2 ms·

So far, every "day of action" banner I've seen has basically been pitched at mock "you've hit your bandwidth cap" or "your throughput has been limited" messages

by cheald 9y ago

So far, every "day of action" banner I've seen has basically been pitched at mock "you've hit your bandwidth cap" or "your throughput has been limited" messages, both of which are in place today and unaffected by neutrality regulations (consumers pay for a line that is capped at a given level of throughput, is not guaranteed to deliver their top-end throughput, and is often capped at a maximum level of bandwidth consumed - wanting more costs more). The messaging feels deceptive to me because it seems to be pitched with juvenile "you should be able to have as much as you want without having to care about price!" tone, rather than the more nuanced concern that monopolistic ISPs could promote or deny traffic in anticompetitive behaviors. That concern, while real, doesn't seem to have shown much threat of manifestation outside of a few edge cases (two that immediately spring to mind are Comcast throttling torrents back in ~'07 and T-Mobile not counting bandwidth consumption against quotas for near-edge hosted media from their their "Binge On" partners). It honestly seems to me that the number of "consumer-friendly" neutrality violations have outnumbered the anti-consumer ones in recent history - which is a concern in that it makes it harder for a startup to compete with an entrenched player, but that's WAY outside of any of the messaging being pitched to the unknowing masses today (probably because "companies giving you service perks for no extra charge is bad!" is a hard message to sell). Things like the Verizon/Netflix flap was a peering dispute, which isn't a new concern and probably isn't resolved to any real degree under neutrality regulations, but people still reference that as a flagship case for neutrality regulations. There are some legitimate fears. Most of them haven't manifested, and are most robustly resolved through opening up competition in the ISP space, IMO. The messaging seems to be, in the majority case, unrealistic scare-mongering, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Toast_ 9y ago
> The messaging seems to be, in the majority case, unrealistic scare-mongering, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Complete reason why I've made the thread. Nearly every reason I've received (via whatever channel) has been a pre-written, appeal to the least common denominator response. The only thing I care about is if what has been suggested is actually possible; and assumably, if so, what we can do to negate it. I really appreciate a real response, thank you.
- cheald 9y ago
  Much of it is possible, sure. I don't think most of it is feasible, or likely. Prioritization of classes of traffic is and has been a thing for a long time, and consumers broadly benefit from it (we all want VOIP traffic to have better latency sensitivity than Netflix traffic, and we all want Netflix traffic to have better bandwidth utilization than VOIP traffic, for example). (De/)Prioritization of individual products is a bogeyman that has yet to manifest outside of some products being excepted from mobile data quotas (Binge On, FB Zero, Wikipedia Zero). Then you have things like the utterly ridiculous "your internet plan doesn't include commenting on this reddit thread!" stunts, which are either blindingly ignorant of the actual aims of net neutrality advocates, or are willfully deceitful (there is no technological way that an ISP could restrict or upsell layer 7 features given that TLS is a thing) - neither of which does very much to produce sympathy in me for the cause. "Your single ISP could engage in behavior that doesn't benefit you" is an obvious threat - that's the threat of any monopolized market. But the vast majority of nightmare scenarios cooked up to scare the masses into action are, IMO, somewhere between fantasy and outright lies.
  - Toast_ 9y ago
    I'm not sure if my thought process is even valid, but I remember watching a blackhat presentation on hacking docsis 3 (may have been "hacking docsis for fun and profit"?) and the basic consensus was that docsis 3 security was just swiss cheese. I'm curious how such a system that can barely regulate it's users, could somehow become a totalitarian behemoth overnight. It's like satire being taken seriously.

by cheald 9y ago

Toast_ 9y ago

> The messaging seems to be, in the majority case, unrealistic scare-mongering, and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Complete reason why I've made the thread. Nearly every reason I've received (via whatever channel) has been a pre-written, appeal to the least common denominator response. The only thing I care about is if what has been suggested is actually possible; and assumably, if so, what we can do to negate it. I really appreciate a real response, thank you.

cheald 9y ago
Much of it is possible, sure. I don't think most of it is feasible, or likely. Prioritization of classes of traffic is and has been a thing for a long time, and consumers broadly benefit from it (we all want VOIP traffic to have better latency sensitivity than Netflix traffic, and we all want Netflix traffic to have better bandwidth utilization than VOIP traffic, for example). (De/)Prioritization of individual products is a bogeyman that has yet to manifest outside of some products being excepted from mobile data quotas (Binge On, FB Zero, Wikipedia Zero). Then you have things like the utterly ridiculous "your internet plan doesn't include commenting on this reddit thread!" stunts, which are either blindingly ignorant of the actual aims of net neutrality advocates, or are willfully deceitful (there is no technological way that an ISP could restrict or upsell layer 7 features given that TLS is a thing) - neither of which does very much to produce sympathy in me for the cause. "Your single ISP could engage in behavior that doesn't benefit you" is an obvious threat - that's the threat of any monopolized market. But the vast majority of nightmare scenarios cooked up to scare the masses into action are, IMO, somewhere between fantasy and outright lies.
- Toast_ 9y ago
  I'm not sure if my thought process is even valid, but I remember watching a blackhat presentation on hacking docsis 3 (may have been "hacking docsis for fun and profit"?) and the basic consensus was that docsis 3 security was just swiss cheese. I'm curious how such a system that can barely regulate it's users, could somehow become a totalitarian behemoth overnight. It's like satire being taken seriously.