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Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

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Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#111

Post by noobermin »

jfaucett wrote: post #16

Does anyone else find the internet market odd? Up until now net neutrality and other policies have given us the following: 1. Massive monopolies which essentially control 95% of all tech (google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc) 2. An internet where every consumer assumes everything should be free. 3. An internet where there's only enough room for a handfull of players in each market globally i.e. if you have…

You merely iterated history, how does NN actually result in any of what you just said?

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#112

Post by jazzyk »

Klathmon wrote: post #79
zepto wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. Using just your skills and barely any money, you cannot acquire a corpus of decades of historical searches and click data nor can you employ the thousands of human raters, both of which Google uses to make the search algorithm work. Please stop spreading this misleading idea.

No, but you could create a better note taking app than Google Keep, or a better email client than Gmail, or a better chat platform than Hangouts, etc... Sure, not everything is that easy, but an open internet does allow for a massive leg up that many other industries could only dream of. Imagine being able to take on Honda's lawnmower division competitively with less than $100 and a few months!

The hallways of VC offices are littered with corpses of startup founders who did have a better app than Google, but were shown the door, because: you don't want to compete with Google.

I should know - I am one of those corpses :-)

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#113

Post by learc83 »

grandalf wrote: post #69
jfaucett wrote: post #16

Does anyone else find the internet market odd? Up until now net neutrality and other policies have given us the following: 1. Massive monopolies which essentially control 95% of all tech (google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc) 2. An internet where every consumer assumes everything should be free. 3. An internet where there's only enough room for a handfull of players in each market globally i.e. if you have…

People miss the detail that it's those big players that want net neutrality because it lets them essentially have a captive last mile infrastructure that requires no investment on their part.

Infrastructure which everyone else has access to.

Without net neutrality that isn't guaranteed.

It's difficult to compete with Google. But imagine competiting with an ISP owned version of Google who owns the last mile to all their customers.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#114

Post by Adverblessly »

jfaucett wrote: post #16

Does anyone else find the internet market odd? Up until now net neutrality and other policies have given us the following: 1. Massive monopolies which essentially control 95% of all tech (google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc) 2. An internet where every consumer assumes everything should be free. 3. An internet where there's only enough room for a handfull of players in each market globally i.e. if you have…

1) Without net neutrality, Facebook can simply pay your cellular internet provider to block all messaging apps but WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger (does that still exist?). Then their (as you put it) 95% monopoly can permanently increase to 100%. The only way to compete would be to either outpay Facebook (good luck!) or start your own cellular company (good luck!).

In fact, the massive monopolies can already pay for better internet speed for their services by paying for better (physical) access to the ISPs network.

2) I'm not sure what causality you are implying here. Is it that if websites were forced to pay off ISPs they would have no choice but to charge users for content, and users would in turn get used to it?

3) Without net neutrality there is room for exactly one app - the ISP provided app, since everything else is blocked. Currently there are people in my country (which is dominated by WhatsApp) that are using Telegram, Signal and Line, so it seems like there is some competition to the giants (and many people abandoned WhatsApp when it was bought by Facebook). You can imagine what would happen if Facebook was allowed to pay off local ISPs to block everything else (and since "everyone uses WhatsApp anyway" you can bet they'll all agree to it).

4) As shown above, net neutrality reduces the barrier of entering into the market because without it there is the additional barrier of paying off the ISPs to allow access to your service.

Therefore, I suggest that the best course of action we have right now to alleviate these problems is to strengthen net neutrality :)

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#115

Post by jfaucett »

learc83 wrote: post #105
jfaucett wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" If FB was required to make a deal with every ISP in the US, do you think they would have been able to grow" It would be much more difficult obviously. But it would also have been much more difficult for myspace in the first place and if they got too big the the gov't could easily split them up. There might be many such companies providing facebook-like services in such a scenario. Maybe not, but its not something I…

Let's say your idea has merit. How do you compete against competing services owned by ISPs? If your alternative is that ISP are prohibited from owning content producers, you're the only one pushing that plan. The only serious alternative being offered is that the invisible hand will deal with all the problems.

"How do you compete against competing services owned by ISPs?"

Good question. I guess you wouldn't need to as long as the ISP market is competitive. You might go to another competitor and convince them your product is good or your product can help/augment the service they are currently providing.

The invisible hand would be really interesting to watch there.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#117

Post by jamescostian »

jfaucett wrote: post #94
jimktrains2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Massive monopolies which essentially control 95% of all tech (google, facebook, amazon, microsoft, apple, etc) Many years ago your list wouldn't have included facebook, it would have included myspace. If FB was required to make a deal with every ISP in the US, do you think they would have been able to grow? Ditto for Google and Amazon. > 2. An internet where every consumer assumes everything should be free. I do…

" If FB was required to make a deal with every ISP in the US, do you think they would have been able to grow" It would be much more difficult obviously. But it would also have been much more difficult for myspace in the first place and if they got too big the the gov't could easily split them up. There might be many such companies providing facebook-like services in such a scenario. Maybe not, but its not something I…

> But it would also have been much more difficult for myspace in the first place and if they got too big the the gov't could easily split them up.

Please elaborate. How would ending net neutrality help the government easily split up myspace?

> If ISPs could charge for particular services

Then they would, and don't be surprised if they kept the lion's share of the profits, not giving much if anything to startups. Without net neutrality, ISPs could say "we're allowing you startups the privilege of being available through us, so don't expect any money from us"

> Why would I necessarily need to make a deal with every ISP. For most products I think you probably don't really care or need to be everywhere in the USA especially when starting out.

Ok but you initially said "no one can even begin competing with google search for less than 20 million" and guess what - that fact would not go away if you removed net neutrality. In fact, it would get even worse. You would need way more than 20 million, because now you also would have to pay the ISPs.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#118

Post by gcb0 »

shawnee_ wrote: post #65

Net neutrality is fundamental to free speech. Without net neutrality, big companies could censor your voice and make it harder to speak up online. Net neutrality has been called the “First Amendment of the Internet.” Not just harder. Infinitely more dangerous. Probably the scariest implications for NN being gutted are those around loss of anonymity through the Internet. ISPs who are allowed to sell users' browsing hi…

current regulation doesn't account for anonymity. only that a isp must also do its best to route packages it can't understand. but doesn't guarantee either. if they can understand the content and want to monitor it, there's no protection against it.

without it they can just block/charge extra for things they cant read. making anonymity and privacy harder. but again, they wont have any new rigths that they don't have today.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#119

Post by bjt2n3904 »

So, which is it HackerNews? Are we OK with companies deciding what gets on the internet, or are we not? On one hand, we laud Facebook et al. for suppressing "fake news", and then we get upset when ISPs do the same.

Furthermore, the FCC has historically engaged in content regulation. Anyone wonder why there's no more cartoons on broadcast television? Or perhaps why the FCC is investigating Colbert's Trump Jokes? If we're so concerned about content freedom, the FCC is not the organization to trust.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#120

Post by nocman »

marknutter wrote: post #63
shallot_router wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs and utility companies are natural monopolies. When you move to a new location, you're stuck with the ISPs that service that location; often just 1 ISP. By giving them the power to selectively control what they're sending down the pipe, the monopoly problem will grow far far worse. Net neutrality is not the cause of the problems you listed, and removing it won't solve any of them.

> ISPs and utility companies are natural monopolies. When you move to a new location, you're stuck with the ISPs that service that location; often just 1 ISP. This is simply not true. With the wide availability of cellular service that provides broadband speeds pretty much everyone in the country has multiple choices of ISP.

If you live near a city this is often true (at least in the US). However, there are at least two problems with this:

1) often the broadband provided by mobile services is capped and/or much more expensive than the services provided by the 1 or at best 2 non-mobile ISPs you have access to.

2) in rural areas, often you do NOT have access to anything close to the same level of broadband speeds. There are a lot of places where the coverage is still spotty, and even where you have it, the speeds just aren't that great.

(again, I'm speaking about conditions in the US)

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