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This has been the weakest day of action I could imagine. I thought sites were going to be throttled. Turns out its just some color changes and, oh, reddit has a

This has been the weakest day of action I could imagine. I thought sites were going to be throttled. Turns out its just some color changes and, oh, reddit has a fancy "slow-loading" gif for their website name. A real wake-up call!

scottLobster 9y ago
I know right? The question for me is why? Netflix has gone on record saying "well, we're big enough to negotiate the deals we want so we don't particularly care if the ladder gets pulled up behind us". I imagine many other big corporations/sites are in similar positions. But even so I doubt they'd want to make said deals in the first place, they'd be expensive. So isn't a stronger response in their best interest? Or perhaps they're all secretly looking forward to fast lanes they can buy...
- cracell 9y ago
  I think they just don't see the point. I don't think the people pushing to dismantle net neutrality are stupid. They know that removing it is bad for innovation and consumers but they'd rather help the ISPs make more money than help keep America's economy healthy overall. Probably because they directly receive benefits from the ISPs. So since we are all being ignored, why will yelling louder make a difference?
  - scottLobster 9y ago
    It worked against SOPA/PIPA, although granted that was legislation up for a vote, not the policy of a commission. At the very least it might give some of the politicians a moment of pause to know they're seriously pissing off other powerful moneyed interests, and it would certainly increase public awareness and perhaps make more people care. If you talk about how YouTube might be throttled without Net Neutrality, people will definitely care.
    - fuckthissite 9y ago
      yeah but back then this site wasnt full of bitches
satsuma 9y ago
I would like to see sites with severely limited usage as well but I imagine that would result in angry customers who don't give a rip one way or the other hurting the bottom line.
- cderwin 9y ago
  This is correct. I am not a fan of net neutrality and the level of "protest" that has appeared today already makes me uneasy. It's easy to claim that google is so monolithic that blocking its services for a day would be a crippling blow to the anti-net neutrality crowd, but it's really just blackmail. I don't think the public would be responsive to such a threat, and there are plenty of alternatives (even if the quality isn't quite the same). I'm sure one of those alternatives would be content to not force its politics on its customers.
  - omnimus 9y ago
    Wow - not a friend of net neutrality? Such person exists?! And reads hacker news? Site which sucess is directly connected to open internet .. I thought that this will be the one issue where hacker news crowd will be united.
lossolo 9y ago
Google has global network with their caches everywhere. If you want private peering with google you can have it for free, they will not pay for peering with you. I know an example in one of Eu countries in which big ISP wanted google to pay them for private peering, this ISP had around 40% of internet market in this country. Google said no and this isp is peering with google for free now, while charging other companies double digit euro for megabit.. Google has so much private peering around the world that they just don't really care, it will not affect them too much. People will change their ISP to have fast youtube access rather than stop to use youtube or google.
- merb 9y ago
  > this ISP had around 40% of internet market in this country oh I tought it is way more than 40%. well the problem is the other providers are not (that) better options either.
MrZongle2 9y ago
Clearly, this day of action needs more hashtags. Maybe a building to be lit up in different colors tonight. /s Seriously, I'm disgusted by what counts as "action" these days. This reeks of lip service, nothing more.
colept 9y ago
I was hoping Amazon would do something creative like offering Prime Six-Day Shipping but nope - just some graphic tossed aside so they can keep selling Fire devices.
code777777 9y ago
I think we need a new term and perhaps a visceral, easily understandable metaphor. Common Joe just doesn't get it or know what we're talking about. He instantly gets "death panel" or "fake news." But net neutrality sounds like something fuzzy almost benign.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  “Open Internet” is good, and is what the FCC policy focus has always been labelled.
  - gervase 9y ago
    The biggest problem with terms with a positive connotation is that both sides will claim them. For example, Comcast will simply say "we support Open Internet" with the implication that "Open" in this context means "We can do whatever we want with our own lines.", i.e. complete corporate freedom. This deliberately promotes confusion, and then whoever has the most money wins. In my opinion, the biggest problem is that this topic is relatively more technical than most people are used to understanding, which makes it very difficult to convey the various ramifications without over-simplifying.
- ABCLAW 9y ago
  I've always thought "Anti-Internet Racketeering" described the issue and ramifications pretty succinctly.
  - scottLobster 9y ago
    Too many syllables for a good slogan. Need something like "It's my internet!" or "Fight internet extortion!"
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Many countries don't have network neutrality. In Australia, Optus use to off "free social" where Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and a few other sites didn't count against your bandwidth. Add network neutrality legislation and it would be very easy to lobby against: "Turnbull wants you to pay more for Facebook and Twitter" Most people don't have an understanding of what Quality of Service is.
jansho 9y ago
Well it's certainly made me pause when I saw HN's fancy grey header. That's perhaps the intention. Raise awareness first, then come together to do something. It's gonna take lots of days of action over the years to gain momentum..
boona 9y ago
Don't you find it weird that businesses have to fake that it's an issue by adding gimmicks to their sites like the slow loading gif? Maybe if it become an actual instantiated issue in the future we could expect a real grassroots movement, but as is, the arguments are mostly academic and it's hard to rally people around that.
BinaryIdiot 9y ago
This is exactly what I thought. Went to reddit.com...where's the Net Neutrality protest? Oh I just realized they made their logo a gif that looks like it loads slow...and they made a post... Went to google.com...the doodle is unrelated and I saw nothing about net neutrality on the site... Went to mozilla.org and I see absolutely nothing about it. I feel like I must be missing something here. Hackernews...looks the same but slightly grayed. Oh the black bar is a link, didn't realize that. But no messages or anything obvious. LinkedIn.com maybe? Nothing Twitter? They have a hashtag that's trending...that's it. Facebook? I see nothing. Not even a trending topic. This is a very luke warm day of technology companies protesting net neutrality. I expected at least a tiny blurb on a homepage SOMEWHERE. So far Netflix and DuckDuckGo are the only large sites that I've notice actually put something on their homepage.
- chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
  Agreed, this is a very poor showing of support from major websites. I remember Wikipedia doing a "black out" day, along with several other websites years back. If you visited the web page, all you saw was a black page and a quick explanation that the web could be censored if legislation were to pass. I've visited several participants' sites to see nothing. GitHub didn't have a single thing, Wikipedia: nothing, and Google (or Alphabet) isn't even listed on the list of participants [0]. [0] https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/#participants https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/#participants
  - marksomnian 9y ago
    The Wikipedia community seems to have a strong dislike [0][1][2] for anything like the SOPA blackout, partially as it's not as black-and-white as SOPA, and partially because Wikipedia directly wouldn't be affected (their site is pretty fast). Worth noting that Wikipedia Zero [3] exists, and has been taking flak for not being the most NN-friendly initiative. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_162#Net_neutrality_maybe_in_great_danger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_140#Is_anything_happening_with_Wikipedia_in_relation_to_the_July_12_Net_Neutrality_day_of_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(propos... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_139#Wikipedia_and_Net_Neutrality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(propos... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/11/25/wikipedias-complicated-relationship-with-net-neutrality/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/11/25...
stordoff 9y ago
I didn't even realise it was today until part way through reading this page of comments. Hacker News -> Noticed the black/grey bar, but assumed it was a variant of the "someone notable has died" black bar so didn't pay it much attention. Reddit -> Didn't even see the altered logo until probably the tenth page I was on, and just though "Oh, the logo didn't load in all the way, weird" (by the time it gets to the "Bandwidth exceeded" message it's probably off the page, and even that's hardly a call to (user) action). Google/Twitter/Facebook -> Didn't notice anything.
prawn 9y ago
They're hedging their bets. They don't want to alienate half their audience, so they make a token show for the minority that care, and leave it at that. Also, isn't it likely that the largest companies would benefit most if they were in a position to pay for priority over small upstart competitors?

scottLobster 9y ago

I know right? The question for me is why? Netflix has gone on record saying "well, we're big enough to negotiate the deals we want so we don't particularly care if the ladder gets pulled up behind us". I imagine many other big corporations/sites are in similar positions. But even so I doubt they'd want to make said deals in the first place, they'd be expensive. So isn't a stronger response in their best interest? Or perhaps they're all secretly looking forward to fast lanes they can buy...

cracell 9y ago
I think they just don't see the point. I don't think the people pushing to dismantle net neutrality are stupid. They know that removing it is bad for innovation and consumers but they'd rather help the ISPs make more money than help keep America's economy healthy overall. Probably because they directly receive benefits from the ISPs. So since we are all being ignored, why will yelling louder make a difference?
- scottLobster 9y ago
  It worked against SOPA/PIPA, although granted that was legislation up for a vote, not the policy of a commission. At the very least it might give some of the politicians a moment of pause to know they're seriously pissing off other powerful moneyed interests, and it would certainly increase public awareness and perhaps make more people care. If you talk about how YouTube might be throttled without Net Neutrality, people will definitely care.
  - fuckthissite 9y ago
    yeah but back then this site wasnt full of bitches

satsuma 9y ago

I would like to see sites with severely limited usage as well but I imagine that would result in angry customers who don't give a rip one way or the other hurting the bottom line.

cderwin 9y ago
This is correct. I am not a fan of net neutrality and the level of "protest" that has appeared today already makes me uneasy. It's easy to claim that google is so monolithic that blocking its services for a day would be a crippling blow to the anti-net neutrality crowd, but it's really just blackmail. I don't think the public would be responsive to such a threat, and there are plenty of alternatives (even if the quality isn't quite the same). I'm sure one of those alternatives would be content to not force its politics on its customers.
- omnimus 9y ago
  Wow - not a friend of net neutrality? Such person exists?! And reads hacker news? Site which sucess is directly connected to open internet .. I thought that this will be the one issue where hacker news crowd will be united.

lossolo 9y ago

Google has global network with their caches everywhere. If you want private peering with google you can have it for free, they will not pay for peering with you. I know an example in one of Eu countries in which big ISP wanted google to pay them for private peering, this ISP had around 40% of internet market in this country. Google said no and this isp is peering with google for free now, while charging other companies double digit euro for megabit.. Google has so much private peering around the world that they just don't really care, it will not affect them too much. People will change their ISP to have fast youtube access rather than stop to use youtube or google.

merb 9y ago
> this ISP had around 40% of internet market in this country oh I tought it is way more than 40%. well the problem is the other providers are not (that) better options either.

MrZongle2 9y ago

Clearly, this day of action needs more hashtags. Maybe a building to be lit up in different colors tonight. /s Seriously, I'm disgusted by what counts as "action" these days. This reeks of lip service, nothing more.

colept 9y ago

I was hoping Amazon would do something creative like offering Prime Six-Day Shipping but nope - just some graphic tossed aside so they can keep selling Fire devices.

code777777 9y ago

I think we need a new term and perhaps a visceral, easily understandable metaphor. Common Joe just doesn't get it or know what we're talking about. He instantly gets "death panel" or "fake news." But net neutrality sounds like something fuzzy almost benign.

dragonwriter 9y ago
“Open Internet” is good, and is what the FCC policy focus has always been labelled.
- gervase 9y ago
  The biggest problem with terms with a positive connotation is that both sides will claim them. For example, Comcast will simply say "we support Open Internet" with the implication that "Open" in this context means "We can do whatever we want with our own lines.", i.e. complete corporate freedom. This deliberately promotes confusion, and then whoever has the most money wins. In my opinion, the biggest problem is that this topic is relatively more technical than most people are used to understanding, which makes it very difficult to convey the various ramifications without over-simplifying.
ABCLAW 9y ago
I've always thought "Anti-Internet Racketeering" described the issue and ramifications pretty succinctly.
- scottLobster 9y ago
  Too many syllables for a good slogan. Need something like "It's my internet!" or "Fight internet extortion!"
djsumdog 9y ago
Many countries don't have network neutrality. In Australia, Optus use to off "free social" where Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and a few other sites didn't count against your bandwidth. Add network neutrality legislation and it would be very easy to lobby against: "Turnbull wants you to pay more for Facebook and Twitter" Most people don't have an understanding of what Quality of Service is.

jansho 9y ago

Well it's certainly made me pause when I saw HN's fancy grey header. That's perhaps the intention. Raise awareness first, then come together to do something. It's gonna take lots of days of action over the years to gain momentum..

boona 9y ago

Don't you find it weird that businesses have to fake that it's an issue by adding gimmicks to their sites like the slow loading gif? Maybe if it become an actual instantiated issue in the future we could expect a real grassroots movement, but as is, the arguments are mostly academic and it's hard to rally people around that.

BinaryIdiot 9y ago

This is exactly what I thought. Went to reddit.com...where's the Net Neutrality protest? Oh I just realized they made their logo a gif that looks like it loads slow...and they made a post... Went to google.com...the doodle is unrelated and I saw nothing about net neutrality on the site... Went to mozilla.org and I see absolutely nothing about it. I feel like I must be missing something here. Hackernews...looks the same but slightly grayed. Oh the black bar is a link, didn't realize that. But no messages or anything obvious. LinkedIn.com maybe? Nothing Twitter? They have a hashtag that's trending...that's it. Facebook? I see nothing. Not even a trending topic. This is a very luke warm day of technology companies protesting net neutrality. I expected at least a tiny blurb on a homepage SOMEWHERE. So far Netflix and DuckDuckGo are the only large sites that I've notice actually put something on their homepage.

chiefofgxbxl 9y ago
Agreed, this is a very poor showing of support from major websites. I remember Wikipedia doing a "black out" day, along with several other websites years back. If you visited the web page, all you saw was a black page and a quick explanation that the web could be censored if legislation were to pass. I've visited several participants' sites to see nothing. GitHub didn't have a single thing, Wikipedia: nothing, and Google (or Alphabet) isn't even listed on the list of participants [0]. [0] https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/#participants https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/#participants
- marksomnian 9y ago
  The Wikipedia community seems to have a strong dislike [0][1][2] for anything like the SOPA blackout, partially as it's not as black-and-white as SOPA, and partially because Wikipedia directly wouldn't be affected (their site is pretty fast). Worth noting that Wikipedia Zero [3] exists, and has been taking flak for not being the most NN-friendly initiative. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_162#Net_neutrality_maybe_in_great_danger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_140#Is_anything_happening_with_Wikipedia_in_relation_to_the_July_12_Net_Neutrality_day_of_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(propos... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_139#Wikipedia_and_Net_Neutrality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(propos... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/11/25/wikipedias-complicated-relationship-with-net-neutrality/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/11/25...

stordoff 9y ago

I didn't even realise it was today until part way through reading this page of comments. Hacker News -> Noticed the black/grey bar, but assumed it was a variant of the "someone notable has died" black bar so didn't pay it much attention. Reddit -> Didn't even see the altered logo until probably the tenth page I was on, and just though "Oh, the logo didn't load in all the way, weird" (by the time it gets to the "Bandwidth exceeded" message it's probably off the page, and even that's hardly a call to (user) action). Google/Twitter/Facebook -> Didn't notice anything.

prawn 9y ago

They're hedging their bets. They don't want to alienate half their audience, so they make a token show for the minority that care, and leave it at that. Also, isn't it likely that the largest companies would benefit most if they were in a position to pay for priority over small upstart competitors?