6 ms·

Unpopular opinion: I was pro net neutrality - but I wouldn't have noticed it had been repealed if I was not so plugged into the debate. What has changed for oth

by bhawks 6y ago

Unpopular opinion: I was pro net neutrality - but I wouldn't have noticed it had been repealed if I was not so plugged into the debate. What has changed for other folks that you can tell? This was 'the sky is falling' level of concern and to be frank I think it was totally overblown.

kadoban 6y ago
It hasn't been that long. Big companies are smart enough to move slowly so as to avoid causing too many waves.
- bcherny 6y ago
  > Don’t attribute to malice that which you can attribute to incompetence.
  - kadoban 6y ago
    Not sure I follow. What action or lack-thereof are we trying to attribute?
    - d110af5ccf 6y ago
      >>>> wouldn't have noticed ... What has changed >>> It hasn't been that long. Big companies are smart enough to move slowly The implication is that ISPs are intentionally slowing the adoption of exploitative policies in order to avoid drawing negative attention while politically vulnerable.
  - imwillofficial 6y ago
    Worst saying ever
    - d110af5ccf 6y ago
      Not at all. Extending the benefit of the doubt is essential to society functioning well. Assuming the worst without clear cause just escalates things needlessly and poisons relationships. That doesn't mean you have to be a sucker though. It's quite clear in context that ISPs would love to abuse a lack of net neutrality if they could get away with it. There's literally a video from years ago of an AT&T executive talking about it.
      - imwillofficial 6y ago
        Perhaps, but every time I see that tired saying trotted out, the context is in groups that have not earned, or worse, have a history of malice that does not justify the benefit of the doubt
- dantheman 6y ago
  It didn't exist for long, it isn't needed and is just another way for the government to get more control of the internet. Let's wait till there is a problem before we try to fix it.
  - ulkesh 6y ago
    There are numerous problems. Comcast packet shaping in the late aughts. Zero-rated services. Lack of competition. Regional monopolies. High prices due to monopolies. Data caps. Downgraded service due to going over data caps. But I suppose none of that matters when it may involve the government having to step in and actually protect consumers -- and protect what has become a basic human right. I do wonder if the AT&T breakup in 1983 would actually occur in this current ignorant political climate, had it been offset by 40 years in the future.
    - imwillofficial 6y ago
      None of which are fixed
  - DistractionRect 6y ago
    Legislation is notoriously slow, and the companies that'd profit would (and did) lobby against fixing it. It's almost always cheaper to prevent a problem than treat it after it festers. What is the problem with net neutrality//regulation? What did repealing it fix? The shift to WFH has highlighted how essential internet access in the modern world - it should be regulated like all other essential utilities.
  - d110af5ccf 6y ago
    > it isn't needed A baseless claim. Others already provided counterexamples. Without net neutrality, things could deteriorate extremely quickly if the changes appeared likely to be profitable. > is just another way for the government to get more control of the internet This statement doesn't even make sense. These aren't KYC regulations or building permits we're talking about here. They just make it illegal to charge for preferential treatment. We've had common carrier laws since forever. The fact that ISPs are exempt is an aberration.
- gremlinsinc 6y ago
  This! Boil the frog slowly and it'll never even know it's boiling. Businesses and politicians are nothing if not methodical, patient, and incremental. Bit by bit they'll rip away competitional freedoms.
  - bhawks 6y ago
    Saying things like this makes people think you're a paranoid tin foil hat carrying conspiracy theorist. Extraordinary claims require evidence and so far that evidence is not compelling to get normal people to care.
    - gremlinsinc 6y ago
      Seriously, all I said was that - they know better than to rip the bandaid off at once. People would be irate if everything they wanted was magically made manifest. That's just common sense. Net-neutrality - from the many other comments has already been enacting incrementally small but bad changes for internet/broadband/streaming platforms and esp. in terms of monopolistic control. It's similar to how 24/7 media took over propagandazing and polarizing the country - all media from Fox to CNN. It started with repealing the Fairness Doctrine which required all viewpoints to be expressed. Then came the Telecommunications Act which was supposed to open the market to more and new radio station ownership; instead, it created an opportunity for a media monopoly. You saw American media go from hundreds of owners to 6 or 7 companies owning 99% of media via radio, tv, etc. At least with more diversity of ownership there wasn't the ability for CEO's to completely control a narrative whether it's Turner, Murdoch, Comcast, Sinclair Broadcasting, etc. It took 25 years for media to bring us to this point, it wasn't an overnight thing. Laws become reality, companies pick at the edges to see what they can get away with, they pick some more, eventually they take as much as they can get away with and control their foothold. I don't see how this is conspiracy, it's just facts about capitalism.
mimikatz 6y ago
I feel the same way. I kinda feel like big tech duped me into buying into the FUD about net neutrality. I was a huge supporter of it and thought when Trump came into office the net would get segmented up. When it didn't happen I felt like I was taken for a ride.
- NDizzle 6y ago
  You were. It's okay. Please learn from that experience.
  - toiletfuneral 6y ago
    hail corporate
- Fellshard 6y ago
  It's an extremely useful FUD for large monopolies, since they can create their own infrastructure and cut ahead of smaller businesses that will be trampled by NN regulations. It's an easy pitch because they make it sound 'democratic', but from an engineering perspective it's absolutely nuts.
  - kadoban 6y ago
    Oh? What exactly are these onerous regulations that small businesses can't comply with, that are part of net neutrality? I can think of precisely none, help me out?
    - Fellshard 6y ago
      Private custom infrastructure that can be specialized for purpose, while the ISPs maintain a monopoly and simply serve unspecialized, lowest common denominator traffic - no room for competitors to differentiate. That is the real issue to tackle: find better ways to make meaningful competition in a region possible, that can offer genuinely different specializations (e.g. High media upload vs. Slow but regular text browsing vs. Real-time gaming).
  - 6y ago
ulkesh 6y ago
Name one innovation that occurred because of Net Neutrality repeal? That was the other side's argument -- that Net Neutrality hindered innovation. The last four years, I've seen nothing but stagnation in the industry, except for perhaps what telecoms like to call "5G", which may have technological advances, but is more of a marketing buzzword. There are still data caps on home connections for literally no reason at all, except as a cash grab. There are still considerably high prices for access. There are still regional monopolies. There is still very little competition, when comparing apples to apples in offered bandwidth. We got flooded with zero-rating services during this time which in and of itself stifles competition. And with this pandemic, it became crystal clear just how vital the internet is, especially as it relates to our kids and their education. Net Neutrality was on the FCC books for, what, 18 months tops? It had little time to do anything that it was meant, and it really belongs in legislation [1] and not at the mercy of a changing administration. [1] https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2019/net-neutrality-legislation-a-framework-for-consensus/ https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2019/net-neutr...
- 0xy 6y ago
  Average internet speeds are up substantially since repeal. It is up over 300% in fact, and is now 12th globally according to Ookla. Even higher if you remove tiny dense countries like Liechtenstein. That's innovation.
  - wtallis 6y ago
    You should at least attempt to make some kind of argument that there's real causation here and not merely correlation. Also, aren't most of Ookla's speed test results biased by testing against servers the ISP has given preferential placement to inside their network, rather than using a diverse set of servers on the public internet? (I'll admit, it's been years since I last cared to look at an Ookla speed test, so I'm not sure if their default server selection strategy has changed.)
    - 0xy 6y ago
      Is your argument that substantial speed increases are not innovation, or that the original arguments for Net Neutrality were totally incorrect? Because NN campaigners said speeds would go down or stagnate. In fact, this is the EFF's prime argument for Net Neutrality. [1] It has been proven absolutely false. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/attack-net-neutrality-attack-free-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/attack-net-neutrality-...
ShroudedNight 6y ago
While the issue became relatively quiet after the Ajit Pai led rollbacks, there appears to have been significant developments on a state-by-state basis. Depending on where you reside, you may have some form of net neutrality provision, even if it's not enforced at the federal level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_S...
danShumway 6y ago
AFAIK almost every major mobile provider throttles video on unlimited plans. I'm also seeing restrictions and throttling when phones are tethered. More ISPs are experimenting with data caps now. We haven't seen the big scary "pay $10 for Netflix access" posters come true, but I think otherwise this has basically gone as predicted? Net neutrality was about whether ISPs could adjust speed/charges/caps on the basis of content type, and they do that right now. AT&T set up a "sponsored data" program in 2020 where companies paid to not have their apps count against data usage. They exempted their own property HBO Max, essentially for free since they're paying themselves. That was a big part of what the net neutrality debate was about: ISPs setting up schemes that favored established players by making them pay for customer access, and the fear that this would make it harder for indie upstarts to enter the market. In 2021 AT&T ended that program, but are still continuing to exempt HBO Max, which is an even worse situation because not only are they leveraging their power as a mobile provider to give their video service a leg up, there's not even a way to pay now to be treated equally on their network. It's not a wasteland, but... I'm not sure what to say. Are people here happy with the direction that ISPs are going right now? I'm not. We have less competition, more ISPs are vertically integrating content and buying content producers, the 5G rollout has been largely disappointing, and there doesn't seem to be any indication that any of this stuff is changing. I guess there haven't been a ton of sexy consequences that are obvious to every consumer, but companies are definitely experimenting with the stuff that would have been regulated under net neutrality. People warned about privileging content, and companies privilege content now.
- bhawks 6y ago
  The lack of real consequences really robs credibility from the next big internet cause (that might really need it). What has happened has played out on a really small scale and it's effect is mildly frustrating to meh. Attributing the lackluster 5G rollout to the repeal net neutrality seems really tenuous. I am not deeply familiar but it seems like their are other confounding factors such as the China/us relationship, the weird 5g paranoia, covid, and the overall sickly state of telcom that has existed since the payphone era. All in all I and many other citizens have bigger fish to fry. Jabbering my friends about net neutrality was a big waste of time and energy. I feel burned and embarrassed.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
Those things have inertia. Net neutrality, like freedom of speech, doesn't lead to great changes overnight, but, I guess, big ones on the long run. Like diet and exercise.
resfirestar 6y ago
I think one could argue that there hasn't really been a regulatory opening for any serious moves against net neutrality in the home broadband market. The FCC repealed the Obama-era rules in June 2018. Comcast/Xfinity was still under merger conditions binding it to net neutrality principles until that September, and had to make a show of assuring the FCC it wouldn't make any anticompetitive moves to avoid having the conditions extended. Charter/Spectrum remains under merger conditions forbidding data caps, which would be needed if they wanted to bill for data unequally, until 2023. So two of the major players with the most to gain haven't been in a position to try mobile-style throttling, and even if other companies considered it there was a possibility (now a reality) that around the time they finished rolling out any change there could be a new administration hostile to their plans and happy to use an already unpopular cable company as a villain.
Black101 6y ago
I haven't noticed a change, but it is not a bad thing to implement because I could see it being abused...
Olreich 6y ago
You don’t criminalize behavior because it will happen, but because it could. Net neutrality prevents companies from doing harmful things, like installing data caps and providing preferential treatment to certain data. Those things don’t have to happen, and maybe aren’t happening because the companies think they’d get bad PR. But they could happen, and that’s why you regulate to prevent them. Perhaps the big kerfuffle was overblown, or perhaps it instead slowed down the plans that companies had (since it was now a provable PR nightmare post-kerfuffle). We don’t have enough data to decide that. We do know that companies are currently allowed to act in anti-consumer fashion.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
archive.is and archive.today does not resolve on some connections.

by bhawks 6y ago

kadoban 6y ago

It hasn't been that long. Big companies are smart enough to move slowly so as to avoid causing too many waves.

bcherny 6y ago
> Don’t attribute to malice that which you can attribute to incompetence.
- kadoban 6y ago
  Not sure I follow. What action or lack-thereof are we trying to attribute?
  - d110af5ccf 6y ago
    >>>> wouldn't have noticed ... What has changed >>> It hasn't been that long. Big companies are smart enough to move slowly The implication is that ISPs are intentionally slowing the adoption of exploitative policies in order to avoid drawing negative attention while politically vulnerable.
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  Worst saying ever
  - d110af5ccf 6y ago
    Not at all. Extending the benefit of the doubt is essential to society functioning well. Assuming the worst without clear cause just escalates things needlessly and poisons relationships. That doesn't mean you have to be a sucker though. It's quite clear in context that ISPs would love to abuse a lack of net neutrality if they could get away with it. There's literally a video from years ago of an AT&T executive talking about it.
    - imwillofficial 6y ago
      Perhaps, but every time I see that tired saying trotted out, the context is in groups that have not earned, or worse, have a history of malice that does not justify the benefit of the doubt
dantheman 6y ago
It didn't exist for long, it isn't needed and is just another way for the government to get more control of the internet. Let's wait till there is a problem before we try to fix it.
- ulkesh 6y ago
  There are numerous problems. Comcast packet shaping in the late aughts. Zero-rated services. Lack of competition. Regional monopolies. High prices due to monopolies. Data caps. Downgraded service due to going over data caps. But I suppose none of that matters when it may involve the government having to step in and actually protect consumers -- and protect what has become a basic human right. I do wonder if the AT&T breakup in 1983 would actually occur in this current ignorant political climate, had it been offset by 40 years in the future.
  - imwillofficial 6y ago
    None of which are fixed
- DistractionRect 6y ago
  Legislation is notoriously slow, and the companies that'd profit would (and did) lobby against fixing it. It's almost always cheaper to prevent a problem than treat it after it festers. What is the problem with net neutrality//regulation? What did repealing it fix? The shift to WFH has highlighted how essential internet access in the modern world - it should be regulated like all other essential utilities.
- d110af5ccf 6y ago
  > it isn't needed A baseless claim. Others already provided counterexamples. Without net neutrality, things could deteriorate extremely quickly if the changes appeared likely to be profitable. > is just another way for the government to get more control of the internet This statement doesn't even make sense. These aren't KYC regulations or building permits we're talking about here. They just make it illegal to charge for preferential treatment. We've had common carrier laws since forever. The fact that ISPs are exempt is an aberration.
gremlinsinc 6y ago
This! Boil the frog slowly and it'll never even know it's boiling. Businesses and politicians are nothing if not methodical, patient, and incremental. Bit by bit they'll rip away competitional freedoms.
- bhawks 6y ago
  Saying things like this makes people think you're a paranoid tin foil hat carrying conspiracy theorist. Extraordinary claims require evidence and so far that evidence is not compelling to get normal people to care.
  - gremlinsinc 6y ago
    Seriously, all I said was that - they know better than to rip the bandaid off at once. People would be irate if everything they wanted was magically made manifest. That's just common sense. Net-neutrality - from the many other comments has already been enacting incrementally small but bad changes for internet/broadband/streaming platforms and esp. in terms of monopolistic control. It's similar to how 24/7 media took over propagandazing and polarizing the country - all media from Fox to CNN. It started with repealing the Fairness Doctrine which required all viewpoints to be expressed. Then came the Telecommunications Act which was supposed to open the market to more and new radio station ownership; instead, it created an opportunity for a media monopoly. You saw American media go from hundreds of owners to 6 or 7 companies owning 99% of media via radio, tv, etc. At least with more diversity of ownership there wasn't the ability for CEO's to completely control a narrative whether it's Turner, Murdoch, Comcast, Sinclair Broadcasting, etc. It took 25 years for media to bring us to this point, it wasn't an overnight thing. Laws become reality, companies pick at the edges to see what they can get away with, they pick some more, eventually they take as much as they can get away with and control their foothold. I don't see how this is conspiracy, it's just facts about capitalism.

mimikatz 6y ago

I feel the same way. I kinda feel like big tech duped me into buying into the FUD about net neutrality. I was a huge supporter of it and thought when Trump came into office the net would get segmented up. When it didn't happen I felt like I was taken for a ride.

NDizzle 6y ago
You were. It's okay. Please learn from that experience.
- toiletfuneral 6y ago
  hail corporate
Fellshard 6y ago
It's an extremely useful FUD for large monopolies, since they can create their own infrastructure and cut ahead of smaller businesses that will be trampled by NN regulations. It's an easy pitch because they make it sound 'democratic', but from an engineering perspective it's absolutely nuts.
- kadoban 6y ago
  Oh? What exactly are these onerous regulations that small businesses can't comply with, that are part of net neutrality? I can think of precisely none, help me out?
  - Fellshard 6y ago
    Private custom infrastructure that can be specialized for purpose, while the ISPs maintain a monopoly and simply serve unspecialized, lowest common denominator traffic - no room for competitors to differentiate. That is the real issue to tackle: find better ways to make meaningful competition in a region possible, that can offer genuinely different specializations (e.g. High media upload vs. Slow but regular text browsing vs. Real-time gaming).
- 6y ago

ulkesh 6y ago

Name one innovation that occurred because of Net Neutrality repeal? That was the other side's argument -- that Net Neutrality hindered innovation. The last four years, I've seen nothing but stagnation in the industry, except for perhaps what telecoms like to call "5G", which may have technological advances, but is more of a marketing buzzword. There are still data caps on home connections for literally no reason at all, except as a cash grab. There are still considerably high prices for access. There are still regional monopolies. There is still very little competition, when comparing apples to apples in offered bandwidth. We got flooded with zero-rating services during this time which in and of itself stifles competition. And with this pandemic, it became crystal clear just how vital the internet is, especially as it relates to our kids and their education. Net Neutrality was on the FCC books for, what, 18 months tops? It had little time to do anything that it was meant, and it really belongs in legislation [1] and not at the mercy of a changing administration. [1] https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2019/net-neutrality-legislation-a-framework-for-consensus/ https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2019/net-neutr...

0xy 6y ago
Average internet speeds are up substantially since repeal. It is up over 300% in fact, and is now 12th globally according to Ookla. Even higher if you remove tiny dense countries like Liechtenstein. That's innovation.
- wtallis 6y ago
  You should at least attempt to make some kind of argument that there's real causation here and not merely correlation. Also, aren't most of Ookla's speed test results biased by testing against servers the ISP has given preferential placement to inside their network, rather than using a diverse set of servers on the public internet? (I'll admit, it's been years since I last cared to look at an Ookla speed test, so I'm not sure if their default server selection strategy has changed.)
  - 0xy 6y ago
    Is your argument that substantial speed increases are not innovation, or that the original arguments for Net Neutrality were totally incorrect? Because NN campaigners said speeds would go down or stagnate. In fact, this is the EFF's prime argument for Net Neutrality. [1] It has been proven absolutely false. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/attack-net-neutrality-attack-free-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/attack-net-neutrality-...

ShroudedNight 6y ago

While the issue became relatively quiet after the Ajit Pai led rollbacks, there appears to have been significant developments on a state-by-state basis. Depending on where you reside, you may have some form of net neutrality provision, even if it's not enforced at the federal level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_S...

danShumway 6y ago

AFAIK almost every major mobile provider throttles video on unlimited plans. I'm also seeing restrictions and throttling when phones are tethered. More ISPs are experimenting with data caps now. We haven't seen the big scary "pay $10 for Netflix access" posters come true, but I think otherwise this has basically gone as predicted? Net neutrality was about whether ISPs could adjust speed/charges/caps on the basis of content type, and they do that right now. AT&T set up a "sponsored data" program in 2020 where companies paid to not have their apps count against data usage. They exempted their own property HBO Max, essentially for free since they're paying themselves. That was a big part of what the net neutrality debate was about: ISPs setting up schemes that favored established players by making them pay for customer access, and the fear that this would make it harder for indie upstarts to enter the market. In 2021 AT&T ended that program, but are still continuing to exempt HBO Max, which is an even worse situation because not only are they leveraging their power as a mobile provider to give their video service a leg up, there's not even a way to pay now to be treated equally on their network. It's not a wasteland, but... I'm not sure what to say. Are people here happy with the direction that ISPs are going right now? I'm not. We have less competition, more ISPs are vertically integrating content and buying content producers, the 5G rollout has been largely disappointing, and there doesn't seem to be any indication that any of this stuff is changing. I guess there haven't been a ton of sexy consequences that are obvious to every consumer, but companies are definitely experimenting with the stuff that would have been regulated under net neutrality. People warned about privileging content, and companies privilege content now.

bhawks 6y ago
The lack of real consequences really robs credibility from the next big internet cause (that might really need it). What has happened has played out on a really small scale and it's effect is mildly frustrating to meh. Attributing the lackluster 5G rollout to the repeal net neutrality seems really tenuous. I am not deeply familiar but it seems like their are other confounding factors such as the China/us relationship, the weird 5g paranoia, covid, and the overall sickly state of telcom that has existed since the payphone era. All in all I and many other citizens have bigger fish to fry. Jabbering my friends about net neutrality was a big waste of time and energy. I feel burned and embarrassed.

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

Those things have inertia. Net neutrality, like freedom of speech, doesn't lead to great changes overnight, but, I guess, big ones on the long run. Like diet and exercise.

resfirestar 6y ago

I think one could argue that there hasn't really been a regulatory opening for any serious moves against net neutrality in the home broadband market. The FCC repealed the Obama-era rules in June 2018. Comcast/Xfinity was still under merger conditions binding it to net neutrality principles until that September, and had to make a show of assuring the FCC it wouldn't make any anticompetitive moves to avoid having the conditions extended. Charter/Spectrum remains under merger conditions forbidding data caps, which would be needed if they wanted to bill for data unequally, until 2023. So two of the major players with the most to gain haven't been in a position to try mobile-style throttling, and even if other companies considered it there was a possibility (now a reality) that around the time they finished rolling out any change there could be a new administration hostile to their plans and happy to use an already unpopular cable company as a villain.

Black101 6y ago

I haven't noticed a change, but it is not a bad thing to implement because I could see it being abused...

Olreich 6y ago

You don’t criminalize behavior because it will happen, but because it could. Net neutrality prevents companies from doing harmful things, like installing data caps and providing preferential treatment to certain data. Those things don’t have to happen, and maybe aren’t happening because the companies think they’d get bad PR. But they could happen, and that’s why you regulate to prevent them. Perhaps the big kerfuffle was overblown, or perhaps it instead slowed down the plans that companies had (since it was now a provable PR nightmare post-kerfuffle). We don’t have enough data to decide that. We do know that companies are currently allowed to act in anti-consumer fashion.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

archive.is and archive.today does not resolve on some connections.