taken control of the entire government and how it intends to maintain said control. I'm encouraged that now that the Republicans are trying to kill women, children, and the elderly by taking away their healthcare, that some people are finally losing patience. A few people. Mobilization behind net neutrality is still a million miles away from now, where people face the united Republican political and propaganda machine literally trying to murder them and say "well, we probably deserve it". A secondary concern is whether it's appropriate to use the word 'democratic' to describe anything about the United States government. Happily that concern is easily dealt with: the answer is 'no'.

jack9 9y ago
> being completely opposed to everything the American people want has taken control of the entire government That's not remotely true. That's what the media portrays, however. Don't try to spread FUD to an audience who has grown up learning to separate sensationalism from fact cough MS cough. They were GIVEN control (despite the pervasive belief that campaign money would win the day for the presidency, but maybe it did?) and there are many aspects of the Republican party that continues to support what the American people want via the status quo and initiative that people in blue states tend to not like. That's not the same thing.
- JauntyHatAngle 9y ago
  >They were GIVEN control (despite the pervasive belief that campaign money would win the day for the presidency, but maybe it did?) The fact is, the majority of the voting public did not vote for Trump. Whether by gerrymandering or by unfortunate coincidence, Trump had a deficit, but the minimum votes needed in the areas that mattered. He's not opposed to -everything- the American people want, but he is the less popular of the two least popular candidates of all time. So yeah, he goes against the majority of America on a huge amount of policies. > there are many aspects of the Republican party that continues to support what the American people want via the status quo and initiative that people in blue states tend to not like. Aspects yes, but the I'd wager most of the decisions made have nothing to do with what the electorate actually want, and are more to do with what their corporate donors are pushing for. There are a lot of "safe" areas where it really doesn't matter what they do, voting repub/democrat is a way of life, not a choice.

Frogolocalypse 9y ago

Shame it won't make any difference.

dingo_bat 9y ago

> in this post I use the term “spam” to connote an identical bit of text that was repeatedly filed many times Wow! Nice definition of spam. Remove the most popular opinion, and hey look! everybody supports NN. > there is some evidence of botting/spamming on the pro-NN side as well (though likely not to the same degree), which is not addressed in this post, and could shift conclusions. IMO, this is just a blatantly biased attempt to delegitimatize any anti-NN feedback. Many people send their comments thru websites with boilerplate text, but they do it in support of what they believe. The author has presented no evidence that the comments he removed from consideration are actually spam and no evidence that the second most popular phrase (in favor of NN) is not spam.

BoiledCabbage 9y ago
I mean the below section of the post is fairly contradictory to your claim. > To further investigate this hypothesis, I randomly sampled 1000 filings that used the repeated text and queried the HaveIBeenPwned API to retrieve a list of known data breaches that the associated emails were involved in. I found that ~76% of emails associated with the repeated comment had been involved in at least one data breach, and ~66% were part of the RCM breach specifically:
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dingo_bat 9y ago
  My email address has also been part of multiple breaches. But I have changed my passwords quick enough that I am sure my email was not used to spam in this instance. The author's hypothesis would be stronger only if the breaches are fairly recent. Anything > a few months ago is likely not compromised anymore. Also, we need to know the same number for the most popular repeated pro-NN comment. Edit: apparently the RCM breach occurred quite recently. So I guess there is some legitimacy to the hypothesis. I would still like to see the same number for the pro-NN repeated comments too.
  - Chaebixi 9y ago

pvnick 9y ago

Corporate interests currently support net neutrality regulations for whatever reason. So you get entertainers like John Oliver pushing young folks who don't know any better to submit comments. Free market solutions are rarely in vogue. Thus the discrepency.

egypturnash 9y ago

I like the part where he "supported" his thesis that a certain class of comments is "spam" by checking a random sample of the associated email addresses against HaveIBeenPwned and finding that 75% of them showed up in there, but did not bother to make sure this is actually a real signal by checking a random sample of "real" comments as well.