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Keep the Internet Open

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Keep the Internet Open

#201

Post by thomasahle »

rdl wrote: post #58

While I like the Internet being open, I don't like "net neutrality" extremism. 1) While I dislike monopoly carrier antics, I'm even more unhappy about the idea of government bureaucrats dictating network engineering standards to carriers and ISPs. If you build a network with caches/content servers close to users, and expensive backhaul back to your network core, you can offer essentially unlimited traffic to users hi…

> you can offer essentially unlimited traffic to users hitting the cache, and still provide more limited access to other stuff. I'd prefer high bandwidth everywhere, but that isn't always an option.

If you are a small company trying to start an internet based business, I'm pretty sure you'd take "limited bandwidth for all" over "high bandwidth for the competition; limited bandwidth for me" anytime.

That is also the best way to ensure the 'lower bound' for bandwidth is kept as high as possible.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#202

Post by kuschku »

rdl wrote: post #138
pharrlax wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It should be a market decision, not a national government decision. That's all well and good where competitive markets exist, but in many places, they simply don't. Only 23% of American census blocks, for example, have more than 1 option for 25MBPS+ internet. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-br...

Maybe the solution is to use exemption from NN as a carrot to encourage competition. "If there are two (or 3? or 4?) or more separate providers offering parity level of service to a property, all providers to that property are exempt from NN requirements for service to that property". If you combined that with allowing new entrant providers to not cover an entire geographic market, but just cherry pick the high densi…

That is a very great idea.

In general, it solves the problem that underlies it all: unregulated private monopolies become anticompetitive.

If you force private monopolies to be fair, or end their monopoly, you have a nice solution.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#203

Post by [deleted] »

brothercolor wrote: post #14

The internet is what makes Silicon Valley go round. Everyone, including Sam Altman, needs to be an activist. Asking for someone else to take point on something so fundamental is like asking Natives to take point on water prot-- wait.

[deleted]

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#205

Post by freeone3000 »

wonder_er wrote: post #181
guelo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "net neutrality" extremism So the NN side are the extremists. Not the side that wants to radically change the way the internet has worked for 40 years. Not the side that wants to upend the most innovative segment of the economy in favor of dinausour monoplies, radically reshaping the foundations of billions of dollars in investment and billions more in created wealth. Those guys are "conservative" right?

reasonable political ideologies can lead to "extreme" outcomes. (I consider an extreme outcome to be one that requires human nature to change, in order to be successful.) Since I think bureaucrats are gonna bureaucrat, handing them power over anything is a terrible idea. Are companies good? no, many of them are terrible. But if enough people don't like a company, the company ceases to exist. I've yet to see a similar…

They have fewer resources and are easier to ignore.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#206

Post by Keverw »

rfrank wrote: post #129
wfo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, like those pesky regulations that stop your ISP from selling your entire internet history at will without telling you or your permission. Pai will finally get rid of it so ISPs can be free and the market can decide. By which I mean the ISPs can decide, since they own the market. Public enemy number one is a pretty fair assessment as far as anyone in tech is concerned. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03…

Why not Google or Facebook founders, executives, and employees whose salaries are paid with the profits of selling other peoples' information? Why not the C-suite of the ISPs who will happily sell user data? Why not the entire adtech industry? Ajit Pai is one actor in a very corrupt system, and a lot of that system is based in San Francisco.

Do Google and Facebook really sell data? From my understanding, they keep the data for ad targeting, feature/content recommendations. Like if I place an ad on Facebook I could put 18 to 35, who likes travel, etc to promote a hotel booking site as an example. Even if you do retarget with Facebook advertising, they don't even show you the names of the people. You have like a retargeting list, it tells you how many people but not much information on them.

Even third party developers get an ID number per user associated to that app only(think of it as a proxy to your real id number). It seems like Facebook and Google cares a lot more about privacy than people think. If they just sold me the data, I could run off with it but by keeping the data to themselves and letting marketers pay them to make use of it they make recurring revenue.

From my understanding, LexisNexis and other data brokers were the ones that are selling the data. Here's a 60 minutes clip on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAT_ina93NY

I don't have any relationship with LexisNexis, I never agreed to anything yet they have information on me. Another example is I was looking at my credit report, and it even lists addresses from childhood. I never had a credit card back then, why do they have information on me? At least with Google and Facebook, I gave consent and I see a benefit. You can even buy lists of people and their medications(sounds like a HIPPA violation but the data brokers know this stuff)

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#207

Post by k_lander »

blhack wrote: post #130

This is a difficult question. Emotionally, I am a net neutrality absolutist, but I think I can talk myself out of it, which to me means that the conversation is complex. Should the power company be able to offer you a discounted rate if you host equipment that offsets their cost (for instance: a powerwall)[1]? I think that the answer to that question is yes. Well okay, then should your ISP be able to offer you a disc…

I am of the opinion that not only is traffic shaping not inherently evil but is a valuable feature that can be used to improve network efficiency but I cannot trust Comcast and the others to favour innovation and technological improvement over short term profits.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#208

Post by JediWing »

rsync wrote: post #132
bo1024 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by extremism? I view net neutrality as the requirement to treat all bits equally regardless of source, which is kind of a binary one. I think as long as we are talking about the hardware infrastructure, (2) is a fundamental problem that cannot be fixed by adding competition, because it shares some common features with utilities like water, electricity, etc (making me believe internet access ought to…

"What do you mean by extremism? I view net neutrality as the requirement to treat all bits equally regardless of source, which is kind of a binary one." It should be possible for me to build some kind of public network, somewhere, for some purpose ... and dictate bits/traffic any way I see fit. Now maybe I can't do that with CATV because common carrier. And maybe I can't do that with public spectrum because public re…

Sure, "some kind of public network", but then it can't be advertised as "Internet access" because at that point you're providing access to your public network, not access to the Internet as a whole.

The issue is ISPs, who by definition are supposed to provide Internet access. Throttling and filtering for profit are not compatible with the Internet as we know it.

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#209

Post by subverter »

I don't think anyone here is going to argue that the internet shouldn't be open.

The real question behind that – and where we differ – is how the role of government fits into that.

If you believe government is inherently good and necessary to enable a "basic right" like the internet, then yes, of course, government should be the one to keep the internet open. This is Sam's view.

On the other hand, if you distrust government and believe their own interests for power and control are always in play, then handing them even more control of the internet is absolutely not the solution.

Knowing what we know of the NSA's mass-surveilance and CIA's targeted hacking and surveillance for unclear-at-best purposes, doesn't that at least give you pause about whether government should be the one to keep the internet open?

Re: Keep the Internet Open

#210

Post by dragonwriter »

nocman wrote: post #196
dragonwriter wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a pretty broad brush you are painting with. Do you have some hard data that says things break down so clearly along party lines? They do on the FCC, for the whole time since net neutrality and internet privacy have become an issue. Congress is a little fuzzier but mostly along the same lines. In the electorate it might be blurrier, but clearly the distribution of views of the relevant politicians shows that…

"They do on the FCC" Not sure what you mean by that, you mean the breakdown of Republicans vs Democrats at the FCC?

Yes, the FCC Republicans have been consistently against Open Internet regulation, the Democrats consistently for it. And similar shsrp partisan divisions exist on a number of other internet-related issues.
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