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No it hasn’t. We’re fighting a boogieman. Instead, we’re going to do is further entrench local monopolies, since only the large guys will be able to afford to

No it hasn’t. We’re fighting a boogieman. Instead, we’re going to do is further entrench local monopolies, since only the large guys will be able to afford to comply with regulation. You literally can’t force corporate Americas to act beneficial to their consumers of incentives are misaligned. It takes literal FDA-levels of regulation to accomplish that, and even that has failures while generally making the entire process expensive while consolidating things down to just a few market players.

deltarholamda 3y ago
Like many government regulations, it has a great name, "Net Neutrality," which, when it is actually implemented, will do much more than make the 'Net neutral. Maybe, at first, it will have something to do with "you can't throttle Web services," but it will morph into "you MUST throttle this particular Web service, it spreads disinformation, which makes the Net less neutral." It is what always happens. It is more reliable than gravity.
- mattnewton 3y ago
  What? How would regulation that “you must not throttle” lead to regulation for “you just throttle”? That makes no sense.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - deltarholamda 3y ago
    How much of the Patriot Act was patriotic? The US government does this sort of thing all the time.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    The most typical way this is done is through selective enforcement. You create rules that most of anybody can be argued to be breaking, but only enforce it for individuals or organizations that you have an issue with. With net neutrality it's pretty easy to see how this would happen. The previous net neutrality rules, under Tom Wheeler, included a carveout for nearly all rules under anything that could be justified as "reasonable network management." This carveout is necessary due to the nature of network management, but it creates an interesting scenario. That term was used literally dozens of times, but also defined absolutely nowhere. This now gives politicians the ability to interpret it, as they see fit. For a company that runs afoul of the powers that be, suddenly it's a standard that can't be met. For those in favor, anything can be accepted as "reasonable network management." And this is how corruption and tyranny typically works works. The cases of a somebody going completely rogue, or a politician doing something after being handed golden bars or a bag of cash - do still happen. But, by and large, the system is big enough, and complex enough, that if somebody with enough power wants to screw somebody - they can do it legally. And if somebody protests inequitable or unfair treatment, just call it a whataboutism.
    - deltarholamda 3y ago
      I am always surprised when somebody finds this a novel take. This sort of corruption is older than Boss Tweed. But I guess every generation has to relearn the same lessons.
    - mattnewton 3y ago
      this is like arguing against speeding tickets because it gives cops too much discretion to enforce it and drives them to corruption.
      - somenameforme 3y ago
        It's all about risk vs reward for both parties. If a cop pulls you over for a speeding ticket, trying to bribe him is a high risk option that could suddenly see you facing felony charges to try to get out of a low cost ticket. And similarly for the officer. You're not going to pay more than the ticket in the bribe, certainly not much more, so it's negligible, and accepting it could completely destroy his livelihood if found out. On occasion it still does happen, but it tends to be because the mutual risk/reward ratios are changed. One of the most common bribes cops are found taking is sexual stuff. That may have a much higher value for the officer than the bribe price would, and a much lower risk for the briber since they can be overtly flirtatious without ever making it clear (from the point of view of a criminal prosecution) they're offering to exchange some sexual favor for a way out. By contrast in the government scenario the risk for both parties is effectively zero since much will go on without a single word even needing to be said. When various government agencies were pressuring Twitter to censor all sorts of things, they never made a single overt threat - yet they simultaneously spoke both threateningly and demandingly. It's the same sort of relationship. The people making the "requests" of Twitter had a million ways of going after Twitter, or the people in charge of it, and Twitter knew this. So they played ball. Even if you got access to every single email, you wouldn't be able to prosecute anybody over it. It was all completely legal, which creates a near infinite risk:reward ratio.
  - exabrial 3y ago
    Read history
- exabrial 3y ago
  precisely.
adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
Ah yes. It takes so much effort not to chose to throttle people.
mcpackieh 3y ago
> You literally can’t force corporate Americas to act beneficial to their consumers of incentives are misaligned. It takes literal FDA-levels of regulation to accomplish that, "Literal FDA-levels of regulation" demonstrably does not accomplish that. The FDA was fine with what the Sacklers/Purdue Pharma were doing; lawsuits filed by states and others got something (not enough) done about it, but the FDA and their regulations were no help.
- exabrial 3y ago
  For the most part it, it's successful, but often times it isn't (which was my point!) We can take the FAA and 787-MAX as another example! Mostly successful, but still not really 100%
hedora 3y ago
How does this cause a compliance burden? It's banning the deployment of optional technologies. If anything, this will help small players, since it prevents big ISPs from using their market leverage to negotiate favorable terms with service providers, and doing that levels the playing field. For instance, there was a time when you could only get high resolution Netflix through large ISPs, since they'd forced Netflix to sign some CDN deal by messing with transit pricing.

deltarholamda 3y ago

Like many government regulations, it has a great name, "Net Neutrality," which, when it is actually implemented, will do much more than make the 'Net neutral. Maybe, at first, it will have something to do with "you can't throttle Web services," but it will morph into "you MUST throttle this particular Web service, it spreads disinformation, which makes the Net less neutral." It is what always happens. It is more reliable than gravity.

mattnewton 3y ago
What? How would regulation that “you must not throttle” lead to regulation for “you just throttle”? That makes no sense.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deltarholamda 3y ago
  How much of the Patriot Act was patriotic? The US government does this sort of thing all the time.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  The most typical way this is done is through selective enforcement. You create rules that most of anybody can be argued to be breaking, but only enforce it for individuals or organizations that you have an issue with. With net neutrality it's pretty easy to see how this would happen. The previous net neutrality rules, under Tom Wheeler, included a carveout for nearly all rules under anything that could be justified as "reasonable network management." This carveout is necessary due to the nature of network management, but it creates an interesting scenario. That term was used literally dozens of times, but also defined absolutely nowhere. This now gives politicians the ability to interpret it, as they see fit. For a company that runs afoul of the powers that be, suddenly it's a standard that can't be met. For those in favor, anything can be accepted as "reasonable network management." And this is how corruption and tyranny typically works works. The cases of a somebody going completely rogue, or a politician doing something after being handed golden bars or a bag of cash - do still happen. But, by and large, the system is big enough, and complex enough, that if somebody with enough power wants to screw somebody - they can do it legally. And if somebody protests inequitable or unfair treatment, just call it a whataboutism.
  - deltarholamda 3y ago
    I am always surprised when somebody finds this a novel take. This sort of corruption is older than Boss Tweed. But I guess every generation has to relearn the same lessons.
  - mattnewton 3y ago
    this is like arguing against speeding tickets because it gives cops too much discretion to enforce it and drives them to corruption.
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      It's all about risk vs reward for both parties. If a cop pulls you over for a speeding ticket, trying to bribe him is a high risk option that could suddenly see you facing felony charges to try to get out of a low cost ticket. And similarly for the officer. You're not going to pay more than the ticket in the bribe, certainly not much more, so it's negligible, and accepting it could completely destroy his livelihood if found out. On occasion it still does happen, but it tends to be because the mutual risk/reward ratios are changed. One of the most common bribes cops are found taking is sexual stuff. That may have a much higher value for the officer than the bribe price would, and a much lower risk for the briber since they can be overtly flirtatious without ever making it clear (from the point of view of a criminal prosecution) they're offering to exchange some sexual favor for a way out. By contrast in the government scenario the risk for both parties is effectively zero since much will go on without a single word even needing to be said. When various government agencies were pressuring Twitter to censor all sorts of things, they never made a single overt threat - yet they simultaneously spoke both threateningly and demandingly. It's the same sort of relationship. The people making the "requests" of Twitter had a million ways of going after Twitter, or the people in charge of it, and Twitter knew this. So they played ball. Even if you got access to every single email, you wouldn't be able to prosecute anybody over it. It was all completely legal, which creates a near infinite risk:reward ratio.
- exabrial 3y ago
  Read history
exabrial 3y ago
precisely.

adgjlsfhk1 3y ago

Ah yes. It takes so much effort not to chose to throttle people.

mcpackieh 3y ago

> You literally can’t force corporate Americas to act beneficial to their consumers of incentives are misaligned. It takes literal FDA-levels of regulation to accomplish that, "Literal FDA-levels of regulation" demonstrably does not accomplish that. The FDA was fine with what the Sacklers/Purdue Pharma were doing; lawsuits filed by states and others got something (not enough) done about it, but the FDA and their regulations were no help.

exabrial 3y ago
For the most part it, it's successful, but often times it isn't (which was my point!) We can take the FAA and 787-MAX as another example! Mostly successful, but still not really 100%

hedora 3y ago

How does this cause a compliance burden? It's banning the deployment of optional technologies. If anything, this will help small players, since it prevents big ISPs from using their market leverage to negotiate favorable terms with service providers, and doing that levels the playing field. For instance, there was a time when you could only get high resolution Netflix through large ISPs, since they'd forced Netflix to sign some CDN deal by messing with transit pricing.