8 ms·

Comcast has attempted to dismantle net neutrality at least for the last 15 years, and it's arguable they have allies in government. They even paid seat warmers

by rhaksw 4y ago

Comcast has attempted to dismantle net neutrality at least for the last 15 years, and it's arguable they have allies in government. They even paid seat warmers to fill up a FCC hearing so it would seem like nobody was countering their viewpoints [1]. They were fined for that, yet they continue efforts to dismantle net neutrality as K'Tetch describes in that clip. The degree to which monopolistic broadband ISPs are willing to manipulate the system is dastardly. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEXuK073bkE&t=749s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEXuK073bkE&t=749s

dragonwriter 4y ago
> Comcast has attempted to dismantle net neutrality at least for the last 15 years, and it's arguable they have allies in government. No, it's not merely arguable. Large portions of the Republican Party in government, including every Republican member of the FCC, are overtly their allies on this.
WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
Agreed but ISPs couldn't get away with it without us voters endlessly reelecting pols who trade law+power for campaign cash.
- rhaksw 4y ago
  ISPs may also be lobbying us through social media. Peter Pomerantsev makes a strong case that moderated forums are for sale in This Is Not Propaganda [1]. For example, he mentions "consensus cracking", > There are instructions on how to control an internet forum, including tips on “consensus cracking”: using a fake persona to express the ideas you oppose in such a weak and unconvincing manner that you can then use another fake persona to knock them down. Here is Peter speaking [2] a week ago at a Stanford conference on disinformation where Obama gave the keynote [3]. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41717504-this-is-not-propaganda https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41717504-this-is-not-pro... [2] https://youtu.be/Nd1CKG3o818?t=23848 https://youtu.be/Nd1CKG3o818?t=23848 [3] https://youtu.be/YrMMiDXspYo?t=1855 https://youtu.be/YrMMiDXspYo?t=1855
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    Thanks for the links. The panel seemed focused on the right problems. I found Peter's input underwhelming and not very on topic, though. I might check out his book if it has more specifics on less obvious online opinion control measures.
    - rhaksw 4y ago
      The book is great. Here three paragraphs I highlighted, from different sections. You can check if they resonate with you. > And it’s not just conflicts or elections that are affected. I see people I have known my whole life slip away from me on social media, reposting conspiracies from sources I have never heard of, some sort of internet undercurrent pulling whole families apart, as if we never really knew each other, as if the algorithms know more about us than we do, as if we are becoming subsets of our own data, which is rearranging our relations and identities with its own logic, or in the cause of someone else’s interests we can’t even see. > When she interviewed Al-Qaeda recruits and their families, what struck her was how normal their backgrounds were, how distant fundamentalist purity was for most of them. Bin Laden's trick had been to take the different grievances of different groups and give them the illusion that if they united globally, they would achieve a better world, if only they could get rid of unbelievers. > Russia, with its social media squadrons, haunts these [social media network] maps. Not because it is the force that can still move earth and heaven as it could in the Cold War, but because the Kremlin's rulers are particularly adept at gaming elements of this new age, or at the very least are good at getting everyone to talk about how good they are, which could be the most important trick of all.
      - nonrandomstring 4y ago
        > Russia, with its social media squadrons... at the very least are good at getting everyone to talk about how good they are, which could be the most important trick of all. A key use of propaganda is demoralisation. Sapping the enemy's resolve and sowing seeds of doubt. It's a long march. For years I've noticed certain voices in tech forums who are not merely fearful of the negative effects of some technologies against liberal democracy, they positively celebrate them. "Liberal values are doomed." - they tell us. "The battle is already lost." Their relentless message is that authoritarian technology is inevitable. It's already ubiquitous. Privacy is an illusion we are better to give up on. The corporations are too powerful. Against state actors there is no point even trying to secure your digital world. Regardless your choice or morals, eventually everyone will be forced to fall into line... etc etc ad-nauseum. I see this as a corrosive meta campaign by voices that have unwittingly been recruited as denouncers of liberal democracy. They sound like the mocking voice of Lord Haw-Haw or the German denouncer in Saving Private Ryan, calling; "The Statue of Liberty ist Kaput!" BTW: This looks like a very interesting book I may be buying. Thanks for posting these snippets.
- Uehreka 4y ago
  I’ve supported candidates who want to clamp down on private electoral financing (like the unfortunate @cantbuypaul) but the problem seems to be that in order for this to work, we’d need to elect a ton of these people, against the will of many lobbyists, and all at the same time (so they could be a large enough caucus to get a bill through). Unfortunately, the only way the left (I chuckle at any conservatives/libertarians who claim to actually oppose corporate campaign finance) has managed to get people into congress is a couple people per election. People on the whole just aren’t in to campaign finance reform, even when it’s decoupled from the so-called “woke agenda”.
  - rolandog 4y ago
    I can't remember where I read it, but I recall there was a study that argued that it would be "better" (can't recall the hypothesis: more democratic? more representative?) to actually pick people like jury duty (i.e. at random).
    - retrac 4y ago
      To the electoral policy nerds, that method is known as sortition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition a.k.a. selection by lots. It has consistently had its advocates over the centuries. I too feel it's underrated as a method. Plato was basically right all those years ago; those who actively seek power generally don't deserve it. I seriously wonder if we'd be better off with a legislature selected of random citizens, and an executive council selected the same way. It did work for the Ancient Athenians for some 300+ years. Democracy in ancient Greece meant selection by lottery and most offices in the Athenian democracy were picked that way. Following selection there was a public interview during which any citizen could pose questions and the candidate could at that point be disqualified for a legally established reason by a vote of the previously-elected archons. (The main exception was military generals, who were elected by popular vote. Competence and respect were considered more important than incorruptibility for that particular office.)
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      It would be better to have an electoral system that provides proportional results, like most established democracies. Sortition does that probabilistically, so it would be better in that sense. OTOH, most of the other proposed benefits of sortition are dubious. E.g., it's often portrayed as insulation against corruption because people aren't dependent on corporate cash to get reelected. OTOH, with most politicians not careerists with a relatively reliable fallback of various cushy sinecures in periods where they are out of office, the amount of money you need to dangle in front of randomly chosen and soon to revert to normal life citizens to radically change their post-term life drops considerably, and neither public enforcement nor media outlets are going to be able to devote the bandwidth necessary to police corruption in the firehouse of people pumped through government.
perihelions 4y ago
They also contracted a fraud firm to forge millions of fake citizen comments to the FCC's public comment process. (Indirectly, through the "Broadband for America" lobbyist front). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/biggest-isps-paid-for-8-5-million-fake-fcc-comments-opposing-net-neutrality/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/biggest-isps-pai... https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...
Thorrez 4y ago
How is this comment related to the article?
- rhaksw 4y ago
  Both are corporate lobbying against people & tech. It's a pattern, > The SMART Copyright Act is a thinly veiled proxy war over mandatory filtering of copyrighted works. . . mandatory filters are error-prone in ways that hurt consumers, and they raise entry barriers in ways that reduce competition. > More generally, the SMART Copyright Act would give the Copyright Office a truly extraordinary power–the ability to force thousands of businesses to adopt, at their expense, technology they don’t want and may not need, and the mandated technologies could reshape how the Internet works.
  - syshum 4y ago
    That is a stretch. You comment has nothing to do with copyright. If you want to talk net neutrality summit something to discuss that. This thread should be about the harms of copyright
    - rhaksw 4y ago
      It's not a stretch. Those who would do away with net neutrality are the same who seek special powers to ostensibly protect copyright. The reality is their measures will harm both internet commerce and freedom. They're luddites who own the content and the ISPs, lobbying for control over something they don't understand because they haven't invested in its future and are feeling left out. They're the ones stretching. If we were restricted to talking about only one or the other at a time, that would unnecessarily limit our ability to brainstorm. Fortunately, we have the freedom to discuss what we want and when.
      - Thorrez 4y ago
        > They're luddites who own the content and the ISPs Is there that big of an overlap between content owners and ISPs? For example, is Disney an ISP?

by rhaksw 4y ago

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Comcast has attempted to dismantle net neutrality at least for the last 15 years, and it's arguable they have allies in government. No, it's not merely arguable. Large portions of the Republican Party in government, including every Republican member of the FCC, are overtly their allies on this.

WarOnPrivacy 4y ago

Agreed but ISPs couldn't get away with it without us voters endlessly reelecting pols who trade law+power for campaign cash.

rhaksw 4y ago
ISPs may also be lobbying us through social media. Peter Pomerantsev makes a strong case that moderated forums are for sale in This Is Not Propaganda [1]. For example, he mentions "consensus cracking", > There are instructions on how to control an internet forum, including tips on “consensus cracking”: using a fake persona to express the ideas you oppose in such a weak and unconvincing manner that you can then use another fake persona to knock them down. Here is Peter speaking [2] a week ago at a Stanford conference on disinformation where Obama gave the keynote [3]. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41717504-this-is-not-propaganda https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41717504-this-is-not-pro... [2] https://youtu.be/Nd1CKG3o818?t=23848 https://youtu.be/Nd1CKG3o818?t=23848 [3] https://youtu.be/YrMMiDXspYo?t=1855 https://youtu.be/YrMMiDXspYo?t=1855
- throwaway290 4y ago
  Thanks for the links. The panel seemed focused on the right problems. I found Peter's input underwhelming and not very on topic, though. I might check out his book if it has more specifics on less obvious online opinion control measures.
  - rhaksw 4y ago
    The book is great. Here three paragraphs I highlighted, from different sections. You can check if they resonate with you. > And it’s not just conflicts or elections that are affected. I see people I have known my whole life slip away from me on social media, reposting conspiracies from sources I have never heard of, some sort of internet undercurrent pulling whole families apart, as if we never really knew each other, as if the algorithms know more about us than we do, as if we are becoming subsets of our own data, which is rearranging our relations and identities with its own logic, or in the cause of someone else’s interests we can’t even see. > When she interviewed Al-Qaeda recruits and their families, what struck her was how normal their backgrounds were, how distant fundamentalist purity was for most of them. Bin Laden's trick had been to take the different grievances of different groups and give them the illusion that if they united globally, they would achieve a better world, if only they could get rid of unbelievers. > Russia, with its social media squadrons, haunts these [social media network] maps. Not because it is the force that can still move earth and heaven as it could in the Cold War, but because the Kremlin's rulers are particularly adept at gaming elements of this new age, or at the very least are good at getting everyone to talk about how good they are, which could be the most important trick of all.
    - nonrandomstring 4y ago
      > Russia, with its social media squadrons... at the very least are good at getting everyone to talk about how good they are, which could be the most important trick of all. A key use of propaganda is demoralisation. Sapping the enemy's resolve and sowing seeds of doubt. It's a long march. For years I've noticed certain voices in tech forums who are not merely fearful of the negative effects of some technologies against liberal democracy, they positively celebrate them. "Liberal values are doomed." - they tell us. "The battle is already lost." Their relentless message is that authoritarian technology is inevitable. It's already ubiquitous. Privacy is an illusion we are better to give up on. The corporations are too powerful. Against state actors there is no point even trying to secure your digital world. Regardless your choice or morals, eventually everyone will be forced to fall into line... etc etc ad-nauseum. I see this as a corrosive meta campaign by voices that have unwittingly been recruited as denouncers of liberal democracy. They sound like the mocking voice of Lord Haw-Haw or the German denouncer in Saving Private Ryan, calling; "The Statue of Liberty ist Kaput!" BTW: This looks like a very interesting book I may be buying. Thanks for posting these snippets.
Uehreka 4y ago
I’ve supported candidates who want to clamp down on private electoral financing (like the unfortunate @cantbuypaul) but the problem seems to be that in order for this to work, we’d need to elect a ton of these people, against the will of many lobbyists, and all at the same time (so they could be a large enough caucus to get a bill through). Unfortunately, the only way the left (I chuckle at any conservatives/libertarians who claim to actually oppose corporate campaign finance) has managed to get people into congress is a couple people per election. People on the whole just aren’t in to campaign finance reform, even when it’s decoupled from the so-called “woke agenda”.
- rolandog 4y ago
  I can't remember where I read it, but I recall there was a study that argued that it would be "better" (can't recall the hypothesis: more democratic? more representative?) to actually pick people like jury duty (i.e. at random).
  - retrac 4y ago
    To the electoral policy nerds, that method is known as sortition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition a.k.a. selection by lots. It has consistently had its advocates over the centuries. I too feel it's underrated as a method. Plato was basically right all those years ago; those who actively seek power generally don't deserve it. I seriously wonder if we'd be better off with a legislature selected of random citizens, and an executive council selected the same way. It did work for the Ancient Athenians for some 300+ years. Democracy in ancient Greece meant selection by lottery and most offices in the Athenian democracy were picked that way. Following selection there was a public interview during which any citizen could pose questions and the candidate could at that point be disqualified for a legally established reason by a vote of the previously-elected archons. (The main exception was military generals, who were elected by popular vote. Competence and respect were considered more important than incorruptibility for that particular office.)
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    It would be better to have an electoral system that provides proportional results, like most established democracies. Sortition does that probabilistically, so it would be better in that sense. OTOH, most of the other proposed benefits of sortition are dubious. E.g., it's often portrayed as insulation against corruption because people aren't dependent on corporate cash to get reelected. OTOH, with most politicians not careerists with a relatively reliable fallback of various cushy sinecures in periods where they are out of office, the amount of money you need to dangle in front of randomly chosen and soon to revert to normal life citizens to radically change their post-term life drops considerably, and neither public enforcement nor media outlets are going to be able to devote the bandwidth necessary to police corruption in the firehouse of people pumped through government.

perihelions 4y ago

They also contracted a fraud firm to forge millions of fake citizen comments to the FCC's public comment process. (Indirectly, through the "Broadband for America" lobbyist front). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/biggest-isps-paid-for-8-5-million-fake-fcc-comments-opposing-net-neutrality/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/biggest-isps-pai... https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...

Thorrez 4y ago

How is this comment related to the article?

rhaksw 4y ago
Both are corporate lobbying against people & tech. It's a pattern, > The SMART Copyright Act is a thinly veiled proxy war over mandatory filtering of copyrighted works. . . mandatory filters are error-prone in ways that hurt consumers, and they raise entry barriers in ways that reduce competition. > More generally, the SMART Copyright Act would give the Copyright Office a truly extraordinary power–the ability to force thousands of businesses to adopt, at their expense, technology they don’t want and may not need, and the mandated technologies could reshape how the Internet works.
- syshum 4y ago
  That is a stretch. You comment has nothing to do with copyright. If you want to talk net neutrality summit something to discuss that. This thread should be about the harms of copyright
  - rhaksw 4y ago
    It's not a stretch. Those who would do away with net neutrality are the same who seek special powers to ostensibly protect copyright. The reality is their measures will harm both internet commerce and freedom. They're luddites who own the content and the ISPs, lobbying for control over something they don't understand because they haven't invested in its future and are feeling left out. They're the ones stretching. If we were restricted to talking about only one or the other at a time, that would unnecessarily limit our ability to brainstorm. Fortunately, we have the freedom to discuss what we want and when.
    - Thorrez 4y ago
      > They're luddites who own the content and the ISPs Is there that big of an overlap between content owners and ISPs? For example, is Disney an ISP?