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It’s amazing how the FCC can go against the American people when there is such overwhelming support for net neutrality.
by valine 9y ago
It’s amazing how the FCC can go against the American people when there is such overwhelming support for net neutrality.
- joshmn 9y agoI think you mean it's amazing what money can buy.
- ytwySXpMbS 9y agoAt a base level, it's amazing that money counts as free speech.
- mc32 9y agoI think it was amazing it was the USSC that saved the 'net from overreaching gov reg (communications decency act).
- dingo_bat 9y agoMob support for NN does not justify it. There's a reason we let domain experts make technical decisions.
- _jal 9y ago...And you believe that's what is happening with this decision?
- the_common_man 9y agoWell, people who are anti-NN would never voice their opinion in this climate. They will get downvoted to hell.
- ikeboy 9y agoI recall trying to argue against NN years ago here and getting down voted. It's interesting that economists largely are against NN as well. http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality-ii http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality-ii
- extra88 9y agoSee my other comment, that's not what those charts say. Less than half of those economists surveyed think that net neutrality is bad policy.
- ikeboy 9y agoThere's a significant number of uncertain ones but those should be excluded, and then the ones against NN significantly outnumber the ones in favor. I don't see any other reasonable way to spin that.
- kelnos 9y ago> There's a significant number of uncertain ones but those should be excluded That's not how polling works. Well, unless your plan is to twist the results to fit your desired narrative.
- ikeboy 9y agoAssuming you're building a policy off of poll responses, how would percent of uncertainty change the policy? It's not clear to me that it should. If it's possible to test, then maybe higher uncertainty should mean you spend more on testing before rolling out policies, but otherwise I don't see what else you'd do with it. Could you enlighten me on what you would do?
- dingo_bat 9y agoThat's not what those charts say. Less than a sixth of the economists surveyed think nn is a good policy.
- orthecreedence 9y agoLet's ask beekeepers what they think of Net Neutrality while we're at it. Or how about professional dog walkers too? "Children under the age of 6 overwhelmingly oppose Net Neutrality."
- extra88 9y agoThe comments on this article are clearly a "safe space" for anti-NN people. Others are engaging with them and they're not all being downvoted to hell.
- dingo_bat 9y agoIf you mean we're letting domain experts decide on a technical issue, yeah, that's exactly what's happening.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoDomain experts are overwhelmingly in favor of NN.
- ikeboy 9y agoActually, a weighted average shows 3 times as many against as for http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality-ii http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality-ii
- extra88 9y agoThose appear to be economists, not Internet domain specialists. Less than half agree or strongly agree and in the weighted chart, a whopping 41% are Uncertain, which suggests they recognize that they don't know much about the subject. Many of the comments by Agree and Strongly Agree respondents indicate they don't understand the subject fully.
- ikeboy 9y agoThe relevant domain for regulations is economics. 45% agree or strongly agree compared to 14% disagree, which is a 3-1 ratio. Excluding the uncertain ones because they likely don't know much about the topic. Could you give examples of what you think they don't understand?
- extra88 9y agoEconomics is not the only relevant domain for public policy. Just because someone is confident in their opinion doesn't mean they're knowledgable, surely you see that regularly online. Economists are not especially self-aware or more humble than other people. Here's an ignorant comment: "Net neutrality is a fiction. Hire Akamai (et al.) to mirror your servers worldwide to speed content to your users." Using Akamai isn't going to do shit if Comcast decides your videos are hurting their cable TV business and start dropping packets, or set a data cap that counts your traffic while they zero rate their own competing product. Another one: "If all qualities sell at the same price, markets cannot allocate quality efficiently. Works for soap, wine, and haircuts; why not Internet?" ISPs do not operate in a market, consumers have little to no choice amongst providers. ISPs provide a service, not a good like soap or wine; haircuts are a service but have nothing in common with Internet access, you can cut your own hair but you can't make your own Internet.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago> when there is such overwhelming support for net neutrality. I think you may be overestimating how representative technical communities are compared to the general public, as well as overestimating how universally people even in technical communities agree about this. (I also think that even with widespread agreement that wouldn't necessarily be enough, but I don't necessarily think that widespread agreement exists, either.)
- jkestner 9y agoHere's a poll of the general population. It's overwhelming. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/06/06/new-mozilla-poll-americans-political-parties-overwhelmingly-support-net-neutrality/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/06/06/new-mozilla-poll-am...
- jquery 9y agoI don't want the general population making what boils down to technical decisions about how the internet works. The name "net neutrality" is also very leading. If you know nothing about the subject it sounds quite appealing.
- myrion 9y agoThat's also because it is.
- IncRnd 9y agoThank you very much for posting that. I read through the information. To be honest, I'm not sure the poll correctly shows overwhelming support. Certainly the numbers from the poll show overwhelming support - however the poll is of 1,008 people online. And, the results of the responses are weighted for demographics. Regarding weighting by demographics, I still remember during the last presidential election cycle how there was a single 19 year old Black man in Illinois whose voice was weighted so strongly in polls that his votes were actually 300 times greater than the least weighted vote.
- umanwizard 9y agoActually, the overwhelming majority of the American people outside of tech circles don’t give a shit. I’m pretty sure if you polled my non-tech friends, fewer than 10% would even know about the issue.