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Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

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Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#141

Post by jasonkostempski »

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…

"If net-neutrality has absolutely nothing to do with the tech monopolies maintaining their power position then why do they all support it?"

By your definition, they're not monopolies, they're just big companies, they're all competing with each other and the occasional new-comer.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#143

Post by ibgib »

jfaucett wrote: post #134
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…

"NN being gutted are those around loss of anonymity through the Internet." How is that by necessity a bad thing? People aren't anonymous in every day life and their internet anonymity is mostly an illusion anyway. Big brother can almost always find out who did what if they want to. " These "rollbacks" of regulations make it orders of magnitude easier for any entity in a corporation or organization to track down peopl…

These are my thoughts as well. In particular:

> _It also makes it orders of magnitudes easier for anyone to find out about a coorportions illegal actions / skirting of laws._

I would add that I find it more important to ensure that there is transparency about the ISPs and other corporations' (and governments') actions.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#145

Post by jcoffland »

jazzyk wrote: post #112
Klathmon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-)

Your mistake was relying on VC for success.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#146

Post by endophage »

zzzcpan wrote: post #108
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 are not natural monopolies though. In the US they are self-made monopolies that over the years pushed for enough regulations to completely thwart competition. Compare that with the most competing ISP markets, like Romania, Ukraine, Russia, where most people can choose from a few ISPs and up to 10+ in densely populated areas. So, net neutrality is an attempt to fix regulation problem with more regulations. Which…

ISPs are natural monopolies due to the incredibly high infrastructure investments required. In countries or regions where there are many ISPs to choose from, it's almost always because the government has required the one or two that own all the infra to rent capacity at cost to anyone who wants to start up a competing service. In return, the governments frequently supply tax breaks.

This mechanism may be a viable alternative to net neutrality as it drastically lowers the cost to enter the ISP market, and it would be in the competitive interest of some providers to self impose net neutrality.

My guess based on observation though is the infrastructure owning ISPs would probably prefer net neutrality to forced rental of their infra if one of those 2 regulations were to be chosen.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#149

Post by bjt2n3904 »

chasing wrote: post #130
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #119

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…

Facebook isn't an ISP. Facebook -- though big! -- is one site on the internet and if you feel like you're not receiving news about things that are important to you there, you hop onto another site. If enough people stop using Facebook, Facebook will be compelled to make changes. Breaking net neutrality laws makes it harder for you to find alternatives. Imagine you're stuck with whatever news sources your ISP picks fo…

> Comcast -- though big! -- is one ISP on the internet and if you feel like you're not receiving news about things that are important to you there, you hop onto another ISP. If enough people stop using Comcast, Comcast will be compelled to make changes. [...] Imagine you're stuck with whatever news sources your social network picks for you. "Huffington Post, Reddit, and Twitter have decided not to pay us, so we no longer accept links to those sites."

And yet, when you change the name of the company, the argument somehow doesn't apply.

I'd make the argument that Facebook has just a powerful monopoly on social networking as ISPs have on service. Especially with things like "shadow profiles". We should have the FCC break up Facebook and Twitter for open source things like Mastodon, right?

You also dodged my point about the FCC's history of content regulation.

Re: Net neutrality is in jeopardy again

#150

Post by manigandham »

curt15 wrote: post #140
apexalpha wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not American, so please correct me if I'm wrong but I have yet to see any proof of this whole 'sell your internet history' complaint that seems to be blatently copied by everyone without any research. The way I understand it is that ISPs can sell anonymized data from groups of users. Like: people who visit news.ycombinator.com generally also visit stackoverflow. I also don't know how an ISP would get your actual…

>I also don't know how an ISP would get your actual internet history if the website uses HTTPS. Charge users extra fees for "premium service" unless they agree to let the ISP their traffic.

How does that change how HTTPS works?
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