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Americans from Both Political Parties Overwhelmingly Support Net Neutrality

625 points by joeyespo 9y ago

muninn_ 9y ago
And just to show how disconnected our government is, the Democrats barely support it, and the Republicans outright do not support it. Ridiculous. But hey, continue not voting for a third party. That will sure fix things.
- forinti 9y ago
  For starters, the title should be "Americans from the two major parties...".
- 5ilv3r 9y ago
  I love the "throwing your vote away" argument. Sorry guys, by voting for the big two, YOU are the one throwing it away. Third party support growth is a great indicator of the public's desire for real change. So what if you lose? You're voting to express your opinion, not to win.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    > So what if you lose? You're voting to express your opinion, not to win. It sounds like you don't actually have much at stake here. If you're poor, or queer, or Muslim, and you're choosing between a high-minded protest vote vs. keeping out the guy who will spend the next four years trying to destroy your family's safety, you sure as hell are voting to win.
    - 5ilv3r 9y ago
      A poll showing huge support for a candidate from the poor queer Muslims would be a hell of a thing, wouldn't it? I grew up poor. I am queer. Winning isn't everything. Sometimes enough people need to care for things to change, and sacrificing what you care about to win will NEVER get you there.
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    > You're voting to express your opinion, not to win. No, that's not why most people vote. And to be clear, I have nothing against anyone voting to express their opinion (vote is speech, after all), but most people actually use their vote to make their next few years as least shit as possible. That often means voting for someone you disagree with, because they're more likely to win. (This is, by the way, one of the reasons that Emmanuel Macron managed to finish first in the first french election round).
    - 5ilv3r 9y ago
      You can choose to play politics, but nothing says you have to. I think we've done it too much already. If you have to sacrifice most of what you care about to win, you lose yourself, and that is heart breaking.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > So what if you lose? You're voting to express your opinion, not to win. If I want to "express my opinion", I'll write an essay. Voting—which is by secret ballot—is poor for expressing opinions. It's to participate in choice of political leadership or (in the case of initiatives and referenda) concrete policy. In that light, winning—that is, getting the best outcome attainable in terms of leader or policy chosen—is more important than expressing opinion. Now, ideally, the electoral system would aggregate opinions well such that there would be nomdofferenve between optimizing for outcome and optimizing for accurate expression of opinion. But you go into the ballot box with the voting system you have, not the voting system you wish you had.
    - 5ilv3r 9y ago
      That's trying to influence people, not express an opinion on policy or candidates up for consideration. Winning isn't as important is being right, in my opinion.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    I vote because of the practical consequences it has. Voting for a candidate who can win can have practical consequences. Voting for someone with no chance of winning has no practical consequences. Voting to express your opinion is ridiculous. Expressing your opinion by voting has as much effect as expressing your opinion by shouting at a cloud. If you want viable third parties you have to change the system. The way it's designed now, viable third parties are impossible. Doesn't matter how much you vote for them. If by some chance you manage to make a third party into a viable national force, they will just displace one of the current major parties and you'll be back to a two-party system with slightly different labels.
    - 5ilv3r 9y ago
      You said impossible. I don't even need to come up with something clever here.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - ghigufufyfufu 9y ago
    In MA, we are pushing for instant runoff and Democrats just added it to the state platform. Stop complaining and help make it happen around America! Then other political parties will be viable.
    - 5ilv3r 9y ago
      That sounds more complicated...
      - ghigufufyfufu 9y ago
        It has the virtue of actually working. The mathematics of first past the post means the spoiler critique is literally true even as it undermines Democratic ideals. This tension can only be resolved by structural change.
- mwfunk 9y ago
  In the current system, it sure seems like all those third party votes do is make sure that whichever mainstream candidate you consider the greater evil is that much more likely to win, since presumably you're voting for a third party rather than who you perceive to be the lesser evil. To the degree that the US government really is disconnected from the people it represents (which I hope it is, because the alternative is much more hopeless), the solutions are getting money out of politics as much as possible, and adopting systems of voting which make it easier for third parties to be successful (or at least, constructively influential).
  - nategri 9y ago
    Re: Money-in-politics: I used to consider myself a Lessig-style single issue voter, but now everything is on fire and during the next 4 years there's a good chance I'll just vote for anyone holding a bucket of water. Once things are back to being normal-broken (instead of meta-broken), I'll get back on the wagon.
    - zanny 9y ago
      The problem is that normal-broken is going to be more broken than it was in 2016 pre-Trump, which was more broken than in 2000 pre-Bush, which was more broken than in 1992 pre-Clinton, which was more broken... etc. I only don't mention Obama because, despite his mass expansion of drone warfare, erosion of civil liberties, total corruption in the face of wall street destroying the economy (and in response to Occupy), flawed healthcare law, military interventionism, and botched promises (nice job closing gitmo) Bush was so bad that it basically just maintained a status quo badness throughout his administration by shifting the bad from the absurdly bad (extreme torture, geneva violations, letting entire cities sink) to just normally bad (including letting a city parch itself on toxic lead water, which is still happening by the way). It is also valuable to consider that the more broken it gets, the harder it is to correct. The more power the oligarchs have, the more rules put in place to prevent protest and revolution. Gerrymandering has (on average) only gotten worse. The longer you wait to realign reality against neoliberalism the more traumatizing the correction is (and the more people that suffer and die under the regime, either from lack of healthcare access to being blown up by tomahawks).
- akhilcacharya 9y ago
  Barely support it? Hillary ran on it and Obama's pick lead to reclassification.
- Darthy 9y ago
  It's funny to me that obviously the "First-past-the-post" voting system is reason for so much problems in the US, from amplified corporate influence to a president who has very little support with the public. Why don't you - yes you who is reading this right now - start a long term grassroots campaign with the goal to move to a better system within 20 years. This would be the most important thing that you would have ever done, and it would make America better, and it would make the world better.
  - czinck 9y ago
    Our (hopefully benevolent) AI overlords will be in control well before the US changes away from first-past-the-post, at least on the whole. The US is too geographically and culturally distinct (for good reasons, not just blue/red states) to implement proportional representation in a way that doesn't piss off everyone. I had written some more explaining why, but the simple fact that you'd need to convince roughly half of US states to vote to give themselves less power means this would never happen. We can't even get reforming the Electoral College through enough blue states, and the President is supposed to represent all states.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > The US is too geographically and culturally distinct (for good reasons, not just blue/red states) to implement proportional representation in a way that doesn't piss off everyone. Candidate centered more proportional systems with multimember districts (e.g., STV) could be implemented without substantially changing the state based structure or apportionment of legislative power (if you go with fixed five-member districts for the House, you'd need to increase the quantum of apportionment to 5 seats, which would somewhat shift power unless you quintupled the number of seats.) This would leave the regional distortions in place, but address the limited-time problems of duopoly.
throwawayjava 9y ago
The problem with this sort of poll is that rhetoric, for a huge number of voters, has a much greater impact than facts about issues. Even and especially if they aren't aware this is the case. This poll reminds me of those ACA polls which concluded overwhelming support by focusing on particular aspects of the Act instead of just coming right out an asking "Obamacare: repeal or keep?" with no preface. If you truly want to gauge public opinion as it will matter in election years -- which is pretty much the only way it matters -- you shouldn't define net neutrality and you definitely shouldn't ask a sequence of potentially priming questions. Instead, you should just ask: "Do you support Net Neutrality?" and nothing else! Of course, the results of this survey are still important. But they might not be predictive of how the average person really feels when asked, over a beer, whether we should "keep internet Obamacare" or "let Comcast censor our speech"
- cwyers 9y ago
  > If you truly want to gauge public opinion as it will matter in election years -- which is pretty much the only way it matters -- you shouldn't define net neutrality and you definitely shouldn't ask a sequence of potentially priming questions. Instead, you should just ask: "Do you support Net Neutrality?" and nothing else! Well, "would you change your vote" or "would you stay home rather than vote for a candidate who disagrees with you" are even more meaningful questions, if you think they'll answer honestly.
- snowwrestler 9y ago
  Rhetoric changes, though. Now that Obamacare is at risk of repeal, people are paying a lot more attention to the details of what it does. That's why GOP members, who thought they would be heroes back home for finally repealing it, are instead getting screamed at.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  > Instead, you should just ask: "Do you support Net Neutrality?" and nothing else! That might tell you who will favor a candidate who says "I support Net Neutrality" as a sound bite. It won't tell you if they mean the same thing that you have in mind. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey . "If by net neutrality you mean ..."
miguelrochefort 9y ago
I don't understand why anyone would support Net Neutrality. What's the difference between forcing a TV cable provider to provide all channels, forcing Netflix to provide all movies, forcing Spotify to provide all albums, forcing Amazon to sell all products, forcing Fedex to ship anywhere, forcing libraries to carry all books, forcing AT&T to let me call anyone (at no additional cost), and forcing Comcast to provide all websites? What if some ISP build their own protocol, are they subject to Net Neutrality's regulations? Why? Why prevent content providers from working with ISPs to better distribute their content? How is it different than allowing stores to associate with arbitrary shipping companies?
- opportune 9y ago
  Those are completely different business models. Cable companies pay channels to host them. Spotify pays artists / record labels to play their music. Comcast does not pay websites to transmit their data, and the websites are fine with that; they just want to be seen.
- abakker 9y ago
  They would support it because your analogy is faulty? Because our providers of internet are often the ONLY choice, due to enforced monopolies, any choices the carrier makes are forced choices on the consumers. If you were forced to buy all your products from amazon, all movies from netflix, and all songs from spotify, then your analogy would hold.
  - miguelrochefort 9y ago
    What if carriers were forced to provide a package that gives access to the entire Internet, but also free to provide packages that makes streaming Netflix or Spotify free?
    - abakker 9y ago
      While I have no conceptual problem with that, it only really makes sense if you pay for bandwidth. Right now, I pay for "internet @ speed". I think your model would work if I paid for "100GB of Internet @ speed". The argument against it, which I am O.K. with, is that the carrier would bias consumption toward established brands, and that would set up competitive barriers to entry for new companies. This would theoretically reduce consumer choice and decrease competition, eventually raising prices. (after all, if the carriers just recoup the costs from Netflix, they'll eventually pass them along to us.)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
glitcher 9y ago
I don't know much about statistics, but is the sample size of 1000 people surveyed here significant enough to be drawing conclusions from? It feels small to me, would anyone with a stronger background in this area care to comment?
- nnm 9y ago
  1000 is enough for this case. Depends on how "accurate" you want to measure a ratio. Here the ratio is the percentage of Americans that support net neutrality. In this case, sample size is 1000, estimated ratio is 76%, the 95% confidence interval is 76% +/- 2.65%, which means if you repeat this survey again, you have a 95% chance that new estimated ratio is within 76% +/- 2.65%. Edit: 99% confidence interval is 76% +/- 3.48%
  - passivepinetree 9y ago
    Well, it depends on where the 1000 people are drawn from as well. Your assumptions only hold if for both the original survey and the repeat, the pool of people being surveyed are an accurate sample of all of the United States.
    - nnm 9y ago
      Good point. On the other hand, the confidence interval I provided is correct as long as the original survey and the repeat are sampled in the same way (regardless whether it is un-biased sampling or not)
empath75 9y ago
I'm skeptical that most people have sufficient information upon which to make a decision. They just like the way it sounds. Here's the definition they provided: > “Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers providing consumer connection to the Internet should treat all data on the internet the same, not giving specific advantages or penalties in access by user, content, website, platform, or application.” Doesn't this seem like it makes any sort of QOS prioritization impossible? What if an ISP wanted to prioritize all real time traffic (voip, videogames, streaming video)?
- zanny 9y ago
  > What if an ISP wanted to prioritize all real time traffic (voip, videogames, streaming video)? Then they should increase bandwidth in their backbone or reduce latency for everyone. All that prioritizing real time traffic means is the ISP gets to judge what is important on the wire and what isn't, rather than the consumer. I don't want my ISP going anywhere near my packets.- or anyone, really - except for whoever I am sending them to. All they need to know is the destination address and the fastest way to get it there. If there were competition in ISPs, you could reasonably argue that ISP's being given sovereignty over the traffic on their lines would be acceptable. But as long as Internet service in the US is the domain of very few regional monopolies, they have too much power over the consumer to be able to mess with such critical infrastructure for their own gain.
  - sushisource 9y ago
    I mean sure, theoretically sounds good, in practice you would not want to give up the myriad QOS instruments that are already in place. They make your internet usage feel faster with very little downside. Absolutely, the Net Neutrality rules need to be in place, but your parent commentor is right when he says it's not going to be a trivial thing to define.
    - jeeceebees 9y ago
      What kind of QOS adjustments would be made impossible by assuming the above definition of net neutrality? Genuinely curious.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
I wonder what the results would be if it were phrased: "Do you think the government should make it illegal for a cell phone company to allow it's customers to stream unlimited music and movies from Netflix and Spotify with no data charges?" "Do you think the government should make it illegal for an Internet service company to willingly partner with a content provider to provide faster service for that content?"
- renlo 9y ago
  Good point. When voters are introduced to net neutrality the phrasing of the definition isn't going to be as clear as "Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers providing consumer connection to the Internet should treat all data on the internet the same, not giving specific advantages or penalties in access by user, content, website, platform, or application." It seems more difficult to be against net neutrality when it's defined like this. If people only get informed about the net neutrality issue from TV advertisements made by ISPs then the results will be a lot different.
StillBored 9y ago
Nothing really new here, much of what the government has been doing for at least the last 25 years is unpopular with not only a majority of people, but a majority of both democrats and republicans. What is s surprising is that, in many ways, the last 4 presidents all ran on a "change" message and have been unsuccessful at changing many of the things that both sides agree needs changing. Why is a deeper discussion, with plenty of blame, but the best way to summarize it, might just be to call it a bad marriage, where two people can no longer give the other side the benefit of the doubt in conversation, so everything being said sounds like personal attacks.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > What is s surprising is that, in many ways, the last 4 presidents all ran on a "change" message and have been unsuccessful at changing many of the things that both sides agree needs changing. Not really surprising: the President is the most powerful single individual in the US system, but the legislative branch as a whole is more powerful than the executive branch.
- sidlls 9y ago
  Running a change message campaign, and having the intent to behave as a maker of change are two different things. The simplest explanation is that these "change message" candidates were paying lip service to the electorate. It's not a charitable explanation, of course, but I'm not convinced being charitable ought to be a given when it comes to politicians' motives. So in my view it's not surprising at all.
  - 3131s 9y ago
    > The simplest explanation is that these "change message" candidates were paying lip service to the electorate. It's not a charitable explanation, of course, but I'm not convinced being charitable ought to be a given when it comes to politicians' motives. They don't deserve the charitable interpretation. These are people that facilitate the sale of weapons to extremists all over the world. You shouldn't have to tip-toe and be polite about it, the recent American presidents are corrupt, murderous authoritarians whose primary function is to act as a talking head for the banks and the war industry.
pvnick 9y ago
The results are contradictory and highlight technical illiteracy of the respondents. Another conclusion: Americans trust ISPs to protect access to the internet more than they do any branch of government. These issues are complicated and susceptible to populist whims. It's a good thing America is not a direct democracy.
tehwebguy 9y ago
Yeah, we want these government sponsored & subsidized monopolies to stay the hell out of our packets. Ajit Pai knows this, he just doesn't care.
cubano 9y ago
Who, when asked, wouldn't support "Net Neutrality?" It sounds like something everyone should be for.."hey, Net Neutrality hell yeah and we shouldn't club baby seals either!" As always, its the policies that really matter...having a catchy must-be-for-it-for-virtue-signaling moniker hardly explains what going on in the back rooms where the legislation is being written. It's like the "Affordable Care Act"...who doesn't want affordable-fucking-care? We are all currently learning, however, that this "care" is hardly that and "affordable" is nowhere in sight.
- tinalumfoil 9y ago
  > Most Americans do not trust the U.S. government to protect access to the Internet Net neutrality is regulated by the FCC, a government agency under Donald Trump. By this article's own admission people have very little faith in the government. There's an interesting sentiment on HN that more regulation is the correct response to distrusting the government but I'd imagine lessening executive power is the more common response.
  - Tyrannosaur 9y ago
    Very true, but despite the distrust of the government, Americans tend to have even more distrust of Comcast
- toast0 9y ago
  > Who, when asked, wouldn't support "Net Neutrality?" Me; not sure that counts though. Although, I support local loop unbundling, which has similar goals.
  - cubano 9y ago
    Local loop unbundling is a very much needed thing and I've been for since Bob Metcalfe used to push for it back in the 90's, but the name hardly virtue-signals like "Net Neutrality" does. I don't really see how the two are at all similar though.
    - 9y ago
n8n3k 9y ago
Satisfied my intellectual curiosity for the day ...
baron816 9y ago
Our problem is that Net Neutrality just isn't a big enough issue. Even if almost 100% of the people support it, not enough of them will change their vote on its account. American democracy is broken because we're always only given two choices. You're never allowed to vote for someone who is going to represent everything you believe in. Things could be different. If we had a system in which you could vote for whomever you want (regardless of where they're from) and that person had voting power in the legislature that was proportional to the share of votes they got, then the laws we would get would actually reflect the will of the people.
- mikeash 9y ago
  That seems problematic. The person whose views most closely match my own is me. If I can vote for literally anyone and it works out the same, then I'd vote for me, presumably everyone else would vote for themselves, and you'd have a weird version of direct democracy.
  - metaphorm 9y ago
    I don't think it's problematic. The duopoly system forces a large number of voters into "lesser evil" stances, or at least forces them to narrowly focus on their one pet issue and vote for candidates based only on that issue. a system with more choices has more opportunities to find candidates that you agree with on multiple dimensions of policy, as well as hopefully finding more candidates that you can respect as human beings. the post you're responding to is proposing a kind of non-geographically constrained proportionally allocated representational democracy. so, instead of voting for just one of the 2 candidates in your congressional district (which is likely gerrymandered anyway) you can vote for anyone in the country and that person's voting power in congress is proportional to their popular vote count. that's not dissimilar to a lot of corporate governance systems (voting shares of common stock widely distributed).
    - mikeash 9y ago
      I'm not sure how this addresses my objection. Sure, more choices means more opportunities to find candidates who match me perfectly. And if you allow literally anyone then that candidate is me. So you might as well not elect candidates at all, just give every citizen a vote in the legislature instead.
horsecaptin 9y ago
No one is going to lose an election for not supporting net-neutrality.
- malloryerik 9y ago
  Right, but they could lose a lot of campaign funding.
Shivetya 9y ago
I support it, but only partially and with caveats. If we are going to regulate service providers then why not limit what content providers can do as well? Why should they get a completely free ride? Here is that NN results in. Permanent protection from competition for internet providers as long as they agree to not be too profitable. In return for having their rates called into question and rate increases reviewed they are protected from having anyone being able to undercut them because those same would be subject to the same rates and rules. Which means, what you got now is what you will have for a long time. NN does not guarantee, in fact it slows, the chance for higher speeds because there won't be competition to deliver such to you. So those are my caveats. I would like to see additional pricing for content providers limited but not at the point they can free ride the net. We are just adding dollars to the content people's wallets and for what? So we can feel good about sticking it to Comcast (which I don't use). This didn't work for railroads or long distance, it took us a century for the former and nearly half for the latter to fix
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  Hu? How does NN limit rates, or competition, and how do content providers "free ride the net"?!?
gm-conspiracy 9y ago
In America, only two political parties?
- Yen 9y ago
  (I'm not sure if your comment was genuinely asking about the number of political parties in the U.S., or sarcastically remarking on the fact that there's only effectively two parties) While there are technically more than two political parties, the vast majority of Americans support one of the two major parties - the GOP (a.k.a. Republicans), and the Democrats. Between them, these parties more-or-less represent most of the range of political discussion and ideology in the U.S. The next-largest party is generally considered to be the Libertarians. Thus, while the statement "Americans from both political parties" may contain a technical inaccuracy, as there are technically more than two parties, it's a useful shorthand for "Typical Americans, regardless of political affiliation" As for why there's only two major political parties in the U.S., it's likely the result of most elections being simple plurality (a.k.a. first-past-the-post). This heavily encourages potential candidates to compromise and coalesce until there's only two candidates, to avoid the spoiler effect.
clashmoore 9y ago
I recall the GOP publishing their support for Net Neutrality in a previous election cycle platform and then abruptly changing it within a week to the opposite. Google is failing me in finding that original platform.
likelynew 9y ago
I am from India and I am closely aware of the wave that started with comedy groups in youtube of youtube and ended up defeating facebook's internet.org. I am little ambivalent about internet.org, but ended up converting 2 people to support internet.org. The common complaint here is this will make unpaid sites slow. This is partially borrowed by netflix event. They use "net neutrality" term, which most of the people have no idea what it means, and they get their entire idea from watching videos which shows faster and slower pipe. On asking them, for whom internet.org specifically is bad, they just don't have anything to say. I have to make them understand that this fight is not about a thing that will make their internet slow. The whole point of a million mails sent is not great care for the internet, but a feel good protest. They would have a much greater effect if they protested for better speeds for local websites, which kind of sucks more in India than one would expect. People are not very sad for seconds of delay, but are more concerned that some company will use faster lane to reduce delay by 10ms-20ms, which is of no use for company in a country which can tolerate very slow sites. Anyways, my point here is this term sound more of a fundamental characteristic of internet that we are loosing, than it is. The commonly envisioned future that we have to pay by services is not happening. Until that, we have far more important thing to protest against. I personally think better privacy and less data processing by machines is what we should protest for more often.
diogenescynic 9y ago
Politicians don't care what their constituents want. Americans overwhelmingly support basic gun-control laws, access to legal abortion, single-payer healthcare, and lots of other issues. Politicians only care about what their lobbyists and financial donors tell them to care about. That's the sad truth. We created this perverse system, so we can reform it when we choose. The only way to reverse this is to make elections publicly funded and reform campaign finance.
- Profragile 9y ago
  Speak for yourself! Only in your circlejerk do Americans support those completely un-American things. Anyone who understands the history and culture of America will vehemently oppose all of those things for obvious reasons.
- kristopolous 9y ago
  It's about the manufactured perception and not the material reality. Who manufactures this perception? Anyone who knows how to tell a good story...
jaggi1 9y ago
They obviously would. It gives them more control over the internet.
killin_dan 9y ago
Net neutrality is bad for the market. What people think they want does not supercede decades of economics. Regulating ISPs will do irreparable damage to the web, and it could be a decade or more before the average consumer can afford to be a part of a meshnet internet. Y'all just don't understand the level of manipulation happening. Point at the comcast boogieman (and rightfully so, tbh) as they strip ISPs of their liberties and force a certain business model on them. I have been somewhat disappointed with my fellow citizens before, and there's always been a certain kinship between Americans, but this is just too far. I guess we will learn econ 101 the hard way.
19guid 9y ago
I oppose net neutrality regulation. In principle, I don't think there's anything wrong with an ISP prioritizing certain kinds of traffic over others, so long as it does not have an anti-competitive effect. For example, I don't see how Netflix paying Comcast to zero-rate Netflix traffic is fundamentally different from Amazon contracting with mail carriers to subsidize the cost of shipping for Amazon purchases, or even -- to use an example another commenter made -- an appliance manufacturer contracting with electrical utilities to subsidize the cost of electricity used by their appliances. So long as Comcast makes its zero-rating program available to all content providers -- including their own -- on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, I don't think there are any competition issues. I've heard people argue that zero-rating makes it harder for smaller content providers to compete, since they won't have the resources to subsidize their customers' traffic. As I said in another comment, that's just the nature of business. Being big affords you certain advantages, like economies of scale. This makes it easier to compete on price. Smaller companies have to compete in other ways. In my view, the real problem with the telecom industry in the United States is a lack of competition [0], a problem caused at least in part by municipal [1] and state [2] governments. With more competition, net neutrality would be a non-issue. Consumers would just stop using ISPs that unfairly discriminate between traffic. [0] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/410353/net-neutrality-already-obsolete-michael-hendrix http://www.nationalreview.com/article/410353/net-neutrality-... [1] https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable-companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/ https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-ju... [2] http://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-by-state/ http://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblock...
- jcfrei 9y ago
  I think the Wired article misses the bigger picture. As you mentioned, the industry of providing network access is one with huge economies of scale. The result (if left unregulated) is always a monopoly or an oligopoly - with certain regions belonging to certain providers. Introducing a new competitor is very, very difficult in such a market, regardless of regulations and lowering prices for right of way. Google learned this the hard way - they have stopped their expansion back in 2016. As a government you can either heavily regulate such markets to make sure the consumers get a fair deal (which is what net neutrality is about) or you can turn it into a public service, ie. allow municipalities to provide internet access (what your third article alludes to).
geodel 9y ago
I think similar surveys like cheaper healthcare, healthier food, lesser college tuitions, better salaries and lower rents will also get similar support from both parties. Everyone like good stuff for them and bad effects can be pushed to other people/state/country and so on.
malloryerik 9y ago
I'm surprised that only one person here has mentioned campaign finance as the true issue here -- and they were downvoted. As horsecaptin noted on this thread, "No one is going to lose an election for not supporting net-neutrality." They do stand to lose serious campaign funding, however. Congressmen and Senators spend a majority of their time raising funds for their campaigns. If it weren't so important to them, they wouldn't. House representatives -- incumbents, no less -- need to raise about $20,000 a week to hold onto their positions, and Senators about $10,000. In 2014, the top four cable providers spent twice as much on campaign "donations" than the top five pharmaceutical companies. I'm not sure about 2016 but imagine it was similar. --- Some links How Much Money Big Cable Gave the Politicians Who Oversee the Internet [2014] http://gizmodo.com/how-much-money-big-cable-gave-the-politicians-who-overs-1657002442 http://gizmodo.com/how-much-money-big-cable-gave-the-politic... House Rep. Pushing To Set Back Online Privacy Rakes In Industry Funds http://www.vocativ.com/415350/house-rep-pushing-to-set-back-online-privacy-rakes-in-industry-funds/ http://www.vocativ.com/415350/house-rep-pushing-to-set-back-... The Campaign Cash That Can Kill the Open Internet [2015] All but two of the 31 co-sponsors of a House bill to kill net neutrality received thousands from telecoms in just the last election. http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-campaign-cash-that-can-kill-the-open-internet http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-campaign-cash-that-can-kill... Half of Anti-Net Neutrality Comments From "Shadowy" Koch Bros. Group http://gizmodo.com/half-of-anti-net-neutrality-comments-came-from-shadowy-1672248771 http://gizmodo.com/half-of-anti-net-neutrality-comments-came... Koch-affiliated astroturfers call Net Neutrality "Marxist" [2014] http://boingboing.net/2014/08/26/koch-affiliated-astroturfers-c.html http://boingboing.net/2014/08/26/koch-affiliated-astroturfer... Vote correlation: Internet privacy resolution and telecom contributions https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/03/vote-correlation-internet-privacy-res/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/03/vote-correlation-in... The 265 members of Congress who sold you out to ISPs, and how much it cost to buy them https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-web-browsing-privacy-fire-sale https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp... Internet Firms Are Far Behind Cable Companies in Political Donations https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/upshot/internet-firms-are-far-behind-cable-companies-in-political-donations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/upshot/internet-firms-are... [2014] The Humiliating Fundraising Existence of a Member of Congress [2014] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-humiliating-fundraising-existence-of-a-member-of-congress/277227/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-hum... Are members of Congress becoming telemarketers? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-are-members-of-congress-becoming-telemarketers/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-are-members-of-congre... How much time do politicians spend fundraising? https://www.quora.com/How-much-time-do-politicians-spend-fundraising https://www.quora.com/How-much-time-do-politicians-spend-fun...

625 points by joeyespo 9y ago

And just to show how disconnected our government is, the Democrats barely support it, and the Republicans outright do not support it. Ridiculous. But hey, continue not voting for a third party. That will sure fix things.

forinti 9y ago
For starters, the title should be "Americans from the two major parties...".
5ilv3r 9y ago
I love the "throwing your vote away" argument. Sorry guys, by voting for the big two, YOU are the one throwing it away. Third party support growth is a great indicator of the public's desire for real change. So what if you lose? You're voting to express your opinion, not to win.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  > So what if you lose? You're voting to express your opinion, not to win. It sounds like you don't actually have much at stake here. If you're poor, or queer, or Muslim, and you're choosing between a high-minded protest vote vs. keeping out the guy who will spend the next four years trying to destroy your family's safety, you sure as hell are voting to win.
  - 5ilv3r 9y ago
    A poll showing huge support for a candidate from the poor queer Muslims would be a hell of a thing, wouldn't it? I grew up poor. I am queer. Winning isn't everything. Sometimes enough people need to care for things to change, and sacrificing what you care about to win will NEVER get you there.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  > You're voting to express your opinion, not to win. No, that's not why most people vote. And to be clear, I have nothing against anyone voting to express their opinion (vote is speech, after all), but most people actually use their vote to make their next few years as least shit as possible. That often means voting for someone you disagree with, because they're more likely to win. (This is, by the way, one of the reasons that Emmanuel Macron managed to finish first in the first french election round).
  - 5ilv3r 9y ago
    You can choose to play politics, but nothing says you have to. I think we've done it too much already. If you have to sacrifice most of what you care about to win, you lose yourself, and that is heart breaking.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > So what if you lose? You're voting to express your opinion, not to win. If I want to "express my opinion", I'll write an essay. Voting—which is by secret ballot—is poor for expressing opinions. It's to participate in choice of political leadership or (in the case of initiatives and referenda) concrete policy. In that light, winning—that is, getting the best outcome attainable in terms of leader or policy chosen—is more important than expressing opinion. Now, ideally, the electoral system would aggregate opinions well such that there would be nomdofferenve between optimizing for outcome and optimizing for accurate expression of opinion. But you go into the ballot box with the voting system you have, not the voting system you wish you had.
  - 5ilv3r 9y ago
    That's trying to influence people, not express an opinion on policy or candidates up for consideration. Winning isn't as important is being right, in my opinion.
- mikeash 9y ago
  I vote because of the practical consequences it has. Voting for a candidate who can win can have practical consequences. Voting for someone with no chance of winning has no practical consequences. Voting to express your opinion is ridiculous. Expressing your opinion by voting has as much effect as expressing your opinion by shouting at a cloud. If you want viable third parties you have to change the system. The way it's designed now, viable third parties are impossible. Doesn't matter how much you vote for them. If by some chance you manage to make a third party into a viable national force, they will just displace one of the current major parties and you'll be back to a two-party system with slightly different labels.
  - 5ilv3r 9y ago
    You said impossible. I don't even need to come up with something clever here.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ghigufufyfufu 9y ago
  In MA, we are pushing for instant runoff and Democrats just added it to the state platform. Stop complaining and help make it happen around America! Then other political parties will be viable.
  - 5ilv3r 9y ago
    That sounds more complicated...
    - ghigufufyfufu 9y ago
      It has the virtue of actually working. The mathematics of first past the post means the spoiler critique is literally true even as it undermines Democratic ideals. This tension can only be resolved by structural change.
mwfunk 9y ago
In the current system, it sure seems like all those third party votes do is make sure that whichever mainstream candidate you consider the greater evil is that much more likely to win, since presumably you're voting for a third party rather than who you perceive to be the lesser evil. To the degree that the US government really is disconnected from the people it represents (which I hope it is, because the alternative is much more hopeless), the solutions are getting money out of politics as much as possible, and adopting systems of voting which make it easier for third parties to be successful (or at least, constructively influential).
- nategri 9y ago
  Re: Money-in-politics: I used to consider myself a Lessig-style single issue voter, but now everything is on fire and during the next 4 years there's a good chance I'll just vote for anyone holding a bucket of water. Once things are back to being normal-broken (instead of meta-broken), I'll get back on the wagon.
  - zanny 9y ago
    The problem is that normal-broken is going to be more broken than it was in 2016 pre-Trump, which was more broken than in 2000 pre-Bush, which was more broken than in 1992 pre-Clinton, which was more broken... etc. I only don't mention Obama because, despite his mass expansion of drone warfare, erosion of civil liberties, total corruption in the face of wall street destroying the economy (and in response to Occupy), flawed healthcare law, military interventionism, and botched promises (nice job closing gitmo) Bush was so bad that it basically just maintained a status quo badness throughout his administration by shifting the bad from the absurdly bad (extreme torture, geneva violations, letting entire cities sink) to just normally bad (including letting a city parch itself on toxic lead water, which is still happening by the way). It is also valuable to consider that the more broken it gets, the harder it is to correct. The more power the oligarchs have, the more rules put in place to prevent protest and revolution. Gerrymandering has (on average) only gotten worse. The longer you wait to realign reality against neoliberalism the more traumatizing the correction is (and the more people that suffer and die under the regime, either from lack of healthcare access to being blown up by tomahawks).
akhilcacharya 9y ago
Barely support it? Hillary ran on it and Obama's pick lead to reclassification.
Darthy 9y ago
It's funny to me that obviously the "First-past-the-post" voting system is reason for so much problems in the US, from amplified corporate influence to a president who has very little support with the public. Why don't you - yes you who is reading this right now - start a long term grassroots campaign with the goal to move to a better system within 20 years. This would be the most important thing that you would have ever done, and it would make America better, and it would make the world better.
- czinck 9y ago
  Our (hopefully benevolent) AI overlords will be in control well before the US changes away from first-past-the-post, at least on the whole. The US is too geographically and culturally distinct (for good reasons, not just blue/red states) to implement proportional representation in a way that doesn't piss off everyone. I had written some more explaining why, but the simple fact that you'd need to convince roughly half of US states to vote to give themselves less power means this would never happen. We can't even get reforming the Electoral College through enough blue states, and the President is supposed to represent all states.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > The US is too geographically and culturally distinct (for good reasons, not just blue/red states) to implement proportional representation in a way that doesn't piss off everyone. Candidate centered more proportional systems with multimember districts (e.g., STV) could be implemented without substantially changing the state based structure or apportionment of legislative power (if you go with fixed five-member districts for the House, you'd need to increase the quantum of apportionment to 5 seats, which would somewhat shift power unless you quintupled the number of seats.) This would leave the regional distortions in place, but address the limited-time problems of duopoly.

throwawayjava 9y ago

The problem with this sort of poll is that rhetoric, for a huge number of voters, has a much greater impact than facts about issues. Even and especially if they aren't aware this is the case. This poll reminds me of those ACA polls which concluded overwhelming support by focusing on particular aspects of the Act instead of just coming right out an asking "Obamacare: repeal or keep?" with no preface. If you truly want to gauge public opinion as it will matter in election years -- which is pretty much the only way it matters -- you shouldn't define net neutrality and you definitely shouldn't ask a sequence of potentially priming questions. Instead, you should just ask: "Do you support Net Neutrality?" and nothing else! Of course, the results of this survey are still important. But they might not be predictive of how the average person really feels when asked, over a beer, whether we should "keep internet Obamacare" or "let Comcast censor our speech"

cwyers 9y ago
> If you truly want to gauge public opinion as it will matter in election years -- which is pretty much the only way it matters -- you shouldn't define net neutrality and you definitely shouldn't ask a sequence of potentially priming questions. Instead, you should just ask: "Do you support Net Neutrality?" and nothing else! Well, "would you change your vote" or "would you stay home rather than vote for a candidate who disagrees with you" are even more meaningful questions, if you think they'll answer honestly.
snowwrestler 9y ago
Rhetoric changes, though. Now that Obamacare is at risk of repeal, people are paying a lot more attention to the details of what it does. That's why GOP members, who thought they would be heroes back home for finally repealing it, are instead getting screamed at.
JoshTriplett 9y ago
> Instead, you should just ask: "Do you support Net Neutrality?" and nothing else! That might tell you who will favor a candidate who says "I support Net Neutrality" as a sound bite. It won't tell you if they mean the same thing that you have in mind. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If-by-whiskey . "If by net neutrality you mean ..."

miguelrochefort 9y ago

I don't understand why anyone would support Net Neutrality. What's the difference between forcing a TV cable provider to provide all channels, forcing Netflix to provide all movies, forcing Spotify to provide all albums, forcing Amazon to sell all products, forcing Fedex to ship anywhere, forcing libraries to carry all books, forcing AT&T to let me call anyone (at no additional cost), and forcing Comcast to provide all websites? What if some ISP build their own protocol, are they subject to Net Neutrality's regulations? Why? Why prevent content providers from working with ISPs to better distribute their content? How is it different than allowing stores to associate with arbitrary shipping companies?

opportune 9y ago
Those are completely different business models. Cable companies pay channels to host them. Spotify pays artists / record labels to play their music. Comcast does not pay websites to transmit their data, and the websites are fine with that; they just want to be seen.
abakker 9y ago
They would support it because your analogy is faulty? Because our providers of internet are often the ONLY choice, due to enforced monopolies, any choices the carrier makes are forced choices on the consumers. If you were forced to buy all your products from amazon, all movies from netflix, and all songs from spotify, then your analogy would hold.
- miguelrochefort 9y ago
  What if carriers were forced to provide a package that gives access to the entire Internet, but also free to provide packages that makes streaming Netflix or Spotify free?
  - abakker 9y ago
    While I have no conceptual problem with that, it only really makes sense if you pay for bandwidth. Right now, I pay for "internet @ speed". I think your model would work if I paid for "100GB of Internet @ speed". The argument against it, which I am O.K. with, is that the carrier would bias consumption toward established brands, and that would set up competitive barriers to entry for new companies. This would theoretically reduce consumer choice and decrease competition, eventually raising prices. (after all, if the carriers just recoup the costs from Netflix, they'll eventually pass them along to us.)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

glitcher 9y ago

I don't know much about statistics, but is the sample size of 1000 people surveyed here significant enough to be drawing conclusions from? It feels small to me, would anyone with a stronger background in this area care to comment?

nnm 9y ago
1000 is enough for this case. Depends on how "accurate" you want to measure a ratio. Here the ratio is the percentage of Americans that support net neutrality. In this case, sample size is 1000, estimated ratio is 76%, the 95% confidence interval is 76% +/- 2.65%, which means if you repeat this survey again, you have a 95% chance that new estimated ratio is within 76% +/- 2.65%. Edit: 99% confidence interval is 76% +/- 3.48%
- passivepinetree 9y ago
  Well, it depends on where the 1000 people are drawn from as well. Your assumptions only hold if for both the original survey and the repeat, the pool of people being surveyed are an accurate sample of all of the United States.
  - nnm 9y ago
    Good point. On the other hand, the confidence interval I provided is correct as long as the original survey and the repeat are sampled in the same way (regardless whether it is un-biased sampling or not)

empath75 9y ago

I'm skeptical that most people have sufficient information upon which to make a decision. They just like the way it sounds. Here's the definition they provided: > “Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers providing consumer connection to the Internet should treat all data on the internet the same, not giving specific advantages or penalties in access by user, content, website, platform, or application.” Doesn't this seem like it makes any sort of QOS prioritization impossible? What if an ISP wanted to prioritize all real time traffic (voip, videogames, streaming video)?

zanny 9y ago
> What if an ISP wanted to prioritize all real time traffic (voip, videogames, streaming video)? Then they should increase bandwidth in their backbone or reduce latency for everyone. All that prioritizing real time traffic means is the ISP gets to judge what is important on the wire and what isn't, rather than the consumer. I don't want my ISP going anywhere near my packets.- or anyone, really - except for whoever I am sending them to. All they need to know is the destination address and the fastest way to get it there. If there were competition in ISPs, you could reasonably argue that ISP's being given sovereignty over the traffic on their lines would be acceptable. But as long as Internet service in the US is the domain of very few regional monopolies, they have too much power over the consumer to be able to mess with such critical infrastructure for their own gain.
- sushisource 9y ago
  I mean sure, theoretically sounds good, in practice you would not want to give up the myriad QOS instruments that are already in place. They make your internet usage feel faster with very little downside. Absolutely, the Net Neutrality rules need to be in place, but your parent commentor is right when he says it's not going to be a trivial thing to define.
  - jeeceebees 9y ago
    What kind of QOS adjustments would be made impossible by assuming the above definition of net neutrality? Genuinely curious.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago

I wonder what the results would be if it were phrased: "Do you think the government should make it illegal for a cell phone company to allow it's customers to stream unlimited music and movies from Netflix and Spotify with no data charges?" "Do you think the government should make it illegal for an Internet service company to willingly partner with a content provider to provide faster service for that content?"

renlo 9y ago
Good point. When voters are introduced to net neutrality the phrasing of the definition isn't going to be as clear as "Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers providing consumer connection to the Internet should treat all data on the internet the same, not giving specific advantages or penalties in access by user, content, website, platform, or application." It seems more difficult to be against net neutrality when it's defined like this. If people only get informed about the net neutrality issue from TV advertisements made by ISPs then the results will be a lot different.

StillBored 9y ago

Nothing really new here, much of what the government has been doing for at least the last 25 years is unpopular with not only a majority of people, but a majority of both democrats and republicans. What is s surprising is that, in many ways, the last 4 presidents all ran on a "change" message and have been unsuccessful at changing many of the things that both sides agree needs changing. Why is a deeper discussion, with plenty of blame, but the best way to summarize it, might just be to call it a bad marriage, where two people can no longer give the other side the benefit of the doubt in conversation, so everything being said sounds like personal attacks.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> What is s surprising is that, in many ways, the last 4 presidents all ran on a "change" message and have been unsuccessful at changing many of the things that both sides agree needs changing. Not really surprising: the President is the most powerful single individual in the US system, but the legislative branch as a whole is more powerful than the executive branch.
sidlls 9y ago
Running a change message campaign, and having the intent to behave as a maker of change are two different things. The simplest explanation is that these "change message" candidates were paying lip service to the electorate. It's not a charitable explanation, of course, but I'm not convinced being charitable ought to be a given when it comes to politicians' motives. So in my view it's not surprising at all.
- 3131s 9y ago
  > The simplest explanation is that these "change message" candidates were paying lip service to the electorate. It's not a charitable explanation, of course, but I'm not convinced being charitable ought to be a given when it comes to politicians' motives. They don't deserve the charitable interpretation. These are people that facilitate the sale of weapons to extremists all over the world. You shouldn't have to tip-toe and be polite about it, the recent American presidents are corrupt, murderous authoritarians whose primary function is to act as a talking head for the banks and the war industry.

pvnick 9y ago

The results are contradictory and highlight technical illiteracy of the respondents. Another conclusion: Americans trust ISPs to protect access to the internet more than they do any branch of government. These issues are complicated and susceptible to populist whims. It's a good thing America is not a direct democracy.

tehwebguy 9y ago

Yeah, we want these government sponsored & subsidized monopolies to stay the hell out of our packets. Ajit Pai knows this, he just doesn't care.

cubano 9y ago

Who, when asked, wouldn't support "Net Neutrality?" It sounds like something everyone should be for.."hey, Net Neutrality hell yeah and we shouldn't club baby seals either!" As always, its the policies that really matter...having a catchy must-be-for-it-for-virtue-signaling moniker hardly explains what going on in the back rooms where the legislation is being written. It's like the "Affordable Care Act"...who doesn't want affordable-fucking-care? We are all currently learning, however, that this "care" is hardly that and "affordable" is nowhere in sight.

tinalumfoil 9y ago
> Most Americans do not trust the U.S. government to protect access to the Internet Net neutrality is regulated by the FCC, a government agency under Donald Trump. By this article's own admission people have very little faith in the government. There's an interesting sentiment on HN that more regulation is the correct response to distrusting the government but I'd imagine lessening executive power is the more common response.
- Tyrannosaur 9y ago
  Very true, but despite the distrust of the government, Americans tend to have even more distrust of Comcast
toast0 9y ago
> Who, when asked, wouldn't support "Net Neutrality?" Me; not sure that counts though. Although, I support local loop unbundling, which has similar goals.
- cubano 9y ago
  Local loop unbundling is a very much needed thing and I've been for since Bob Metcalfe used to push for it back in the 90's, but the name hardly virtue-signals like "Net Neutrality" does. I don't really see how the two are at all similar though.
  - 9y ago

n8n3k 9y ago

Satisfied my intellectual curiosity for the day ...

baron816 9y ago

Our problem is that Net Neutrality just isn't a big enough issue. Even if almost 100% of the people support it, not enough of them will change their vote on its account. American democracy is broken because we're always only given two choices. You're never allowed to vote for someone who is going to represent everything you believe in. Things could be different. If we had a system in which you could vote for whomever you want (regardless of where they're from) and that person had voting power in the legislature that was proportional to the share of votes they got, then the laws we would get would actually reflect the will of the people.

mikeash 9y ago
That seems problematic. The person whose views most closely match my own is me. If I can vote for literally anyone and it works out the same, then I'd vote for me, presumably everyone else would vote for themselves, and you'd have a weird version of direct democracy.
- metaphorm 9y ago
  I don't think it's problematic. The duopoly system forces a large number of voters into "lesser evil" stances, or at least forces them to narrowly focus on their one pet issue and vote for candidates based only on that issue. a system with more choices has more opportunities to find candidates that you agree with on multiple dimensions of policy, as well as hopefully finding more candidates that you can respect as human beings. the post you're responding to is proposing a kind of non-geographically constrained proportionally allocated representational democracy. so, instead of voting for just one of the 2 candidates in your congressional district (which is likely gerrymandered anyway) you can vote for anyone in the country and that person's voting power in congress is proportional to their popular vote count. that's not dissimilar to a lot of corporate governance systems (voting shares of common stock widely distributed).
  - mikeash 9y ago
    I'm not sure how this addresses my objection. Sure, more choices means more opportunities to find candidates who match me perfectly. And if you allow literally anyone then that candidate is me. So you might as well not elect candidates at all, just give every citizen a vote in the legislature instead.

horsecaptin 9y ago

No one is going to lose an election for not supporting net-neutrality.

malloryerik 9y ago
Right, but they could lose a lot of campaign funding.

Shivetya 9y ago

I support it, but only partially and with caveats. If we are going to regulate service providers then why not limit what content providers can do as well? Why should they get a completely free ride? Here is that NN results in. Permanent protection from competition for internet providers as long as they agree to not be too profitable. In return for having their rates called into question and rate increases reviewed they are protected from having anyone being able to undercut them because those same would be subject to the same rates and rules. Which means, what you got now is what you will have for a long time. NN does not guarantee, in fact it slows, the chance for higher speeds because there won't be competition to deliver such to you. So those are my caveats. I would like to see additional pricing for content providers limited but not at the point they can free ride the net. We are just adding dollars to the content people's wallets and for what? So we can feel good about sticking it to Comcast (which I don't use). This didn't work for railroads or long distance, it took us a century for the former and nearly half for the latter to fix

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
Hu? How does NN limit rates, or competition, and how do content providers "free ride the net"?!?

gm-conspiracy 9y ago

In America, only two political parties?

Yen 9y ago
(I'm not sure if your comment was genuinely asking about the number of political parties in the U.S., or sarcastically remarking on the fact that there's only effectively two parties) While there are technically more than two political parties, the vast majority of Americans support one of the two major parties - the GOP (a.k.a. Republicans), and the Democrats. Between them, these parties more-or-less represent most of the range of political discussion and ideology in the U.S. The next-largest party is generally considered to be the Libertarians. Thus, while the statement "Americans from both political parties" may contain a technical inaccuracy, as there are technically more than two parties, it's a useful shorthand for "Typical Americans, regardless of political affiliation" As for why there's only two major political parties in the U.S., it's likely the result of most elections being simple plurality (a.k.a. first-past-the-post). This heavily encourages potential candidates to compromise and coalesce until there's only two candidates, to avoid the spoiler effect.

clashmoore 9y ago

I recall the GOP publishing their support for Net Neutrality in a previous election cycle platform and then abruptly changing it within a week to the opposite. Google is failing me in finding that original platform.

likelynew 9y ago

I am from India and I am closely aware of the wave that started with comedy groups in youtube of youtube and ended up defeating facebook's internet.org. I am little ambivalent about internet.org, but ended up converting 2 people to support internet.org. The common complaint here is this will make unpaid sites slow. This is partially borrowed by netflix event. They use "net neutrality" term, which most of the people have no idea what it means, and they get their entire idea from watching videos which shows faster and slower pipe. On asking them, for whom internet.org specifically is bad, they just don't have anything to say. I have to make them understand that this fight is not about a thing that will make their internet slow. The whole point of a million mails sent is not great care for the internet, but a feel good protest. They would have a much greater effect if they protested for better speeds for local websites, which kind of sucks more in India than one would expect. People are not very sad for seconds of delay, but are more concerned that some company will use faster lane to reduce delay by 10ms-20ms, which is of no use for company in a country which can tolerate very slow sites. Anyways, my point here is this term sound more of a fundamental characteristic of internet that we are loosing, than it is. The commonly envisioned future that we have to pay by services is not happening. Until that, we have far more important thing to protest against. I personally think better privacy and less data processing by machines is what we should protest for more often.

diogenescynic 9y ago

Politicians don't care what their constituents want. Americans overwhelmingly support basic gun-control laws, access to legal abortion, single-payer healthcare, and lots of other issues. Politicians only care about what their lobbyists and financial donors tell them to care about. That's the sad truth. We created this perverse system, so we can reform it when we choose. The only way to reverse this is to make elections publicly funded and reform campaign finance.

Profragile 9y ago
Speak for yourself! Only in your circlejerk do Americans support those completely un-American things. Anyone who understands the history and culture of America will vehemently oppose all of those things for obvious reasons.
kristopolous 9y ago
It's about the manufactured perception and not the material reality. Who manufactures this perception? Anyone who knows how to tell a good story...

jaggi1 9y ago

They obviously would. It gives them more control over the internet.

killin_dan 9y ago

Net neutrality is bad for the market. What people think they want does not supercede decades of economics. Regulating ISPs will do irreparable damage to the web, and it could be a decade or more before the average consumer can afford to be a part of a meshnet internet. Y'all just don't understand the level of manipulation happening. Point at the comcast boogieman (and rightfully so, tbh) as they strip ISPs of their liberties and force a certain business model on them. I have been somewhat disappointed with my fellow citizens before, and there's always been a certain kinship between Americans, but this is just too far. I guess we will learn econ 101 the hard way.

19guid 9y ago

I oppose net neutrality regulation. In principle, I don't think there's anything wrong with an ISP prioritizing certain kinds of traffic over others, so long as it does not have an anti-competitive effect. For example, I don't see how Netflix paying Comcast to zero-rate Netflix traffic is fundamentally different from Amazon contracting with mail carriers to subsidize the cost of shipping for Amazon purchases, or even -- to use an example another commenter made -- an appliance manufacturer contracting with electrical utilities to subsidize the cost of electricity used by their appliances. So long as Comcast makes its zero-rating program available to all content providers -- including their own -- on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, I don't think there are any competition issues. I've heard people argue that zero-rating makes it harder for smaller content providers to compete, since they won't have the resources to subsidize their customers' traffic. As I said in another comment, that's just the nature of business. Being big affords you certain advantages, like economies of scale. This makes it easier to compete on price. Smaller companies have to compete in other ways. In my view, the real problem with the telecom industry in the United States is a lack of competition [0], a problem caused at least in part by municipal [1] and state [2] governments. With more competition, net neutrality would be a non-issue. Consumers would just stop using ISPs that unfairly discriminate between traffic. [0] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/410353/net-neutrality-already-obsolete-michael-hendrix http://www.nationalreview.com/article/410353/net-neutrality-... [1] https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable-companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/ https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-ju... [2] http://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-by-state/ http://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblock...

jcfrei 9y ago
I think the Wired article misses the bigger picture. As you mentioned, the industry of providing network access is one with huge economies of scale. The result (if left unregulated) is always a monopoly or an oligopoly - with certain regions belonging to certain providers. Introducing a new competitor is very, very difficult in such a market, regardless of regulations and lowering prices for right of way. Google learned this the hard way - they have stopped their expansion back in 2016. As a government you can either heavily regulate such markets to make sure the consumers get a fair deal (which is what net neutrality is about) or you can turn it into a public service, ie. allow municipalities to provide internet access (what your third article alludes to).

geodel 9y ago

I think similar surveys like cheaper healthcare, healthier food, lesser college tuitions, better salaries and lower rents will also get similar support from both parties. Everyone like good stuff for them and bad effects can be pushed to other people/state/country and so on.

malloryerik 9y ago

I'm surprised that only one person here has mentioned campaign finance as the true issue here -- and they were downvoted. As horsecaptin noted on this thread, "No one is going to lose an election for not supporting net-neutrality." They do stand to lose serious campaign funding, however. Congressmen and Senators spend a majority of their time raising funds for their campaigns. If it weren't so important to them, they wouldn't. House representatives -- incumbents, no less -- need to raise about $20,000 a week to hold onto their positions, and Senators about $10,000. In 2014, the top four cable providers spent twice as much on campaign "donations" than the top five pharmaceutical companies. I'm not sure about 2016 but imagine it was similar. --- Some links How Much Money Big Cable Gave the Politicians Who Oversee the Internet [2014] http://gizmodo.com/how-much-money-big-cable-gave-the-politicians-who-overs-1657002442 http://gizmodo.com/how-much-money-big-cable-gave-the-politic... House Rep. Pushing To Set Back Online Privacy Rakes In Industry Funds http://www.vocativ.com/415350/house-rep-pushing-to-set-back-online-privacy-rakes-in-industry-funds/ http://www.vocativ.com/415350/house-rep-pushing-to-set-back-... The Campaign Cash That Can Kill the Open Internet [2015] All but two of the 31 co-sponsors of a House bill to kill net neutrality received thousands from telecoms in just the last election. http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-campaign-cash-that-can-kill-the-open-internet http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-campaign-cash-that-can-kill... Half of Anti-Net Neutrality Comments From "Shadowy" Koch Bros. Group http://gizmodo.com/half-of-anti-net-neutrality-comments-came-from-shadowy-1672248771 http://gizmodo.com/half-of-anti-net-neutrality-comments-came... Koch-affiliated astroturfers call Net Neutrality "Marxist" [2014] http://boingboing.net/2014/08/26/koch-affiliated-astroturfers-c.html http://boingboing.net/2014/08/26/koch-affiliated-astroturfer... Vote correlation: Internet privacy resolution and telecom contributions https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/03/vote-correlation-internet-privacy-res/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/03/vote-correlation-in... The 265 members of Congress who sold you out to ISPs, and how much it cost to buy them https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-web-browsing-privacy-fire-sale https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp... Internet Firms Are Far Behind Cable Companies in Political Donations https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/upshot/internet-firms-are-far-behind-cable-companies-in-political-donations.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/upshot/internet-firms-are... [2014] The Humiliating Fundraising Existence of a Member of Congress [2014] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-humiliating-fundraising-existence-of-a-member-of-congress/277227/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/06/the-hum... Are members of Congress becoming telemarketers? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-are-members-of-congress-becoming-telemarketers/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-are-members-of-congre... How much time do politicians spend fundraising? https://www.quora.com/How-much-time-do-politicians-spend-fundraising https://www.quora.com/How-much-time-do-politicians-spend-fun...