RIP Net Neutrality

[wankerness]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/technology/fcc-net-neutrality.html

I'm glad we've all wasted thousands and thousands of articles and directed all our hand-wringing over people flashing their dick at someone 20 years ago when this has been brewing for months and is now on our doorstep again, this time with no one with a shred of integrity to stop it. This Pai guy is the most dangerous person in that entire administration. If this passes, the only thing to take comfort in is that it's going to negatively affect the Trump voters as much as everyone else. Jesus Christ. That guy's statement is one of the most laughable things imaginable.

“Under my proposal, the federal government will stop micromanaging the internet,” Mr. Pai said in a statement. “Instead, the F.C.C. would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them.”

If you gave that dialogue to a corporate villain in a movie you'd probably get it sent back for being too silly. It's an exact mirror of the language about taking healthcare away, only even more laughable and more guaranteed to negatively affect everyone, cause even the radical healthcare haters are glued to their devices, and practically no one has a choice of feasible ISPs. The fact the companies that will control it are opposed against Google, Netflix and Facebook virtually guarantees everyone will be pissed off once it goes into effect.

Guess we'll hope for the best, though they just repealed antitrust laws on TV broadcasts, allowing SINCLAIR into everyone's home, so blah. This country is completely screwed until there's a huge change in the administration. I miss GW.

 

[Grindspine]

But how will all the GOP supporters see their favorite politicians' tweets? (As if politicians needed to be pleural)

 

[BenjaminW]

Is it possible to get the Supreme Court to settle what's going on right now or no?

 

[Explorer]

I'm glad we've all wasted thousands and thousands of articles and directed all our hand-wringing over people flashing their dick at someone 20 years ago when this has been brewing for months and is now on our doorstep again, this time with no one with a shred of integrity to stop it.

This country is completely screwed until there's a huge change in the administration. I miss GW.

I don't know what caused you to hold back on posting this, if you're that upset that the rest of us didn't.

However, the groundwork for Trump's authoritarian excesses can be found in declarations like "Dissent is terror." For that reason, only people who hate the Constitution, and the freedom of speech enshrined within it, would miss such an administration, unless they conveniently "forgot" such actual history.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

I've been pro net neutrality ever since the crap a couple of years ago when the ISPs got caught throttling user's data on landlines for watching too much netflix. If they get their way the cost of a lot of stuff is going to go up and ISPs are going to have us in more of a stranglehold than they already do. There's only like 2 ISPs in my area, everything would run a lot smoother if the government was running their own ISP as a utility (some states like TN already do that with cheaper faster internet than ISPs tend to offer).

 

[narad]

I hope this just means Google becomes an ISP and essentially drives comcast out of business.

 

[wankerness]

I don't know what caused you to hold back on posting this, if you're that upset that the rest of us didn't.

However, the groundwork for Trump's authoritarian excesses can be found in declarations like "Dissent is terror." For that reason, only people who hate the Constitution, and the freedom of speech enshrined within it, would miss such an administration, unless they conveniently "forgot" such actual history.

Part #1 - I'm referring to "us" as in basically the entire US non-Fox News press and country, particularly practically every site I read that has an active commentariat. I was unaware of this cause no one was talking about it, they were all busy lamenting about crap that while important, didn't all deserve the constant focus of all the news. We were getting headlines like "Dustin Hoffman said something rude in 1986" instead of any mention of this. So, I have no idea what your problem is, unless you took it as a personal insult and are trying to direct it back at me.

Part #2 - I don't know what you're trying to say here.

 

[wankerness]

https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations-brief-history

https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/net-neutrality-violations-history/

https://technical.ly/philly/2014/05...-speeds-changed-comcast-deal-comcast-roundup/

Some examples of things that helped to create the net neutrality law in the first place. I see a lot of libertarian-types say "WE WERE TOTALLY FINE BEFORE THE LAW SO WHO CARES." This is the kind of thing that will all be totally justified from a legal perspective.

Anyone who talks about it creating competition is kidding themselves thanks to infrastructure costs.

 

[xzyryabx]

Everyone needs to step for us to have any chance of stopping this!
Please go to reddit.com and follow any of the links on the main page; there you will find the easiest way to have your voice heard. Don't count on anybody else, do this now. It takes 5 min.

 

[budda]

Call your congress, people.

 

[MFB]

Call your congress, people.

The current administration gives absolutely zero fucks about what 'we the people' want, and is currently doing a 1% victory lap with things like this; so yeah, feel free to call Congress, but the ones who are fighting it have already BEEN fighting it, and are outnumbered on every decision so...

 

[wankerness]

Here's an example of internet service plans in Portugal, where they don't have net neutrality.

This actually kind of amuses me, since this would infuriate practically everyone on both sides of the aisle. If people have to pay ~5 bucks extra for facebook, another 5 bucks for Netflix, another 5 bucks for Spotify, and porn streaming sites would remain in the slow lane, that might finally be what pushes Trump down to 0% approval. I think most people can live without super speed on gmail and drive, etc, and another chunk can probably live with garbage speed on Skype/Facetime/etc.

(This isn't exactly the same thing, it's basically giving extra data to those services as you pay more, it's just a good blueprint for the kind of segmenting/charging that will surely start occurring considering the companies in control have their own trash competition against the Google/Facebook platforms that they want to force.)

Well, actually the percentage of the country that overlaps between approving of him (~30%) and not having broadband (~25%) would still approve. I'm sure that's a lot smaller than 25% though.

 

[xzyryabx]

The current administration gives absolutely zero fucks about what 'we the people' want, and is currently doing a 1% victory lap with things like this; so yeah, feel free to call Congress, but the ones who are fighting it have already BEEN fighting it, and are outnumbered on every decision so...

I hate this mentality. I'm no SOJ warrior by any strech of the imagination, but that's not the case at all!
If it wasn't for the outcry against PIPA/SOPA, they would have passed. The shenanigans the FCC pulled in regards to the comment period are on the record and currently being investigated. This shit doesn't get swept under the rug with complete disregard for the rule of law (despite the current, and previous, administrations' attempts).
Of course they are still pushing for similar legislation, but as long as there is a large outcry from us at worst it'll slow things down and give rational minds time to prevail.

 

[wankerness]

I think a lot of this is just despair over the current political climate. Like, with healthcare, which has gotten voted down a couple times now but keeps immediately popping up again, the MASSIVE outcry against those were things came down to what, 2-3 republican senators deciding to vote against them? And these are not subject to the same scrutiny.

There was a news story I read about investigation of hundreds of thousands of fake comments using New Yorkers' identities to post in favor of it on the FCC site, which is pretty funny, but it didn't have enough detail for me to officially state it's not "FAKE NEWS." Once the whole internet gets wind of it again they'll be buried, anyway.

 

[MFB]

And these are not subject to the same scrutiny.

Scrutiny? Yes

BUT, no politician is going to look at this and say, "They'll make the same stink over this as the did for healthcare!" Healthcare is the kind of thing that costs them re-election, net neutrality probably won't register on the same level to them.

 

[xzyryabx]

I think a lot of this is just despair over the current political climate. Like, with healthcare, which has gotten voted down a couple times now but keeps immediately popping up again, the MASSIVE outcry against those were things came down to what, 2-3 republican senators deciding to vote against them? And these are not subject to the same scrutiny.

There you go. Those dissenting voices only did this b/c their constituents are going to hang them if they vote to kill the ACA. The rest of the reps are bowing to the corporate pressure, but this goes to show that us bitching about things does get the message through eventually, in some cases.

 

[budda]

The current administration gives absolutely zero fucks about what 'we the people' want, and is currently doing a 1% victory lap with things like this; so yeah, feel free to call Congress, but the ones who are fighting it have already BEEN fighting it, and are outnumbered on every decision so...

Call anyway so you know you did your part

 

[Drew]

It's a little too soon to say RIP yet, but this is a worst case development if it goes through. Two iitial thoughts:

1) Honestly, this is a fight that'll pit big corporations against big corporations; Verizon and Comcast win if net neutrality goes away, but Google and Facebook and Netflix et al lose. Our best bet may be the later group fighting the former.
2) Barring that, municipal internet service may be an answer - the mayor of my city (an outspoken critic of Trump) has already been making some noise on this front.