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Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

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Re: Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

#51

Post by hristov »

weberc2 wrote: post #39
hristov wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we need diversity of opinion, perhaps you could up-vote someone that believes that the earth is flat or black is white. There are out there some readily determinable facts, and it is perfectly fine for all of our opinions to be the same as it concerns those facts. For example, almost everyone on earth will be of the opinion that fire is hotter than ice. Do we all suffer from group think? If someone believes that f…

> It is well known and readily verifiable that net neutrality as defined by the previous FCC rules and as defined by the EFF allows for providers to charge more for people using more data. So no net neutrality would not require anyone to subsidize heavy data users. You're being patronizing. Why do you assume that the OP is referencing this point in his "diversity of opinion" quote? A charitable interpretation would b…

That is the only point the grandparent made.

Re: Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

#52

Post by btym »

waterphone wrote: post #28
btym wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a direction they headed in shortly after Yahoo acquired them, it's not a new thing with the Verizon acquisition. Blogs marked "adult" and NSFW posts already won't show up in search engines[edit: I stand corrected], by default in searches on the website, or searches on the mobile app (even when logged in).

That is not true at all. All Tumblr blogs, including NSFW blogs, have always been viewable and indexable by external search engines through their public URL (blogname.tumblr.com) unless flagged as private/hidden (a choice of the blog owner). They have only been hidden from Tumblr's search engine if the user has their account set to not see adult content. You can verify this by searching for "tumblr porn" on Google. F…

>All Tumblr blogs, including NSFW blogs, have always been viewable and indexable by external search engines through their public URL (blogname.tumblr.com) unless flagged as private/hidden (a choice of the blog owner).

There is definitely something in account settings somewhere that removes you from search results, I may have mixed that up with the NSFW flag.

>They have only been hidden from Tumblr's search engine if the user has their account set to not see adult content

As I mentioned, this is default. And "adult" blogs do not show up at all in search results on mobile.

My point stands, though. Yahoo already started making adult content harder to find (accidentally or intentionally), the momentum is already there.

Re: Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

#53

Post by f4rker »

jp_sc wrote: post #4

tl;dr: Verizon owns Yahoo now, so it owns Tumblr too.

Buying yahoo was a very dumb move for VZ unless they just want hold assets OR completely overhaul yahoo. Yahoo has been a losing brand since circa 2000. Soon as yahoo took over tumblr it started to suck more.

source : I work on other peoples tumblrs site all the time

Re: Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

#54

Post by jedberg »

weberc2 wrote: post #26
RangerScience wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to downvote you because of how intensely I disagree with everything you're saying, but you're saying it nicely so I won't. Instead - The major concern about losing NN is that instead of just paying for volume of data, I'll also be required to pay based on type and/or source of that data, and that the entities providing the data will also be required to pay based on type and/or destination. Do you think this co…

I'm not opposed to NN, but your phrasing piqued my curiosity: Why is it bad that ISPs charge us based on type/source of data? Should grocery stores charge us by volume (mass?) of food instead of by type/source/etc? If aggregating costs is indeed more moral, why should it be enforced by law (as opposed to the food example)? Providing robust answers to these questions should strengthen the NN position.

It's not quite the same though. It would be more like if the store said you could pay $50 to enter and fill a cart with whatever you want, but you can use as many other carts as you want but only for their store brand items.

Then the local government comes in and says that they are the only store allowed in town.

Now, is it fair to General Mills that they have to compete with the store brand cereal when the store brand is effectively free and there is no way for General Mills to get their cereal to you any other way?

Re: Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

#55

Post by bsurmanski »

fiatjaf wrote: post #19
RangerScience wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to downvote you because of how intensely I disagree with everything you're saying, but you're saying it nicely so I won't. Instead - The major concern about losing NN is that instead of just paying for volume of data, I'll also be required to pay based on type and/or source of that data, and that the entities providing the data will also be required to pay based on type and/or destination. Do you think this co…

Thank you for not downvoting me. Free market would be part of my answer if I had one. I'm not well-informed enough to say much, but imagine you have a local link in a small rural town that only support some absolute number of packets or whatever: if you have one big consumer that is eating the major part of that every day, making the others miserable, isn't it reasonable to limit that consumer's bandwidth somehow? Th…

I don't think your 'small rural town' metaphor is solved by removing net neutrality. From the provider's point of view, who cares if someone is using up 1000 packets of youtube or 1000 packets of nytimes? They cost the same from the provider's stand point (unlike 1kg lobster vs 1kg of bread for a restaurant). Filtering by content doesn't change anything, network providers can already charge by amount of traffic. If they can't provide enough, they can raise prices, free market style.

The issue with removing net neutrality is that it enables censorship and removes 'the free market' of the internet. The internet provider doesn't like your political blog? Well now they can wall it off under a addon package just like cable TV. Facebook makes an exclusive deal with the internet provider? Now Twitter is locked behind an addon package or completely unavailable.

You might say, "well people will just use a different internet provider!". The problem with that is that many places in the USA only have one, maybe two providers to chose from; So it's not like a restaurant where they can just go somewhere else.

You might say, "well more internet providers will be created if no-one likes the current ones!". But its very expensive to create a network of fiber optic cables. Billions of dollars, maybe trillions. A start-up can't just 'interrupt' the market. And usually when a new internet provider is created, they have to lease the big-company lines just work. And you can bet if they make that deal with existing companies they'll have to accept big-company's traffic policies.

Re: Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

#56

Post by r00fus »

hristov wrote: post #30
jnordwick wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upvoted because we need more diversity of opinion here.

If we need diversity of opinion, perhaps you could up-vote someone that believes that the earth is flat or black is white. There are out there some readily determinable facts, and it is perfectly fine for all of our opinions to be the same as it concerns those facts. For example, almost everyone on earth will be of the opinion that fire is hotter than ice. Do we all suffer from group think? If someone believes that f…

In addition, constantly re-discussing the same points weakens the signal-to-noise ratio.

Re: Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

#57

Post by bsurmanski »

weberc2 wrote: post #29
deanCommie wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix pays it's bills like everyone else. Net Neutrality means that if you were to start a compelling competitor to Netflix, as long as your technology was sound enough, and you could keep up with the bandwidth bills, you would be able to offer the service to your customers without any subjective political negotiation with ISPs and entrenched market leaders.

This isn't a very good argument, since Comcast (or whoever) wants to charge Netflix more --a challenger wouldn't have to pay the Netflix premium. Maybe in some hypothetical scenario ISPs would charge incumbents less, but the real-world scenario is the opposite.

Not if Netflix makes a special exclusivity deal. You can bet that some businesses will make as many deals as possible to keep down the competition, if it's legal.

Re: Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

#58

Post by waterphone »

btym wrote: post #52
waterphone wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not true at all. All Tumblr blogs, including NSFW blogs, have always been viewable and indexable by external search engines through their public URL (blogname.tumblr.com) unless flagged as private/hidden (a choice of the blog owner). They have only been hidden from Tumblr's search engine if the user has their account set to not see adult content. You can verify this by searching for "tumblr porn" on Google. F…

>All Tumblr blogs, including NSFW blogs, have always been viewable and indexable by external search engines through their public URL (blogname.tumblr.com) unless flagged as private/hidden (a choice of the blog owner). There is definitely something in account settings somewhere that removes you from search results, I may have mixed that up with the NSFW flag. >They have only been hidden from Tumblr's search engine if…

There are three visibility flags for Tumblr blogs:

- Allow logged-out users to see this blog

- Allow this blog to appear in search results

- Flag this blog as adult-oriented

Either of the first two flags would obscure the blog from search engines, but the latter one has never.

Re: Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

#59

Post by steego »

fiatjaf wrote: post #19
RangerScience wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to downvote you because of how intensely I disagree with everything you're saying, but you're saying it nicely so I won't. Instead - The major concern about losing NN is that instead of just paying for volume of data, I'll also be required to pay based on type and/or source of that data, and that the entities providing the data will also be required to pay based on type and/or destination. Do you think this co…

Thank you for not downvoting me. Free market would be part of my answer if I had one. I'm not well-informed enough to say much, but imagine you have a local link in a small rural town that only support some absolute number of packets or whatever: if you have one big consumer that is eating the major part of that every day, making the others miserable, isn't it reasonable to limit that consumer's bandwidth somehow? Th…

I apologize for calling your opinion vapid in my other post. Thank you for taking the time to articulate your ideas in this post.

I too am a proponent for free markets, but I have to point out that the telecommunications industry could care less about free market principles.

For the last hundred years telcos have consistently lobbied the federal government for regulations that lock out competition. They pretend regulation prevents them from performing as well as they could, but the last thing they want is a minimally regulated market with a low barrier to entry.

The only reason we're even having this conversation is because there was a small window of opportunity in the 90's to pass smart Telco laws that both regulated and deregulated divergent aspects of the industry. First, because the incumbent telcos enjoyed monopolies for nearly 50 years, they were obligated to lease parts of their networks to resellers like local ISPs.

Had this not happened, the larger telcos and service providers could have choked the early Internet and giving us networks like AOL/MSN instead.

If you truly believe in the virtue of free markets, you need to understand that powerful politically connected companies do not and they can be some of the biggest opponents of free markets while they pretend they are.

Re: Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality

#60

Post by lumisota »

sausman wrote: post #36
RangerScience wrote: post #11

If you're a founder and looking to sell your company, is there anything you can do to guard yourself against these kinds of situations? I imagine it might be some particular part of a golden handcuff / golden parachute deal, but making it work for everyone involved sounds super hard...

This is my biggest qualm with building a company aimed to sell (either to public markets or another company). You are binding yourself to pursue as much profit as possible through whatever legal means possible. Even if those legal means go against everything you stand for, you have to pursue them because you have a fiduciary duty.

"Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.": http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/13-354.html
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