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This was posted to hackernews a couple months ago: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/att-says-it-never-blocked-apps-fails-to-mention-how-it-blocked-f

This was posted to hackernews a couple months ago: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/att-says-it-never-blocked-apps-fails-to-mention-how-it-blocked-facetime/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/att-says-it-neve... As the article points out the kind of abuses people are talking about are nit theoretical; they were done before the 2015 rules went into effect. This was especially true on mobile plans. Another thing is you can look at how this has played out in other countries, and it isn't pretty. There's an image floating around of an ad for a Portuguese ISP, which looks like a cable tv add from the 90's -- explicit lists of sites that are provided. It's hard to study this kind of phenomenon with the level of rigor we'd expect from a physicist. That sort of thing is kinda the best you can do. Finally, I have friends who work at companies who do larger scale traffic analysis on the net, and from what they've told me, at least before the 2015 rules, throttling was basically the norm, though you'd be hard pressed to get the pr departments to admit it.

patrickaljord 9y ago
> There's an image floating around of an ad for a Portuguese ISP, which looks like a cable tv add from the 90's -- explicit lists of sites that are provided. And there's nothing wrong with this. What this picture floating around doesn't say is that the Portuguese ISP is for mobile and this ISP also provides a full internet access plan for mobile cheaper and faster than in the US. It is true that they also provide cheap plans limited to certain websites for people who can't afford the regular plan. What liberals would want would have the consequence of people who can't afford the regular plan to not have any plans at all. My family in Peru run on similar cheap plans limited to Whatsapp, Facebook, Wikipedia and a few other services and thanks to this I can communicate with them. As usual, liberals principals for fairness would in reality punish the poor who would lose access to these services but at least liberals would sleep better at night knowing that no one is getting "cable tv from the 90's" like internet (whatever that means). Instead, they would get no internet at all. Well played folks.
- zenhack 9y ago
  First, I'll point out that this is not a "liberal" thing; polling has revealed that republican voters are by and large for keeping the net neutrality rules as well. This isn't a left vs right issue, it's basically big ISPs vs most everyone else. Second, and more to the point, internet service is generally much cheaper in other countries, but the reasons are most definitely not lack of regulations. It basically comes down to local monopolies, and the usual effects of lack of competition. Giving large ISPs more power will not help. This article gives a decent overview of the situation: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/upshot/why-the-us-has-fallen-behind-in-internet-speed-and-affordability.html?referer= https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/upshot/why-the-us-has-...

patrickaljord 9y ago

> There's an image floating around of an ad for a Portuguese ISP, which looks like a cable tv add from the 90's -- explicit lists of sites that are provided. And there's nothing wrong with this. What this picture floating around doesn't say is that the Portuguese ISP is for mobile and this ISP also provides a full internet access plan for mobile cheaper and faster than in the US. It is true that they also provide cheap plans limited to certain websites for people who can't afford the regular plan. What liberals would want would have the consequence of people who can't afford the regular plan to not have any plans at all. My family in Peru run on similar cheap plans limited to Whatsapp, Facebook, Wikipedia and a few other services and thanks to this I can communicate with them. As usual, liberals principals for fairness would in reality punish the poor who would lose access to these services but at least liberals would sleep better at night knowing that no one is getting "cable tv from the 90's" like internet (whatever that means). Instead, they would get no internet at all. Well played folks.

zenhack 9y ago
First, I'll point out that this is not a "liberal" thing; polling has revealed that republican voters are by and large for keeping the net neutrality rules as well. This isn't a left vs right issue, it's basically big ISPs vs most everyone else. Second, and more to the point, internet service is generally much cheaper in other countries, but the reasons are most definitely not lack of regulations. It basically comes down to local monopolies, and the usual effects of lack of competition. Giving large ISPs more power will not help. This article gives a decent overview of the situation: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/upshot/why-the-us-has-fallen-behind-in-internet-speed-and-affordability.html?referer= https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/upshot/why-the-us-has-...