10 ms·

The internet already lost its neutrality

85 points by noncoml 9y ago

peacelilly 9y ago
> When U.S. President Donald Trump’s critics have demanded to know what his supporters got in exchange for voting for the genital-grabber-in-chief, thus far those supporters have had only one concrete achievement they could really point to: the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. I hate opinion articles like this one.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  Agree.
  - codefined 9y ago
    Disagree, factual information is often hard to come by on "success", since it depends on what metrics you use. Opinion pieces, clearly marked[0], are probably better than the alternative of nothing. [0] https://puu.sh/ytqSJ/1b73204b14.png https://puu.sh/ytqSJ/1b73204b14.png
- noja 9y ago
  I hate it when the top comment is a derail.
- JepZ 9y ago
  I like opinion articles as they make it easier to understand the perspective of the author. At least as long as at least some facts are present, but that does not seem to be a problem here. So while I do not necessarily share the authors opinion, I find his opinion a valuable context.
nkkollaw 9y ago
I have followed this but not that much since I'm not American. I'm wondering, if the laws pass, can people use Tor to keep the actual site they visit hidden, and avoid caps? Also, of course this would create a precedence--although I doubt we would pass such a law in Europe since companies here are not as infiltrated into the government as in the States--, but would the end of Net neutrality in the States directly affect other countries, and how?
- philipov 9y ago
  Anyone using Tor will get capped by default.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - drb91 9y ago
    Or just blocked.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- mikeash 9y ago
  It’s possible. One way people have demonstrated that ISPs were throttling services like Netflix is by showing that you get better performance when streaming over a VPN.
- betterunix2 9y ago
  "I'm wondering, if the laws pass, can people use Tor to keep the actual site they visit hidden, and avoid caps?" Tor will also be capped. So far ISPs seem to be interested in a strategy of capping everything by default, then removing caps for select services. Tor, VPNs, etc. are unlikely to be selected for non-capped service, especially once ISPs start charging for caps (not only is the Tor project in no position to pay countless ISPs, but if it were not capped then as you suggested people could evade caps and reduce the benefit of paying to be exempted). "would the end of Net neutrality in the States directly affect other countries, and how?" In the long run it will be a benefit to those countries that maintain net neutrality, by fostering the innovative environment of a neutral Internet. In the short term it will probably have no particular impact on anyone outside the US, other than reducing the rate at which new ideas are brought to market in the US.
  - nkkollaw 9y ago
    Makes sense, thanks for the explanation.
revmoo 9y ago
> When U.S. President Donald Trump’s critics have demanded to know what his supporters got in exchange for voting for the genital-grabber-in-chief Yeah can we at least pretend to be neutral and not editorialize on the first sentence of an article?
Animats 9y ago
The Daily Stormer is back up.[1] [1] https://dailystormer.hk/ https://dailystormer.hk/
- userbinator 9y ago
  There is something rather ironic about a white supremacist site using the TLD of an Asian country well known for its extensive censorship. (Yes, I know Hong Kong is somewhat special, but it has been a part of China since 1997.)
  - Terr_ 9y ago
    Technically speaking, under treaty obligations, China can't overtly change Hong Kong's government until 2047. That said, they still have ways to influence the elections.
    - azinman2 9y ago
      Making sure it’s all pro-China puppets in charge is a pretty good way to get what you want sooner.
  - sverige 9y ago
    Especially ironic considering they're based in the U.S., which used to be the home of free speech. "OMG, they're nazis! Shut 'em down!" is the sadly unironic position of most who live in what was once the epicenter of the free speech movement, and is now the epicenter of censorious impulses.
    - 0134340 9y ago
      Doubly ironic in that their conservative brethren endorsed NN, or the wishes of the corporations over the notions of free speech or data equality, regardless of content or source.
  - 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
    I get the impression that a lot of white supremacists specifically fetishize the legacy of colonialism, either per se or as symbolic of white superiority stabbed in the back by political correctness. I've seen them invoking defunct colonial names and symbols for now-independent nations, e.g. "Rhodesia" [1] (which I encountered "in the wild" when looking for a good recording of Warren Zevon's "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" on YouTube). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia
jstewartmobile 9y ago
Typical Megan McArdle libertarian "thinkpiece". Acknowledges the problem... 'Meanwhile, our experience of the internet is increasingly controlled by a handful of firms, most especially Google and Facebook. The argument for regulating these companies as public utilities is arguably at least as strong as the argument for thus regulating ISPs, and very possibly much stronger; while cable monopolies may have local dominance, none of them has the ability that Google and Facebook have to unilaterally shape what Americans see, hear and read.' Yet refuses to blaspheme the Lord our free market: 'Is this a problem? I think it is. But that doesn’t mean that the internet would get better if Google and Facebook and Apple and Amazon were required to make every decision with a regulator hanging over their shoulder to decide whether it was sufficiently “neutral.”'
- jquery 9y ago
  Well, when relatively few people in favor of NN are in favor of regulating content (under the shield of "they're private businesses, they can censor what they want!"), it's hard to criticize McArdle for taking the side of the free market with ISPs as well. I largely believe the problem isn't ISPs anymore, it's content-providers. Content is getting increasingly centralized by so-called "content providers" instead of ISPs. People's experience of online censorship is probably a couple orders of magnitude greater when it comes to the increasingly restrictive rules of Facebook/Google/Twitter/Pinterest/YouTube/etc.* (all in the name of being advertiser friendly). My one and only experience with ISPs censoring content was a long time ago when my torrents were throttled. I've never had the ISPs (short of government intervention) block a tweet, a status update, a video, or an online service since then. So when people's experience of online censorship is with content providers, not ISPs, how can we expect to sell the public on Net Neutrality when it doesn't touch the largest experiential part of online censorship? There's an elephant in the room and we're screaming about the mouse in the corner. *EDIT: Let's not forgot the app stores which give two companies the power to essentially erase you from mobile devices if they decide to.
  - wfo 9y ago
    Yes censorship by content providers is a (relatively small while Tor exists) problem, and it happens currently in real life. Censorship by ISPs is devastating, competition cannot help, and it is impossible to circumvent and is a real possibility. Because something is not currently happening does not mean we should not be concerned about it, rather, the opposite.
hugh4life 9y ago
I'm agnostic on the rightness or wrongness of net neutrality, but net neutrality makes cord cutting more viable... something Trump supporters who dislike being forced to subsidize certain types of content through bundled packages should be able to appreciate. "In a world without net neutrality, your ISP may offer one video service for free while charging for Netflix, which eventually means you pay more. Oh wait, Comcast, among others, already tried that trick in 2014. In 2017, the ISPs will get away with it." http://awfulannouncing.com/streaming/proposed-net-neutrality-repeal-sports-impacts.html http://awfulannouncing.com/streaming/proposed-net-neutrality...
freeflight 9y ago
The article gives good background about FCC attempts to regulate ISP and the troubles of finding the right framework for it. Where it all falls apart, at least for me, is when it tries to use The Daily Stormer as an example of how net neutrality is "already lost". And I'm not even sure where to start to voice my problems with that framing. For example, the claim that there's "nothing illegal" about it, which is factually wrong as lots of the content on Daily Stormer would easily break a couple of German laws, and probably laws of a few other countries, as Germany isn't the only country with laws in regards to Holocaust denial. While I don't know the specifics about the hosting situation of TDS, I doubt what happened there was "a small number of private companies decided to exercise their considerable control over what we’re allowed to read", like the author claims. That sentence pretty much stylizes TDS as a kind of victim by some ominous international conspiracy, I'm quite certain that's not at all what happened, just like I'm very certain that TDS is still around and reachable for anybody who would want to read it.
- jdoliner 9y ago
  > For example, the claim that there's "nothing illegal" about it, which is factually wrong as lots of the content on Daily Stormer would easily break a couple of German laws This isn't an argument that an American ISP could use to censor content under our current regulation, why should a CDN be allowed to? > I doubt what happened there was "a small number of private companies decided to exercise their considerable control over what we’re allowed to read" In the words of Cloudflare's CEO: “I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the internet.” So I'd say your doubt is misplace, that's a pretty accurate description of what did happen. Whether or not you consider TDS a victim of some ominous international conspiracy is up to you. But they're certainly not a beneficiary of a regulatory environment in which the internet is neutral and views can't be silence. At least not the American internet, as you pointed out, they're still up but they had to move their hosting to Hong Kong to stay up. So I think it's fair to say that American net neutrality failed them. Now, of course, you may be of the mind: "Who cares? They're Nazis they deserve what they got." But as soon as you go down the path of "we treat sites neutrally... we just treat some sites more neutrally than others." It begins to erode your support as people wonder if they'll eventually be part of the excepted group that doesn't get net neutrality.
LeoJiWoo 9y ago
Well conservatives/populists definitely think so. They have been quite clear on social media, that they are angry at being censored on youtube, google, facebook etc. Some even went as far as saying they trust Comcast to be more neutral than silicon valley. I fear net neutrality is over, unless we can get bipartisan support, but that won't happen unless more parts of the internet ecosystem get enforced neutrality.
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  They're right to think so. The big 4/5/6 etc. are politically charged and smart enough to cover their tracks. Comcast is so ham-handed they'd leave a fluorescent blood trail if they even thought about pulling something.
- fareesh 9y ago
  This is an important point. Now that the chance of losing neutrality, and therefore the possibility of censorship is affecting everyone, there is an expectation from conservatives, who are routinely silenced on the internet, to join hands to preserve the "neutral" status quo. It isn't even just purely politically conservative folks either. For example, Dr. Gad Saad spoke at a Free Speech event in Toronto very recently, and the video was demonetized on YouTube before it had even been published. I have disposable income, I watch Dr Saad's videos. I wouldn't mind viewing ads before his videos. Why would I think less of an advertiser whose ad showed up as a preroll? Am I not the intended audience? Or is it that my impressions aren't allowed because I enjoy Dr. Saad's content? What if I was highly critical of his content and I wanted to watch it, are my video views still not worth anything? The only reason I am on YouTube.com for the duration of the video is because of Dr. Saad. If YouTube is making money off my presence, why can't Dr. Saad? For the advertiser, I am the product, so what does he have to do with anything?
namuol 9y ago
> our experience of the internet is increasingly controlled by a handful of firms, most especially Google and Facebook Exactly why we need to keep net neutrality. It helps keep the marketplace fair by preventing carriers from charging extra for preferential treatment; something that Big Tech Co. will effectively set the price of, but most upstarts won't be able to afford.
Terr_ 9y ago
> Those regulations [Title II common-carriers] were more concerned about things like controlling market power than, say, promoting innovation. Why is a strength of the approach being presented as a weakness? The only kind of "innovation" that could suffer is the kind that involves extortive payment plans and anti-competitive business deals... exactly what people were worried about. > Those of us old enough to remember the telephone service looked like in the 1970s, before the FCC unwound a little WTF? It's not that the FCC "unwound" from some kind of pro-consumer zeal, it's that the breakup of the "Ma Bell" mega-conglomerate began.
rocqua 9y ago
The argument "We've lost net neutrality because some people refuse hosting / claim domains" misses the definition of net-neutrality. Specifically, net-neutrality is about treating all traffic the same. It would be horrible if ISPs refused, on their own initiative, to serve certain traffic. However, this is a case of people refusing to host. Now maybe hosting at `web-scale' is only possible with such a small set of providers as to be an issue, but that is not relevant to the net-neutrality discussion.
- jdoliner 9y ago
  But all of the supposed goals of net neutrality, competition, everyone having a voice, etc. seem to be impinged at the hosting / domain layer. So if the justification for net neutrality is that we might lose those things... and people feel like they already don't have those things, why would they care about net neutrality?
  - namuol 9y ago
    > people feel like they already don't have [a perfectly free Internet where everyone has a voice], why would they care about net neutrality? The Internet is dominated by Tech Giants, but deregulating ISPs will probably only make the problem worse by allowing Tech Giants to set the price for preferential treatment by ISPs, thereby raising the barrier to entry for competitors and raising prices for regular consumers.
    - jdoliner 9y ago
      Hopefully you can see how "this will probably only make the problem worse" doesn't quite stir people's stumps the way "this will create a new problem that we've worked very hard to avoid up until this point."
      - namuol 9y ago
        > this will create a new problem that we've worked very hard to avoid up until this point Sorry, could you elaborate? Not sure what you meant here. Do you just mean to suggest that the "net-neutrality-is-good-for-competition" argument will not persuade the average person, or something else?
rdiddly 9y ago
Yes yes, let big legacy companies do whatever they want! And stifle the little guys! It'll help innovation! Anyone see any problems with that argument?
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  I like her writing, but it would be fun to lock her in a room with the old ARPA guys, let her tell them how the government is going to stifle technology, then watch what happens.
sddfd 9y ago
The argument in the article is deeply flawed. It goes like this: With net neutrality, ISPs would be over-regulated, and competition/ease of market entry would be hampered. The article then goes on to claim this competition is needed, because Google and Facebook already have so much power over the internet. But this is deeply flawed, because big compabies will only have more power over the net without net neutrality: they can just pay for the net to behave as they want.
- ironchef253 9y ago
  This is not the logic of the article. The article says that Title II is pointless over-regulation which creates danger for ISPs, which it is. Imagine if I created 700 rules for what you can do every day and promised to “selectively apply” those rules based on how I feel today. Would you be ok with that? Any mood change on my part (correlating with a change in FCC leadership) and I could ruin your life. Those are not good conditions under which to build a long term business. If you had that hanging over your head, you wouldn’t be happy either. People have been brainwashed to think that Net Neutrality == Title II regulation. That is incorrect. The principal of Net Neutrality is far more important than Title II. Title II is just the wrong tool for the job and causes a lot of additional damage in addition to supporting Net Neutrality. Watching Facebook, Google and Twitter demoting and removing opinions and websites they don’t like (aka not advertiser friendly) is much more sinister than what the ISPs are able to / are likely to do. Censorship by search algorithm is far more dangerous than removal of Title II, which has downsides but is not anywhere near as apocalyptic as what people are saying about it online. I am frustrated at how many people on here do so little research into their own opinions, they just look online and see what Twitter or reddit are saying and say: “ok, sounds good I believe that.” Please take the approach of trying to poke holes in your own opinions before adopting them.
  - sddfd 9y ago
    Thanks for your comment. I agree it is important to distinguish between title II and net neutrality. However, I fail to see how the power of Google & Facebook to "curate" the internet is an argument against net neutrality. To me it seems that if ISPs are not bound by net neutrality, then the power of big companies will be even greater. Just another example is a startup competing with Netflix. Without net neutrality, one most likely has to buy a premium Netflix packet from the ISP on top of the Netflix subscription to be able to stream the whole month in high quality. You can look at Portugal, where at least on mobile such packages are already available. Now I don't see how a startup can compete, if its users also have to buy another premium package from their ISPs to use the startups services (in addition to the Premium package the already pay to be able to watch Netflix).
mandelbulb 9y ago
Following the same logic of this article's line of argumentation, I'd say hacker news lost its entire value because it allowed such a horrid submission to gain 75+ points.
mlazos 9y ago
Ugh this article was so frustrating to read. To say “oh look a nazi website can’t find a hosting service” == the internet is already not neutral is such a straw man argument. Even if hosting services were censoring everything it clearly doesn’t help the problem to allow ISP’s to censor what traffic goes through their infrastructure on top of that. This article misses the key point of NN - it’s that ISP’s already will not have competition due to high barriers to entry (case in point Google is even winding down their fiber investments). To compare ISPs to Facebook, G and amazon is apples and oranges - it currently takes very little upfront cost to host a website and “compete” with them. Their monopolies are purely because they provide good quality services that consumers want. ISPs on the other hand have zero competition in most areas and are natural monopolies due to the amount of money (and lobbying) required to build network infrastructure. Using that power to force people to use their services or pay a fee to access others is classic vertical integration and shouldn’t be allowed.

85 points by noncoml 9y ago

> When U.S. President Donald Trump’s critics have demanded to know what his supporters got in exchange for voting for the genital-grabber-in-chief, thus far those supporters have had only one concrete achievement they could really point to: the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. I hate opinion articles like this one.

nkkollaw 9y ago
Agree.
- codefined 9y ago
  Disagree, factual information is often hard to come by on "success", since it depends on what metrics you use. Opinion pieces, clearly marked[0], are probably better than the alternative of nothing. [0] https://puu.sh/ytqSJ/1b73204b14.png https://puu.sh/ytqSJ/1b73204b14.png
noja 9y ago
I hate it when the top comment is a derail.
JepZ 9y ago
I like opinion articles as they make it easier to understand the perspective of the author. At least as long as at least some facts are present, but that does not seem to be a problem here. So while I do not necessarily share the authors opinion, I find his opinion a valuable context.

nkkollaw 9y ago

I have followed this but not that much since I'm not American. I'm wondering, if the laws pass, can people use Tor to keep the actual site they visit hidden, and avoid caps? Also, of course this would create a precedence--although I doubt we would pass such a law in Europe since companies here are not as infiltrated into the government as in the States--, but would the end of Net neutrality in the States directly affect other countries, and how?

philipov 9y ago
Anyone using Tor will get capped by default.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- drb91 9y ago
  Or just blocked.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
mikeash 9y ago
It’s possible. One way people have demonstrated that ISPs were throttling services like Netflix is by showing that you get better performance when streaming over a VPN.
betterunix2 9y ago
"I'm wondering, if the laws pass, can people use Tor to keep the actual site they visit hidden, and avoid caps?" Tor will also be capped. So far ISPs seem to be interested in a strategy of capping everything by default, then removing caps for select services. Tor, VPNs, etc. are unlikely to be selected for non-capped service, especially once ISPs start charging for caps (not only is the Tor project in no position to pay countless ISPs, but if it were not capped then as you suggested people could evade caps and reduce the benefit of paying to be exempted). "would the end of Net neutrality in the States directly affect other countries, and how?" In the long run it will be a benefit to those countries that maintain net neutrality, by fostering the innovative environment of a neutral Internet. In the short term it will probably have no particular impact on anyone outside the US, other than reducing the rate at which new ideas are brought to market in the US.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  Makes sense, thanks for the explanation.

revmoo 9y ago

> When U.S. President Donald Trump’s critics have demanded to know what his supporters got in exchange for voting for the genital-grabber-in-chief Yeah can we at least pretend to be neutral and not editorialize on the first sentence of an article?

Animats 9y ago

The Daily Stormer is back up.[1] [1] https://dailystormer.hk/ https://dailystormer.hk/

userbinator 9y ago
There is something rather ironic about a white supremacist site using the TLD of an Asian country well known for its extensive censorship. (Yes, I know Hong Kong is somewhat special, but it has been a part of China since 1997.)
- Terr_ 9y ago
  Technically speaking, under treaty obligations, China can't overtly change Hong Kong's government until 2047. That said, they still have ways to influence the elections.
  - azinman2 9y ago
    Making sure it’s all pro-China puppets in charge is a pretty good way to get what you want sooner.
- sverige 9y ago
  Especially ironic considering they're based in the U.S., which used to be the home of free speech. "OMG, they're nazis! Shut 'em down!" is the sadly unironic position of most who live in what was once the epicenter of the free speech movement, and is now the epicenter of censorious impulses.
  - 0134340 9y ago
    Doubly ironic in that their conservative brethren endorsed NN, or the wishes of the corporations over the notions of free speech or data equality, regardless of content or source.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  I get the impression that a lot of white supremacists specifically fetishize the legacy of colonialism, either per se or as symbolic of white superiority stabbed in the back by political correctness. I've seen them invoking defunct colonial names and symbols for now-independent nations, e.g. "Rhodesia" [1] (which I encountered "in the wild" when looking for a good recording of Warren Zevon's "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" on YouTube). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia

jstewartmobile 9y ago

Typical Megan McArdle libertarian "thinkpiece". Acknowledges the problem... 'Meanwhile, our experience of the internet is increasingly controlled by a handful of firms, most especially Google and Facebook. The argument for regulating these companies as public utilities is arguably at least as strong as the argument for thus regulating ISPs, and very possibly much stronger; while cable monopolies may have local dominance, none of them has the ability that Google and Facebook have to unilaterally shape what Americans see, hear and read.' Yet refuses to blaspheme the Lord our free market: 'Is this a problem? I think it is. But that doesn’t mean that the internet would get better if Google and Facebook and Apple and Amazon were required to make every decision with a regulator hanging over their shoulder to decide whether it was sufficiently “neutral.”'

jquery 9y ago
Well, when relatively few people in favor of NN are in favor of regulating content (under the shield of "they're private businesses, they can censor what they want!"), it's hard to criticize McArdle for taking the side of the free market with ISPs as well. I largely believe the problem isn't ISPs anymore, it's content-providers. Content is getting increasingly centralized by so-called "content providers" instead of ISPs. People's experience of online censorship is probably a couple orders of magnitude greater when it comes to the increasingly restrictive rules of Facebook/Google/Twitter/Pinterest/YouTube/etc.* (all in the name of being advertiser friendly). My one and only experience with ISPs censoring content was a long time ago when my torrents were throttled. I've never had the ISPs (short of government intervention) block a tweet, a status update, a video, or an online service since then. So when people's experience of online censorship is with content providers, not ISPs, how can we expect to sell the public on Net Neutrality when it doesn't touch the largest experiential part of online censorship? There's an elephant in the room and we're screaming about the mouse in the corner. *EDIT: Let's not forgot the app stores which give two companies the power to essentially erase you from mobile devices if they decide to.
- wfo 9y ago
  Yes censorship by content providers is a (relatively small while Tor exists) problem, and it happens currently in real life. Censorship by ISPs is devastating, competition cannot help, and it is impossible to circumvent and is a real possibility. Because something is not currently happening does not mean we should not be concerned about it, rather, the opposite.

hugh4life 9y ago

I'm agnostic on the rightness or wrongness of net neutrality, but net neutrality makes cord cutting more viable... something Trump supporters who dislike being forced to subsidize certain types of content through bundled packages should be able to appreciate. "In a world without net neutrality, your ISP may offer one video service for free while charging for Netflix, which eventually means you pay more. Oh wait, Comcast, among others, already tried that trick in 2014. In 2017, the ISPs will get away with it." http://awfulannouncing.com/streaming/proposed-net-neutrality-repeal-sports-impacts.html http://awfulannouncing.com/streaming/proposed-net-neutrality...

freeflight 9y ago

The article gives good background about FCC attempts to regulate ISP and the troubles of finding the right framework for it. Where it all falls apart, at least for me, is when it tries to use The Daily Stormer as an example of how net neutrality is "already lost". And I'm not even sure where to start to voice my problems with that framing. For example, the claim that there's "nothing illegal" about it, which is factually wrong as lots of the content on Daily Stormer would easily break a couple of German laws, and probably laws of a few other countries, as Germany isn't the only country with laws in regards to Holocaust denial. While I don't know the specifics about the hosting situation of TDS, I doubt what happened there was "a small number of private companies decided to exercise their considerable control over what we’re allowed to read", like the author claims. That sentence pretty much stylizes TDS as a kind of victim by some ominous international conspiracy, I'm quite certain that's not at all what happened, just like I'm very certain that TDS is still around and reachable for anybody who would want to read it.

jdoliner 9y ago
> For example, the claim that there's "nothing illegal" about it, which is factually wrong as lots of the content on Daily Stormer would easily break a couple of German laws This isn't an argument that an American ISP could use to censor content under our current regulation, why should a CDN be allowed to? > I doubt what happened there was "a small number of private companies decided to exercise their considerable control over what we’re allowed to read" In the words of Cloudflare's CEO: “I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the internet.” So I'd say your doubt is misplace, that's a pretty accurate description of what did happen. Whether or not you consider TDS a victim of some ominous international conspiracy is up to you. But they're certainly not a beneficiary of a regulatory environment in which the internet is neutral and views can't be silence. At least not the American internet, as you pointed out, they're still up but they had to move their hosting to Hong Kong to stay up. So I think it's fair to say that American net neutrality failed them. Now, of course, you may be of the mind: "Who cares? They're Nazis they deserve what they got." But as soon as you go down the path of "we treat sites neutrally... we just treat some sites more neutrally than others." It begins to erode your support as people wonder if they'll eventually be part of the excepted group that doesn't get net neutrality.

LeoJiWoo 9y ago

Well conservatives/populists definitely think so. They have been quite clear on social media, that they are angry at being censored on youtube, google, facebook etc. Some even went as far as saying they trust Comcast to be more neutral than silicon valley. I fear net neutrality is over, unless we can get bipartisan support, but that won't happen unless more parts of the internet ecosystem get enforced neutrality.

jstewartmobile 9y ago
They're right to think so. The big 4/5/6 etc. are politically charged and smart enough to cover their tracks. Comcast is so ham-handed they'd leave a fluorescent blood trail if they even thought about pulling something.
fareesh 9y ago
This is an important point. Now that the chance of losing neutrality, and therefore the possibility of censorship is affecting everyone, there is an expectation from conservatives, who are routinely silenced on the internet, to join hands to preserve the "neutral" status quo. It isn't even just purely politically conservative folks either. For example, Dr. Gad Saad spoke at a Free Speech event in Toronto very recently, and the video was demonetized on YouTube before it had even been published. I have disposable income, I watch Dr Saad's videos. I wouldn't mind viewing ads before his videos. Why would I think less of an advertiser whose ad showed up as a preroll? Am I not the intended audience? Or is it that my impressions aren't allowed because I enjoy Dr. Saad's content? What if I was highly critical of his content and I wanted to watch it, are my video views still not worth anything? The only reason I am on YouTube.com for the duration of the video is because of Dr. Saad. If YouTube is making money off my presence, why can't Dr. Saad? For the advertiser, I am the product, so what does he have to do with anything?

namuol 9y ago

> our experience of the internet is increasingly controlled by a handful of firms, most especially Google and Facebook Exactly why we need to keep net neutrality. It helps keep the marketplace fair by preventing carriers from charging extra for preferential treatment; something that Big Tech Co. will effectively set the price of, but most upstarts won't be able to afford.

Terr_ 9y ago

> Those regulations [Title II common-carriers] were more concerned about things like controlling market power than, say, promoting innovation. Why is a strength of the approach being presented as a weakness? The only kind of "innovation" that could suffer is the kind that involves extortive payment plans and anti-competitive business deals... exactly what people were worried about. > Those of us old enough to remember the telephone service looked like in the 1970s, before the FCC unwound a little WTF? It's not that the FCC "unwound" from some kind of pro-consumer zeal, it's that the breakup of the "Ma Bell" mega-conglomerate began.

rocqua 9y ago

The argument "We've lost net neutrality because some people refuse hosting / claim domains" misses the definition of net-neutrality. Specifically, net-neutrality is about treating all traffic the same. It would be horrible if ISPs refused, on their own initiative, to serve certain traffic. However, this is a case of people refusing to host. Now maybe hosting at `web-scale' is only possible with such a small set of providers as to be an issue, but that is not relevant to the net-neutrality discussion.

jdoliner 9y ago
But all of the supposed goals of net neutrality, competition, everyone having a voice, etc. seem to be impinged at the hosting / domain layer. So if the justification for net neutrality is that we might lose those things... and people feel like they already don't have those things, why would they care about net neutrality?
- namuol 9y ago
  > people feel like they already don't have [a perfectly free Internet where everyone has a voice], why would they care about net neutrality? The Internet is dominated by Tech Giants, but deregulating ISPs will probably only make the problem worse by allowing Tech Giants to set the price for preferential treatment by ISPs, thereby raising the barrier to entry for competitors and raising prices for regular consumers.
  - jdoliner 9y ago
    Hopefully you can see how "this will probably only make the problem worse" doesn't quite stir people's stumps the way "this will create a new problem that we've worked very hard to avoid up until this point."
    - namuol 9y ago
      > this will create a new problem that we've worked very hard to avoid up until this point Sorry, could you elaborate? Not sure what you meant here. Do you just mean to suggest that the "net-neutrality-is-good-for-competition" argument will not persuade the average person, or something else?

rdiddly 9y ago

Yes yes, let big legacy companies do whatever they want! And stifle the little guys! It'll help innovation! Anyone see any problems with that argument?

jstewartmobile 9y ago
I like her writing, but it would be fun to lock her in a room with the old ARPA guys, let her tell them how the government is going to stifle technology, then watch what happens.

sddfd 9y ago

The argument in the article is deeply flawed. It goes like this: With net neutrality, ISPs would be over-regulated, and competition/ease of market entry would be hampered. The article then goes on to claim this competition is needed, because Google and Facebook already have so much power over the internet. But this is deeply flawed, because big compabies will only have more power over the net without net neutrality: they can just pay for the net to behave as they want.

ironchef253 9y ago
This is not the logic of the article. The article says that Title II is pointless over-regulation which creates danger for ISPs, which it is. Imagine if I created 700 rules for what you can do every day and promised to “selectively apply” those rules based on how I feel today. Would you be ok with that? Any mood change on my part (correlating with a change in FCC leadership) and I could ruin your life. Those are not good conditions under which to build a long term business. If you had that hanging over your head, you wouldn’t be happy either. People have been brainwashed to think that Net Neutrality == Title II regulation. That is incorrect. The principal of Net Neutrality is far more important than Title II. Title II is just the wrong tool for the job and causes a lot of additional damage in addition to supporting Net Neutrality. Watching Facebook, Google and Twitter demoting and removing opinions and websites they don’t like (aka not advertiser friendly) is much more sinister than what the ISPs are able to / are likely to do. Censorship by search algorithm is far more dangerous than removal of Title II, which has downsides but is not anywhere near as apocalyptic as what people are saying about it online. I am frustrated at how many people on here do so little research into their own opinions, they just look online and see what Twitter or reddit are saying and say: “ok, sounds good I believe that.” Please take the approach of trying to poke holes in your own opinions before adopting them.
- sddfd 9y ago
  Thanks for your comment. I agree it is important to distinguish between title II and net neutrality. However, I fail to see how the power of Google & Facebook to "curate" the internet is an argument against net neutrality. To me it seems that if ISPs are not bound by net neutrality, then the power of big companies will be even greater. Just another example is a startup competing with Netflix. Without net neutrality, one most likely has to buy a premium Netflix packet from the ISP on top of the Netflix subscription to be able to stream the whole month in high quality. You can look at Portugal, where at least on mobile such packages are already available. Now I don't see how a startup can compete, if its users also have to buy another premium package from their ISPs to use the startups services (in addition to the Premium package the already pay to be able to watch Netflix).

mandelbulb 9y ago

Following the same logic of this article's line of argumentation, I'd say hacker news lost its entire value because it allowed such a horrid submission to gain 75+ points.

mlazos 9y ago

Ugh this article was so frustrating to read. To say “oh look a nazi website can’t find a hosting service” == the internet is already not neutral is such a straw man argument. Even if hosting services were censoring everything it clearly doesn’t help the problem to allow ISP’s to censor what traffic goes through their infrastructure on top of that. This article misses the key point of NN - it’s that ISP’s already will not have competition due to high barriers to entry (case in point Google is even winding down their fiber investments). To compare ISPs to Facebook, G and amazon is apples and oranges - it currently takes very little upfront cost to host a website and “compete” with them. Their monopolies are purely because they provide good quality services that consumers want. ISPs on the other hand have zero competition in most areas and are natural monopolies due to the amount of money (and lobbying) required to build network infrastructure. Using that power to force people to use their services or pay a fee to access others is classic vertical integration and shouldn’t be allowed.