I remember when a bunch of big sites went dark years ago, protesting in favor of net neutrality. Then NN got rolled back during the Trump administration, and... it didn't seem to make a...
I remember when a bunch of big sites went dark years ago, protesting in favor of net neutrality. Then NN got rolled back during the Trump administration, and... it didn't seem to make a difference. Not that I could see, anyway. Now NN is back. Having it is probably a good idea, but a lot of the harms people predicted never materialized, and in retrospect the whole thing feels rather alarmist.
The CNN article does a poor job explaining, but this older article highlights some of the other great stuff Title II classification provides. Privacy protections Disability access Billing...
The CNN article does a poor job explaining, but this older article highlights some of the other great stuff Title II classification provides.
Privacy protections
Disability access
Billing transparency (why your power bill and phone bill have more detailed breakdowns of costs) It would require ISPs to disclose any 'soft caps' like Comcast has been enacting over the years.
The ability for broadband providers to use any existing utility pole. This is bad-news-bears for incumbants.
Similar example of why net neutrality is highly important: Twitch had to shut down in South Korea because the ISPs there charged fees to content providers to allow access to their content. Netflix...
Similar example of why net neutrality is highly important: Twitch had to shut down in South Korea because the ISPs there charged fees to content providers to allow access to their content. Netflix was able to negotiate a deal for better rates, but not many companies have the means or motivation to fight for that. End result: companies downgrade quality of certain content to minimize costs and are disincentivized from trying to get high traffic, and consumers ultimately get a far worse experience than the rest of the world.
It's really a matter of when, not if, other ISPs would try the same in other countries. Greed is the ultimate motivator. They care about dollar signs and literally nothing else.
My understanding is that, when the federal government rolls back a regulation, there's often some hesitancy to take advantage of it, since the next administration might just re-establish the...
My understanding is that, when the federal government rolls back a regulation, there's often some hesitancy to take advantage of it, since the next administration might just re-establish the regulation. This appears to be a good example of that.
Afaik, the main thing was California passed a law that enacted strong net neutrality rules on a state level. The Trump DOJ and carriers challenged that, California said they were going to fight...
Afaik, the main thing was California passed a law that enacted strong net neutrality rules on a state level.
The Trump DOJ and carriers challenged that, California said they were going to fight it, and the Biden DOJ dropped it / California won in 2021.
Not sure if other states had similar reactions, but California by itself has a huge amount of clout. Carriers were looking at having to handle things differently all over the country in addition to being blocked from doing what they hoped to accomplish.
The bungled execution (e.g., transparent lies about the DDOS/faked comments) might have also contributed to some hesitancy to advantage of the situation.
Many people think Y2K was alarmist, but in both situations while there was certainly alarmism and misinformation there were also very legitimate concerns that didn't manifest because people put in work to stop them.
While I don't think it's a good argument by itself, it's worth noting how much pushback mainstream ISPs made against net neutrality. Most comments made in support of the FCC proposal to roll back...
While I don't think it's a good argument by itself, it's worth noting how much pushback mainstream ISPs made against net neutrality. Most comments made in support of the FCC proposal to roll back NN turned out to be fake. Considering the mainstream ISPs are pretty much the gold standard for geographic monopolies, I'm inclined to think that most laws they support are not in consumers' best interest.
Contrasting this, my local ISP (the only one in my area) actually came out in support of net neutrality. I'm not at all surprised, considering every interaction I have with them has been absolutely delightful - something I absolutely could not say about Frontier or Spectrum.
The other comments make great points too- better points than I'm making.
I remember when a bunch of big sites went dark years ago, protesting in favor of net neutrality. Then NN got rolled back during the Trump administration, and... it didn't seem to make a difference. Not that I could see, anyway. Now NN is back. Having it is probably a good idea, but a lot of the harms people predicted never materialized, and in retrospect the whole thing feels rather alarmist.
The CNN article does a poor job explaining, but this older article highlights some of the other great stuff Title II classification provides.
Also, apparently in Portugal where they have no such legal requirements the cable-ification of the internet is happening.
Similar example of why net neutrality is highly important: Twitch had to shut down in South Korea because the ISPs there charged fees to content providers to allow access to their content. Netflix was able to negotiate a deal for better rates, but not many companies have the means or motivation to fight for that. End result: companies downgrade quality of certain content to minimize costs and are disincentivized from trying to get high traffic, and consumers ultimately get a far worse experience than the rest of the world.
It's really a matter of when, not if, other ISPs would try the same in other countries. Greed is the ultimate motivator. They care about dollar signs and literally nothing else.
My understanding is that, when the federal government rolls back a regulation, there's often some hesitancy to take advantage of it, since the next administration might just re-establish the regulation. This appears to be a good example of that.
I wonder if it just didn't have enough time to fester into a horror show.
Afaik, the main thing was California passed a law that enacted strong net neutrality rules on a state level.
The Trump DOJ and carriers challenged that, California said they were going to fight it, and the Biden DOJ dropped it / California won in 2021.
Not sure if other states had similar reactions, but California by itself has a huge amount of clout. Carriers were looking at having to handle things differently all over the country in addition to being blocked from doing what they hoped to accomplish.
The bungled execution (e.g., transparent lies about the DDOS/faked comments) might have also contributed to some hesitancy to advantage of the situation.
Many people think Y2K was alarmist, but in both situations while there was certainly alarmism and misinformation there were also very legitimate concerns that didn't manifest because people put in work to stop them.
While I don't think it's a good argument by itself, it's worth noting how much pushback mainstream ISPs made against net neutrality. Most comments made in support of the FCC proposal to roll back NN turned out to be fake. Considering the mainstream ISPs are pretty much the gold standard for geographic monopolies, I'm inclined to think that most laws they support are not in consumers' best interest.
Contrasting this, my local ISP (the only one in my area) actually came out in support of net neutrality. I'm not at all surprised, considering every interaction I have with them has been absolutely delightful - something I absolutely could not say about Frontier or Spectrum.
The other comments make great points too- better points than I'm making.
Wasn't the whole idea to prevent changes from taking place? So a lack of change would be an indication of success.
Previous discussions can also be found here.
I wonder how Ajit Pai took the news.