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Didn’t the FCC use this to justify their decisions against net neutrality? This is wholesale manipulation of our democracy and they get a slap on the wrist? I d

by jmpman 3y ago

Didn’t the FCC use this to justify their decisions against net neutrality? This is wholesale manipulation of our democracy and they get a slap on the wrist? I demand jail time for any broadband executive that knew of and approved this scheme.

golemotron 3y ago
Call it what you like but the FCC decision-making is not democracy. They are at least three steps removed from the voters, write their own regulations, and are not really accountable to voters. This is part of the independent agency problem in our scheme of governance. The better system would be for the elected legislature to actually write regulations. That's representative democracy rather than democracy but closer to accountability.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  The elected legislature doesn't have the expertise to write regulations in highly technical areas. Or really almost any areas, but certainly not the sorts of stuff that the FCC, FAA, SEC, etc. regulates. The representative democracy happens with their confirmation of the agency heads appointed by the executive branch.
  - agensaequivocum 3y ago
    If the legislature cannot write it, then the law or force of law shouldn't exist.
    - dumpsterlid 3y ago
      [dead]
    - Spivak 3y ago
      I think you're right in a broad sense but this is the least bad situation. Because the alternative is that no laws that require expertise ever get passed or worse, legislators rubber stamp laws they don't really understand written by people in industry.
  - golemotron 3y ago
    > The elected legislature doesn't have the expertise to write regulations in highly technical areas. People with backgrounds in science and engineering can't run for Congress?
    - diffeomorphism 3y ago
      A background is not sufficient and people should be humble enough to know when to take advice. That is not to say they should not be familiar with subjects, but relying on one person to write regulations for whole sectors is bound to lead to problems.
      - golemotron 3y ago
        Experts can write them but representatives should be on the record voting for or against them.
        diffeomorphism 3y ago
        Sure.
  - flanked-evergl 3y ago
    > The elected legislature doesn't have the expertise to write regulations in highly technical areas. For the most part the regulatory agencies don't have the expertise either. It is almost all political in every country where I have ever lived, and most EU tech regulations is also absolute garbage.
- dpierce9 3y ago
  Independent agencies are completely accountable to congress. The idea that they are unaccountable is nonsense. They can only ever do things in the bounds of what congress has said they can do. Congress can change what is allowed at any time. Your proposal is to give congress the authority to write regulations without independent agencies. I got news for you, congress already has that power! They created the agencies because they recognized their limitations when it comes to creating regulations that require technical expertise and/or detailed particulars. Congress can also pass a law nullifying ANY existing agency regulations or, in the extreme, dissolving the agency. If a regulatory agency interprets a law one way, congress can pass a law saying that isn’t what we meant, stop doing that, do it this way instead. This is perfect accountability. If congress can’t do those things, how do you expect them to write effective regulation? What more do you want?
  - Spivak 3y ago
    It might be perfect accountability [1] but under this supreme court it might be found unconstitutional. It's not actually clear whether congress is allowed delegate their power to another branch of government. In fact if you take the constitution in context with the British law it was inspired by it's explicitly prohibited. It's already something that has been legally contentious, overturning it has textualist support, and the textualists justices are also broadly Republican who want a weakened federal government. [1] I mean not really perfect since they have to pass legislation to make those changes and it's easier to block legislation than to pass it. So a minority party in congress with presidential support can (and has) wielded undue legislative power.
    - golemotron 3y ago
      > In fact if you take the constitution in context with the British law it was inspired by it's explicitly prohibited. Can you say more about this? It sounds very interesting.
      - Clubber 3y ago
        https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/chevron_deference https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/chevron_deference In Chevron, the Supreme Court set forth a legal test as to when the court should defer to the agency’s answer or interpretation, holding that such judicial deference is appropriate where the agency’s answer was not unreasonable, so long as Congress had not spoken directly to the precise issue at question. This is the SCOTUS ruling that gave administration so much power in 1984, so it's relatively new. The validity of it is currently being heard in: https://cooleypubco.com/2023/05/11/chevron-deference-case-fishing/ https://cooleypubco.com/2023/05/11/chevron-deference-case-fi... I hope it goes away.
boomboomsubban 3y ago
Kind of. They used the comments to show the decision had some supporters, but even with the fakes the majority of comments were in favor of keeping the Obama era net neutrality bylaws. Still, the FCC ended net neutrality. So yes they used the comments to justify their decision, but calling it a "wholesale manipulation of our democracy" is an overstatement as the decision never required democratic consensus.
- deathanatos 3y ago
  > but even with the fakes the majority of comments were in favor of keeping the Obama era net neutrality bylaws. … no? > The proceeding generated a record-breaking number of comments — more than 22 million — and nearly 18 million were fake, the attorney general’s office found. 81% of the comments were astroturf.
  - courseofaction 3y ago
    This should absolutely be jailable.
  - retox 3y ago
    This doesn't appear in the article, I'm not doubting it but where is it from?
    - Jedd 3y ago
      https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-technology-business-9f10b43b6aacbc750dfc010ceaedaca7 https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-technolog...
    - deathanatos 3y ago
      https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-technology-business-9f10b43b6aacbc750dfc010ceaedaca7 https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-technolog... It's the article-within-the-article, linked to at "second series of agreements secured".
  - deleted 3y ago
dahfizz 3y ago
This is what government overreach looks like. What unelected officials can give with no oversight, they can just as quickly take away with no oversight. The FCC is not a democracy. Net neutrality needed to be a law.
- usernew 3y ago
  Government overreach is... repealing regulations? Net neutrality is not law. There are valid arguments to be made against it - like with your cell plan, everyone can or perhaps should, pay for the bytes they use, and how much infrastructure (CPU) those bytes use to get delivered fast. There are also arguments for net neutrality. But as with any agency, and agency is not a direct democracy. What if people in urban centers decided for the country that property tax should be based on acres of land? All of a sudden living on a cheap farm costs millions in taxes. But most people are in the city, so they outvote the farmers. So we don't have a direct democracy for most things. The solution is not law. Making up a thousand laws for every little thing is that government overreach you speak of. Repealing laws is literally the opposite of overreach. What we need is more competition, so I as a user will pick the ISP that does not slow down traffic for me to sites I want to visit, instead of choosing between people who want to screw me with vs without lube. Countries like France did it right. Cables go through public land, towers are on public land, radio frequencies are public. A company can't buy that. So they put in cables and any company that wants can rent them, but never buy them. That's why in France, I had GbE at my house for 8EUR/month, with a free router, a decade ago, and cumblast here charges me $50/month for 50Mb/s today. Choice and competition. Capitalism.
  - kd5bjo 3y ago
    > Net neutrality is not law. There are valid arguments to be made against it - like with your cell plan, everyone can or perhaps should, pay for the bytes they use, and how much infrastructure (CPU) those bytes use to get delivered fast. The big question that net neutrality answers is which of the two communicating parties is “using” the bytes: The end user. Of course users should pay for the cost of the resources they use; otherwise, the connection provider would quickly become insolvent, and nobody wants that. But users shouldn’t need to know the internal business practices of their connection provider in order to understand their billing. Instead, net neutrality says that the provider cannot charge different rates for different destinations; it’s their responsibility to amortize their variable costs into some kind of destination-agnostic price structure for consumers. This is basic risk pooling, where the actor in position to affect the costs (via infrastructure changes) is required to shoulder the pricing risk of their own actions.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
HWR_14 3y ago
The FCC had already made their decision against net neutrality. They did use the public comments to help justify it, but that was PR, not decision making.
iforgotpassword 3y ago
Banks speculating, manipulating reports, ramming the economy into the ground - bailout, slap on the wrist, all managers involved still pay themselves huge bonuses. Some Canadian dude circumventing Nintendo's copy protection - make sure the rest of this guy's life is completely fucked up.
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  A true 2 class justice system and jurisprudence doesn't even address unjust imbalances like this. Although to their defense, we have seen a vast increase in political trials and the legislative certainly takes part in this.
vjulian 3y ago
I genuinely don’t understand why government in the US is not being aggressively toppled by its citizens. Perhaps apathy, or fear of the unknown, fear of civil war?
essentialfloss 3y ago
I agree.

by jmpman 3y ago

golemotron 3y ago

Call it what you like but the FCC decision-making is not democracy. They are at least three steps removed from the voters, write their own regulations, and are not really accountable to voters. This is part of the independent agency problem in our scheme of governance. The better system would be for the elected legislature to actually write regulations. That's representative democracy rather than democracy but closer to accountability.

SoftTalker 3y ago
The elected legislature doesn't have the expertise to write regulations in highly technical areas. Or really almost any areas, but certainly not the sorts of stuff that the FCC, FAA, SEC, etc. regulates. The representative democracy happens with their confirmation of the agency heads appointed by the executive branch.
- agensaequivocum 3y ago
  If the legislature cannot write it, then the law or force of law shouldn't exist.
  - dumpsterlid 3y ago
    [dead]
  - Spivak 3y ago
    I think you're right in a broad sense but this is the least bad situation. Because the alternative is that no laws that require expertise ever get passed or worse, legislators rubber stamp laws they don't really understand written by people in industry.
- golemotron 3y ago
  > The elected legislature doesn't have the expertise to write regulations in highly technical areas. People with backgrounds in science and engineering can't run for Congress?
  - diffeomorphism 3y ago
    A background is not sufficient and people should be humble enough to know when to take advice. That is not to say they should not be familiar with subjects, but relying on one person to write regulations for whole sectors is bound to lead to problems.
    - golemotron 3y ago
      Experts can write them but representatives should be on the record voting for or against them.
      - diffeomorphism 3y ago
        Sure.
- flanked-evergl 3y ago
  > The elected legislature doesn't have the expertise to write regulations in highly technical areas. For the most part the regulatory agencies don't have the expertise either. It is almost all political in every country where I have ever lived, and most EU tech regulations is also absolute garbage.
dpierce9 3y ago
Independent agencies are completely accountable to congress. The idea that they are unaccountable is nonsense. They can only ever do things in the bounds of what congress has said they can do. Congress can change what is allowed at any time. Your proposal is to give congress the authority to write regulations without independent agencies. I got news for you, congress already has that power! They created the agencies because they recognized their limitations when it comes to creating regulations that require technical expertise and/or detailed particulars. Congress can also pass a law nullifying ANY existing agency regulations or, in the extreme, dissolving the agency. If a regulatory agency interprets a law one way, congress can pass a law saying that isn’t what we meant, stop doing that, do it this way instead. This is perfect accountability. If congress can’t do those things, how do you expect them to write effective regulation? What more do you want?
- Spivak 3y ago
  It might be perfect accountability [1] but under this supreme court it might be found unconstitutional. It's not actually clear whether congress is allowed delegate their power to another branch of government. In fact if you take the constitution in context with the British law it was inspired by it's explicitly prohibited. It's already something that has been legally contentious, overturning it has textualist support, and the textualists justices are also broadly Republican who want a weakened federal government. [1] I mean not really perfect since they have to pass legislation to make those changes and it's easier to block legislation than to pass it. So a minority party in congress with presidential support can (and has) wielded undue legislative power.
  - golemotron 3y ago
    > In fact if you take the constitution in context with the British law it was inspired by it's explicitly prohibited. Can you say more about this? It sounds very interesting.
    - Clubber 3y ago
      https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/chevron_deference https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/chevron_deference In Chevron, the Supreme Court set forth a legal test as to when the court should defer to the agency’s answer or interpretation, holding that such judicial deference is appropriate where the agency’s answer was not unreasonable, so long as Congress had not spoken directly to the precise issue at question. This is the SCOTUS ruling that gave administration so much power in 1984, so it's relatively new. The validity of it is currently being heard in: https://cooleypubco.com/2023/05/11/chevron-deference-case-fishing/ https://cooleypubco.com/2023/05/11/chevron-deference-case-fi... I hope it goes away.

boomboomsubban 3y ago

Kind of. They used the comments to show the decision had some supporters, but even with the fakes the majority of comments were in favor of keeping the Obama era net neutrality bylaws. Still, the FCC ended net neutrality. So yes they used the comments to justify their decision, but calling it a "wholesale manipulation of our democracy" is an overstatement as the decision never required democratic consensus.

deathanatos 3y ago
> but even with the fakes the majority of comments were in favor of keeping the Obama era net neutrality bylaws. … no? > The proceeding generated a record-breaking number of comments — more than 22 million — and nearly 18 million were fake, the attorney general’s office found. 81% of the comments were astroturf.
- courseofaction 3y ago
  This should absolutely be jailable.
- retox 3y ago
  This doesn't appear in the article, I'm not doubting it but where is it from?
  - Jedd 3y ago
    https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-technology-business-9f10b43b6aacbc750dfc010ceaedaca7 https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-technolog...
  - deathanatos 3y ago
    https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-technology-business-9f10b43b6aacbc750dfc010ceaedaca7 https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-technolog... It's the article-within-the-article, linked to at "second series of agreements secured".
- deleted 3y ago

dahfizz 3y ago

This is what government overreach looks like. What unelected officials can give with no oversight, they can just as quickly take away with no oversight. The FCC is not a democracy. Net neutrality needed to be a law.

usernew 3y ago
Government overreach is... repealing regulations? Net neutrality is not law. There are valid arguments to be made against it - like with your cell plan, everyone can or perhaps should, pay for the bytes they use, and how much infrastructure (CPU) those bytes use to get delivered fast. There are also arguments for net neutrality. But as with any agency, and agency is not a direct democracy. What if people in urban centers decided for the country that property tax should be based on acres of land? All of a sudden living on a cheap farm costs millions in taxes. But most people are in the city, so they outvote the farmers. So we don't have a direct democracy for most things. The solution is not law. Making up a thousand laws for every little thing is that government overreach you speak of. Repealing laws is literally the opposite of overreach. What we need is more competition, so I as a user will pick the ISP that does not slow down traffic for me to sites I want to visit, instead of choosing between people who want to screw me with vs without lube. Countries like France did it right. Cables go through public land, towers are on public land, radio frequencies are public. A company can't buy that. So they put in cables and any company that wants can rent them, but never buy them. That's why in France, I had GbE at my house for 8EUR/month, with a free router, a decade ago, and cumblast here charges me $50/month for 50Mb/s today. Choice and competition. Capitalism.
- kd5bjo 3y ago
  > Net neutrality is not law. There are valid arguments to be made against it - like with your cell plan, everyone can or perhaps should, pay for the bytes they use, and how much infrastructure (CPU) those bytes use to get delivered fast. The big question that net neutrality answers is which of the two communicating parties is “using” the bytes: The end user. Of course users should pay for the cost of the resources they use; otherwise, the connection provider would quickly become insolvent, and nobody wants that. But users shouldn’t need to know the internal business practices of their connection provider in order to understand their billing. Instead, net neutrality says that the provider cannot charge different rates for different destinations; it’s their responsibility to amortize their variable costs into some kind of destination-agnostic price structure for consumers. This is basic risk pooling, where the actor in position to affect the costs (via infrastructure changes) is required to shoulder the pricing risk of their own actions.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

HWR_14 3y ago

The FCC had already made their decision against net neutrality. They did use the public comments to help justify it, but that was PR, not decision making.

iforgotpassword 3y ago

Banks speculating, manipulating reports, ramming the economy into the ground - bailout, slap on the wrist, all managers involved still pay themselves huge bonuses. Some Canadian dude circumventing Nintendo's copy protection - make sure the rest of this guy's life is completely fucked up.

raxxorraxor 3y ago
A true 2 class justice system and jurisprudence doesn't even address unjust imbalances like this. Although to their defense, we have seen a vast increase in political trials and the legislative certainly takes part in this.

vjulian 3y ago

I genuinely don’t understand why government in the US is not being aggressively toppled by its citizens. Perhaps apathy, or fear of the unknown, fear of civil war?

essentialfloss 3y ago

I agree.