Watching the local news, the net neutrality story ran after stories of a dog attacked by a coyote and a woman who lost her wedding ring.

This. NBC pretty much controls the streaming sphere now.

LOL how much is a zettabyte?

Edit: LOL 1 zettabyte is equivalent to 8 million years of UHD 8K video format.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte

Logically, sure.

But these sites will have a window pop up and say something like "Do you wish to continue for 1 cent per page?" Troglodytes will happily accept those terms not knowing the bill at the end of the month is $500.

If you want to feel like Patrick Swayze in Ghost, try yelling NET NEURALITY at old, white people.

No

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This is the digital equivalent of the state, non-profit partners, companies and individuals spending billions upon billions on building a highway system which all can use legally.

And then the state sells every on-ramp and off-ramp to private toll companies, giving them carte blanche to do as they see fit.

But the price of maintaining the highway itself will still paid by the ones who made it.

It is, without a shadow of a doubt, a pinnacle of idiocy.

I dunno. hulu and netflix are pretty big are affiliated or owned by other hudge conglomerates. I think the isp wont go after them.

I think where this really hurts is if me and my 3 college buddies come up with some super sweet website/app that is super awesome and everyone loves, then the isp can be like, lololol pay us $$$$$. but since we are just getting started, well, we dont have $$$$$.

so we fail and and we lose our money and time and the public at large does not get to benefit from our super awesome app.

or, mebbe we come up with a facebook like app that isnt evil incarnate and we want to get it on the internet. well, obv facebook is not happy at all with that bc they might lose market share or bizness or whatever. now facebook tells the isp, yo, price these mofos out. and facebook can even be like, hey if you price them out then we will give you $$$$$$$$.

and also, while I think the big companies with a lot of pull like netflix wont get messed with, I do think that petty fights may occur, and big companies may go after the little guys too. like, what if espn (or yahoo) fantasy sports goes after footballguys and the isp affiliated with espn throttles footballguys.

I would imagine some big companies would make it a part of their strategy to just go after all the little guys they can find.

ya this is the way I see it.

and it really sucks bc its gonna totally stifle creativity and make the internet stagnate.

Hey, Texas: Can you do us all a favor and get rid of this ******* next year?

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/941489723901665280

I’m not 100% sure this can happen, but FB can definitely pay more to ISPs to get preferential treatment that a startup can’t afford.

Also, someone should point out to Cruz that pre-2015 Netflix was being throttled by ISPs.

This ought to come under the purview of antitrust legislation, no? It's basically what Rockefeller used to do in the 19th century with trains, no?

LOL anti-trust. Our DOJ is pretty much toothless in the face of corporate malfeasance at this point, and that was a bipartisan effort. This is what two generations of making our politics strictly about the culture wars gets us.

Good thread. The upside of relying on insane nonsense to stir up anger is that it makes stirring up anger easy, but the downside is that when the insane nonsense is proven to be true, it kind of undermines the credibility of your positions.

COUNTERPOINT: AJIT HUSSEIN PAI HASN'T ROLLED OVER HIS OLD 401(K) THEREFORE COMCAST OWNS AMERICA

bobman, does it concern you at all that your anti-net neutrality team consists only of deplorables and reprehensible scumbags like Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and Donald Trump, Jr.?

also, do you believe in climate change?

I would also be curious to hear why bobman thinks there has been a big push by these companies to end net neutrality. Why bother spending the time and money if net neutrality doesn't really matter?

I'm open to the idea that this will all be overblown. It's a complicated industry. But if that's the case, I don't understand the actions being taken.

I love that pai went on fox and friends to declare victory because the internet still worked the morning after his decision. Such a blatant fallacy that only idiots like our president couldn’t see through.

Net Neutrality gets killed yesterday and TODAY my ISP starts calling me to bug me about spending more money with them. Coincidence? I think not!

Why is this a good thread? He simply states that ISPs will not do a fee per search or any other such noxious scheme, and that no change will be visible on the consumer end. But he doesn't explain why. How can he be sure? I thought the whole point of a monopoly on an essential service was that you can rip off your customer and they have to grin and bear it. The repeal of NN seems, from my perspective as a lay person, to open up some new avenues in that direction. I would like to see some work shown that the providers will find it unprofitable to nickel and dime customers and content providers. And even so, companies are run by humans, often deplorable ones, who may make unprofitable decisions for petty reasons - think Bridgegate but with your internet.

Like idk the whole thing strikes me as a magic free market always sorting itself out type of argument. Maybe there's a good nuanced perspective here - this Sanchez guy certainly believes there is - but what is it?

There's a lot of daylight between issues that are important to companies whose business is intimately tied up with an issue and those that are important to regular people. (This is the whole reason lobbying is even a thing!) I'm sure net neutrality is important to Comcast and Google. My skepticism is that it's important to regular people.

Well, one argument is that we used to not have net neutrality rules and no one charged by the google search.

I get that's the argument, but like saying "nothing changed when we added these rules," isn't a good reason for repealing them. It's like, if you're a casino manager, and you see a cheating angle that no one has used, you should still try to block it. The only reason not to would be that doing so somehow creates a negative effect that outweighs the risk. That's where I'm asking the work be shown re: net neutrality. Why is the downside large and how do you know the risk is small, other than it didn't happen before?

Google has supported net neutrality. I don't think they are looking to charge for search outside of their ads. Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast are the lobby against it and they've spent a lot of money. (the 4th biggest lobby is a trade group that includes those three)

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/net_neutrality/

Dunno if the polls have moved, but this one from May had support/oppose at 61/18.

Why are any politicians against net neutrality?

Not that hard to figure out.

I think bobman is usually right about things and he's probably right here. In particular, this tweet is explanatory:



The lack of net neutrality isn't going to be taking good things away, it will be taking away what you never knew you could have had.