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Seeing as how the most vocal proponents of net neutrality are the corporations and platforms most involved in censoring things on the internet, I don't trust any of the stuff written about it. I've seen some videos explaining how its a push to solidify government backed monopolies on ISPs and their crony affiliated corporations which seems to make a lot of sense.

Facebook, and now IG also do this

Since I have a "corporate page" basically 10% of my followers see my facebook content on there feed. I have to sponsor an add for everyone to see it

I see instagram posts out of order on my feed as well, which I assume means IG knows what I want to see first.

We have 2 internet options at my house: comcast and century link. I just don't find it believable that they would block content. To me, that just sounds too 1984. The invisible hand yadda yadda yadda

Yeah, maybe, but I can't see how deregulating the industry is going to work against monopolies. They did that with telecom in general and now in a lot of places there's only one cable company, but it's not a monopoly, because there's a different cable company in the next county (that only services that area). I had to switch cable internet companies when I moved 20 miles, my cost went up and now I have a plan with a set amount of download data, that charges me fees when we go over and we always go over like the last 2 days of the month. So even though I can't get another internet company where I live, it's not a monopoly, because other companies exist and COULD theoretically provide service here (but don't).

Same with my utilities. There's a law here that says we can shop around energy markets for the best price, but the local company can charge you equipment maintenance and transmission fees. I don't even understand how it works and they don't explain how to shop around or guides on how to know if you've got a good price. So the difference between what companies say regulations or lack of do and what really happens are two different things always. I just think it's better to have regulation and have oversight, transparency and accountability, rather than the feds jut abdicating responsibility or care on the citizen's behalf, because it's "small government". The government is still huge, it just doesn't give a shit about doing its job.

JonnyAngle wrote:To me, that just sounds too 1984. The invisible hand yadda yadda yadda

You rang?

repoman wrote:Seeing as how the most vocal proponents of net neutrality are the corporations and platforms most involved in censoring things on the internet, I don't trust any of the stuff written about it. I've seen some videos explaining how its a push to solidify government backed monopolies on ISPs and their crony affiliated corporations which seems to make a lot of sense.

Well, sure, if you want to build your own telecommunications company to dismantle the monopoly on internet access go right ahead. You still live in Vermont? That's exactly what Burlington Telecom, Green Mountain Access, Vermont Telephone Company... etc are. Net Neutrality isn't stopping them, is it?

Also of note, pretty much everyone from the Wild West/Libertarian era of the OG internet (free information! free access to all! etc.) crew is on board with maintaining it, too, so it's not just "the corporations" and those "government backed ISPs".

Would be interested to see these videos, though, since they don't seem to make much sense in a "this describes what this situation is" manner.

Even if they don't charge extra for specific services they are not providing, why change the rules so they can?

And about 50 million Americans do not have a choice of isp. You have what there is. If spectrum decides something, I'm stuck with them, there are literally 0 alternatives for broadband providers for me. And I am in a major city.

DRodriguez wrote:Even if they don't charge extra for specific services they are not providing, why change the rules so they can?

And about 50 million Americans do not have a choice of isp. You have what there is. If spectrum decides something, I'm stuck with them, there are literally 0 alternatives for broadband providers for me. And I am in a major city.

In California we had Comcast and no other options...and they dicked us around endlessly. When we moved to Ohio, we had Spectrum and they were mostly ok, but we had a couple problems and they didn't care too much about fixing them (I didn't get to the door fast enough and they took off on the first appointment). When we moved to a different town here, then we had Armstrong (which we have now). Their tech had to run a whole new line for us and showed up on time, but he left the old line in place (which was well placed) and just kind of left the new line dangling in my basement. We had a period where we would lose service for 15 minutes, about 4 times a day, every day for a month. There's no alternative, so complaining to them does absolutely nothing. As much as Spectrum kind of sucked, we had unlimited data and Armstrong has tiered levels and constantly charges us overages. It's like they know exactly how much data a typical family uses a month and made their plan just under that. The only way I can upgrade is if I get cable tv and phone service and all that shit, which I do not want.

JonnyAngle wrote:Facebook, and now IG also do this

Since I have a "corporate page" basically 10% of my followers see my facebook content on there feed. I have to sponsor an add for everyone to see it

I see instagram posts out of order on my feed as well, which I assume means IG knows what I want to see first.

We have 2 internet options at my house: comcast and century link. I just don't find it believable that they would block content. To me, that just sounds too 1984. The invisible hand yadda yadda yadda

Comcast tried to block Bittorrent back in 2008. This is, actually, kind of what kickstarted this whole situation.

Look at what's going on with Mozilla and Yahoo right now -- Yahoo's suing Mozilla, who dropped Yahoo as their default browser for Google when they launched their newest browser, because the Yahoo search experience sucks, basically.

Now, imagine Comcast engages in an exclusive contract with Yahoo, so the Yahoo homepage loads 57x faster than the Google homepage. Right now, they can't do that. If they repeal these current rules, that will be fair game (broad strokes and all that because it's an example). Website speed is incredibly important when it comes to consumers: imagine one of your competitors reaches out to Comcast (or whoever) and basically prices you out of business by paying more than you can afford to match to ensure that your website ages to load while the competitor's site loads in one or two seconds?

DRodriguez wrote:And about 50 million Americans do not have a choice of isp. You have what there is. If spectrum decides something, I'm stuck with them, there are literally 0 alternatives for broadband providers for me. And I am in a major city.

This is something that blew my mind when I left Texas.
In Plano, there were something like, 5+ ISP's. Not only could you shop around, ISP's bent over backwards to get your business.
Where I live now, there's 2. Spectrum and AT&T.
And AT&T's service literally goes from one street has access to 60+Mbps internet and the next street, basically, has dial-up.
So, Spectrum rules, and they lie like crazy.

I'm paying top dollar for the fastest speeds they offer, and I've clocked it at 10Mbps at certain times.

I think I should follow up my bitching about cable companies to point out, I'm saying that the government doesn't enforce anti-trust laws and net neutrality policy thoroughly and transparently NOW. Probably because, like so many other huge businesses, the lobbyists make sure to stay paid up and Congress can't get any amount of routine business done to save its life. So if we strip away what little regulation is occasionally enforced, it won't make those things better...it will just leave it up to those companies to operate on the honor system. Based on the concept that if we the consumers don't like what they do, we'll take our business elsewhere and the "free market" will self correct. As has been pointed out a bunch though...there is no free market and not a lot of choice, so all it would effectively do is allow these companies to do whatever they want without challenge.

D.o.S. wrote:Comcast tried to block Bittorrent back in 2008. This is, actually, kind of what kickstarted this whole situation.

Interesting!

D.o.S. wrote: Look at what's going on with Mozilla and Yahoo right now -- Yahoo's suing Mozilla, who dropped Yahoo as their default browser for Google when they launched their newest browser, because the Yahoo search experience sucks, basically.

Per the article I read, Mozilla had the contractual right to do this. Mozilla did what was best for their brand, which equates, in my mind, to a better customer experience.

D.o.S. wrote:Now, imagine Comcast engages in an exclusive contract with Yahoo, so the Yahoo homepage loads 57x faster than the Google homepage. Right now, they can't do that. If they repeal these current rules, that will be fair game (broad strokes and all that because it's an example). Website speed is incredibly important when it comes to consumers: imagine one of your competitors reaches out to Comcast (or whoever) and basically prices you out of business by paying more than you can afford to match to ensure that your website ages to load while the competitor's site loads in one or two seconds?

This is where you lose me. I don't see Comcast, or any other ISP, signing a contract with google, yahoo, bing, whomever. There have to be thousands of ISP's across the country. I think there is too much data and too many ISP's for Comcast to "corrupt the internet."

Forward thinking: I think wired ISP's will go away within the next 10 years anyways. We'll all get data from a satellite modem, where there will be no boundaries as to who can get what ISP provider.

Trigger warning: I USE BING!

JonnyAngle wrote:

D.o.S. wrote:Now, imagine Comcast engages in an exclusive contract with Yahoo, so the Yahoo homepage loads 57x faster than the Google homepage. Right now, they can't do that. If they repeal these current rules, that will be fair game (broad strokes and all that because it's an example). Website speed is incredibly important when it comes to consumers: imagine one of your competitors reaches out to Comcast (or whoever) and basically prices you out of business by paying more than you can afford to match to ensure that your website ages to load while the competitor's site loads in one or two seconds?

This is where you lose me. I don't see Comcast, or any other ISP, signing a contract with google, yahoo, bing, whomever. There have to be thousands of ISP's across the country. I think there is too much data and too many ISP's for Comcast to "corrupt the internet."

Yeah Google/Yahoo was an example. Maybe a bad one, I could try, uh, CarSalesWebsiteA and CarSalesWebsiteB if you want?

Either way, as Corey pointed out, there are vast swaths of the US right now that only have access to one or two ISPs. What's stopping them from offering preferential speeds to the highest bidding content providers? And where are they going to fall on that discussion when it comes to making more money vs. less money?

Forward thinking: I think wired ISP's will go away within the next 10 years anyways. We'll all get data from a satellite modem, where there will be no boundaries as to who can get what ISP provider.

Potentially. I am not particularly bothered at any rate as a consumer since I don't live in the US. It'll be really, really interesting to see what happens to the internet in the states if this actually goes through, though.

Trigger warning: I USE BING!

I use Bing too, for work. Because I have to.

We have Google Fiber here. As far as I know, Google's been a pretty big defender of NN, and I'm curious to see if and how they change their service in this new situation (if it gets that far). The shitty thing is that from what I understand, Google isn't going to keep developing the service beyond the few cities it's in right now. They had plans for LA and halted it, plus some others...

popvulture wrote:We have Google Fiber here. As far as I know, Google's been a pretty big defender of NN, and I'm curious to see if and how they change their service in this new situation (if it gets that far). The shitty thing is that from what I understand, Google isn't going to keep developing the service beyond the few cities it's in right now. They had plans for LA and halted it, plus some others...

Personally, I’m not really sure which side of the spectrum I fall on. I don’t think it will affect me personally anyways.

However i have a friend who is extremely anti n n. He says that the googles and facebooks are investing money in hardware right now to take some of the load off the isp servers. And if n n goes through this would stop because there is no benefit for the website. Also, your emergency voip call could get dropped because all of the neighbors are downloading 4k porn.

Good discussion.

JonnyAngle wrote:However i have a friend who is extremely anti n n. He says that the googles and facebooks are investing money in hardware right now to take some of the load off the isp servers. And if n n goes through this would stop because there is no benefit for the website. Also, your emergency voip call could get dropped because all of the neighbors are downloading 4k porn.

Good discussion.

That tech is extremely valuable to both companies even if net neutrality stays. Either via patent rights or to still be faster than their competitors.

RE voip, one of the things that started net neutrality was a case where an isp just suddenly stopped voip so people would be forced to pay for their phone network as well. This would be allowed again with net neutrality removed.