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Ajit Pai Is Officially Gone
- illuminated 6y agoI'm not the author of the list below, but it's a nice TLDR. Here is a list of harmful nonsense [1] Pai and his FCC did over the last four years: - Killed net neutrality - Approved T-Mobile / Sprint merger - Repeatedly released reports that claimed U.S. broadband is fine - Defended murder of net neutrality in court - Flubbed Puerto Rico hurricane disaster response - Slow-walked and obstructed investigation into telecom company sale of your location data - Said FTC would protect net neutrality (it didn’t, and couldn’t) - Falsely claimed killing net neutrality was good for broadband access (it wasn’t) - Refused to brief Congress about telecom companies’ sale of their customers’ phone location data - Helped Comcast and other major telecom companies in their pursuit of monopolistic power - Oversaw America’s falling rank in an annual “Internet Freedom” index - Allowed Verizon to throttle California firefighters’ data while they were fighting unprecedented wildfires - Invented a DDoS attack that shut down the FCC’s net neutrality comment system - Lied to public about that fake DDoS attack that shut down the agency’s net neutrality comment system - Lied to Congress about that fake DDoS attack - Didn’t detect that dead people were leaving comments on net neutrality comment system - Refused to change the definition of ‘broadband’ - Demanded $200 to release emails about his giant mug - Allowed scammers to submit fake comments about net neutrality under the names of two sitting senators - Did that dumbass Harlem Shake thing with a pizzagate conspiracy theorist - Became a rubber stamp for Sinclair Media and - Tried to kill a broadband assistance program that subsidized internet connections for the economically unstable and poor - Got a literal gun from the NRA for his “courage” in killing net neutrality - Was investigated by his own agency for alleged corruption as he pushed to dismantle media consolidation rules - Published report claiming broadband market was magically fixed by repealing net neutrality - Ignored 22 million comments supporting net neutrality - Tried to reclassify cell phone data service as “broadband internet” - Allowed phone call rates for incarcerated people to skyrocket [1]: https://www.vice.com/en/topic/ajit-pai https://www.vice.com/en/topic/ajit-pai
- BitwiseFool 6y agoIf a silver-lining is possbile from all this, way more people know about Net-Neutrality and now think it's important.
- godelmachine 6y agoDo we stand a change to reverse the damages he has inflicted?
- dangjc 6y agoThere’s a good chance to get decent commissioners approved by a Democratic Senate. They can start a process to make new rules. Federal agencies have a rule making process which requires evidence and findings, especially to change prior rules. Hopefully there will be mounting evidence that many of these changes were harmful.
- DamnYuppie 6y agoI haven't been following the aftermath of the net neutrality decision. Are there any data points that point to the impact of it being worse for most consumers, either in access or cost?
- ViViDboarder 6y agoNet Neutrality never really became status quo. It wasn’t in place for long enough to see any significant challenges. It’s removal was a return to status quo, so there would be nothing to measure. As a consumer, one thing that’s been visible to me, without Net Neutrality, is connectivity companies (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc) buying media companies (HBO, Hulu, etc) and then implementing bandwidth caps and then zero rating their traffic to get edges over their competitors who don’t control the networks. There is some history of it, including links to research, on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality
- java-man 6y agoused my name to kill net neutrality.
- rubyist5eva 6y agoPeople keep saying killing net neutrality was bad...but has there been actually been anything tangible that came out of killing it?
- zaroth 6y agoWell Netflix has to have been running at multiples of their regular bandwidth the last year, and at least anecdotally my experience has been flawless, and I haven't read about any widespread issues with Netflix streaming. It certainly seems the free market was able to deal with it. One thing I'm really happy with is how the FCC ran the $9.2 billion auction for the RDOF (Rural Digital Opportunity Fund) subsidies. Although I don't have hard numbers, my impression is that the USF (Universal Service Fund) is a typical government boondoggle, and the RDOF auction format was a pretty innovative way to distribute the funds. For a minute there it looked like they would try to exclude SpaceX from bidding in the high bandwidth / low latency tier, but ultimately they went with taking a chance on their unproven tech and they were able to win $885 million in subsidies.
- ASalazarMX 6y agoNetflix has a wide distribution infrastructure, both in physical data centers and in cloud providers. Fast.com will usually give you sustained fast speeds even if your overall internet access is spotty. IIRC, some people were able to watch Netflix even when there were global internet outages. Their team is amazing.
- ulucs 6y agoChaos engineering really pays off
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ncmncm 6y agoThere is no free market in communication. "Was able to deal with it" is a curious turn of phrase: Yes, there are still companies. But has Americans' access to communication kept pace with the technology and with the rest of the world? Very, very far from it. Americans, collectively, pay far more, for far fewer bits, than others in the world, particularly once you get just a few miles away from a city center. It is telling how much higher prices are in places where competition has been curtailed by the FCC's failures, and how much higher even prices where two services operate are, than in other countries. The number of states where towns have been forbidden to operate a municipal network also reveals our poor condition. America is a third-world country in communication, just as it is in infant mortality. It is not accidental. There are reasons that a cable service is the most hated company in the US, more even than Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, or Koch Industries, which might deserve it more.
- say_it_as_it_is 6y agoI learned from Ajit Pai that a public comment period requires identity verification
- lorax_108 6y agoajit pai is gone and so is that fat orange liar trump!!! good day here in america!!!
- ectqmbe 6y agoYep. The news was almost boring. How great is that?
- mmglr 6y ago> His official FCC Twitter account, where he antagonized people who criticized him, has been deleted. Are gov't officials allowed to delete their official use Twitter (and any social media) accounts just like that? I would think posts should be archived or put in read only mode for posterity?
- happyconcepts 6y agoNet neutrality is fairness. Access isn't fair if it isn't neutral. Anyone telling you otherwise (Ajit Pai) doesn't care about you.
- RickJWagner 6y ago"Pai killed net". Really? I think the journalist has some axe to grind.