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I live in a non-net-neutral country (Sri Lanka). As far as I can tell the impact of the lack of net neutrality is that Meta pays for the portion of my phone dat

I live in a non-net-neutral country (Sri Lanka). As far as I can tell the impact of the lack of net neutrality is that Meta pays for the portion of my phone data bill that accesses Meta properties. I've not yet heard a convincing explanation of why this is bad.

mexicocitinluez 2y ago
Granted, Google is getting worse but a quick search will outline the reason: "Net Neutrality policies are a national standard by which we ensure that broadband internet service is treated as an essential service. It prohibits internet service providers from blocking, throttling, or engaging in paid prioritization of lawful content. By classifying broadband service as a “telecommunications” service under Title II of the law, the FCC restores its oversight of internet service outages, national security threats in broadband networks, and consumer protection and regains key tools to promote broadband deployment." I am admittedly not educated about Sri Lanka, but here in the US, companies fuck people over regularly. And as such, it's often important to even the playing the field. If you want to create your own search engine, but Google decides to partner with every major ISP in the country and pay to throttle your site you'd probably find the whole "Why do we need net neutrality" arugment pretty convincing. It's hard for me ot understand the position that we should just let these enormous companies do whatever they want and either you're a paid shill commenting on posts like this or just honestly don't have a clue.
- bandrami 2y ago
  Hold on, that isn't really an accurate description is it? I'm originally from the US, and carriers have always been able to block or throttle customers for basically any reason. That's not a net neutrality question. Net neutrality is about where (to use an American example) Netflix can run fiber directly to Comcast in return for Comcast not metering their customers' Netflix traffic.
  - swores 2y ago
    It's also about throttling - Net Neutrality doesn't mean ISPs can't ever throttle users, it means they can't do it differently depending what the users are accessing, either everything is throttled or nothing is.
    - bandrami 2y ago
      Wait even under net neutrality ISPs can absolutely throttle nodes based on what people are accessing; that's the basis of QoS, and it's entirely legal to provide QoS guarantees. What net neutrality forbids is preferentially running backbone traffic. But like Comcast has always been able to throttle tor or Gnutella.
      - mexicocitinluez 2y ago
        No idea what Tor and Gnutella have to do with throttling by Google as it's a totally different issues that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. You're comparing apples to oranges.
        bandrami 2y ago
        Google isn't an ISP (except I guess in Mountain View)
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    That's more because in the USA, net neutrality was very short lived ? It's not like ISPs cannot block/throttle customers at all, but what they are allowed to do is heavily regulated under net neutrality.
    - bandrami 2y ago
      But I really feel like the discourse here is ignoring the provider side. What net neutrality has meant is that Facebook is not allowed to subsidize data for its users. Like I said here in Sri Lanka I buy a data package for my phone and the data limits don't include Meta properties at all because Meta subsidizes our data packages, which is (or was until today) illegal in the US
louthy 2y ago
Now try to build a competitor to Meta. Oh, you can't afford to buy the portion of the data bill for every person on earth? Never mind. Meta rules forever, no competition, ever again.

mexicocitinluez 2y ago

Granted, Google is getting worse but a quick search will outline the reason: "Net Neutrality policies are a national standard by which we ensure that broadband internet service is treated as an essential service. It prohibits internet service providers from blocking, throttling, or engaging in paid prioritization of lawful content. By classifying broadband service as a “telecommunications” service under Title II of the law, the FCC restores its oversight of internet service outages, national security threats in broadband networks, and consumer protection and regains key tools to promote broadband deployment." I am admittedly not educated about Sri Lanka, but here in the US, companies fuck people over regularly. And as such, it's often important to even the playing the field. If you want to create your own search engine, but Google decides to partner with every major ISP in the country and pay to throttle your site you'd probably find the whole "Why do we need net neutrality" arugment pretty convincing. It's hard for me ot understand the position that we should just let these enormous companies do whatever they want and either you're a paid shill commenting on posts like this or just honestly don't have a clue.

bandrami 2y ago
Hold on, that isn't really an accurate description is it? I'm originally from the US, and carriers have always been able to block or throttle customers for basically any reason. That's not a net neutrality question. Net neutrality is about where (to use an American example) Netflix can run fiber directly to Comcast in return for Comcast not metering their customers' Netflix traffic.
- swores 2y ago
  It's also about throttling - Net Neutrality doesn't mean ISPs can't ever throttle users, it means they can't do it differently depending what the users are accessing, either everything is throttled or nothing is.
  - bandrami 2y ago
    Wait even under net neutrality ISPs can absolutely throttle nodes based on what people are accessing; that's the basis of QoS, and it's entirely legal to provide QoS guarantees. What net neutrality forbids is preferentially running backbone traffic. But like Comcast has always been able to throttle tor or Gnutella.
    - mexicocitinluez 2y ago
      No idea what Tor and Gnutella have to do with throttling by Google as it's a totally different issues that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. You're comparing apples to oranges.
      - bandrami 2y ago
        Google isn't an ISP (except I guess in Mountain View)
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  That's more because in the USA, net neutrality was very short lived ? It's not like ISPs cannot block/throttle customers at all, but what they are allowed to do is heavily regulated under net neutrality.
  - bandrami 2y ago
    But I really feel like the discourse here is ignoring the provider side. What net neutrality has meant is that Facebook is not allowed to subsidize data for its users. Like I said here in Sri Lanka I buy a data package for my phone and the data limits don't include Meta properties at all because Meta subsidizes our data packages, which is (or was until today) illegal in the US

louthy 2y ago

Now try to build a competitor to Meta. Oh, you can't afford to buy the portion of the data bill for every person on earth? Never mind. Meta rules forever, no competition, ever again.