Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#251

Post by J5892 » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 9:54 PM UTC

lerpa wrote: post #149

Net neutrality just helps the status quo, and forces the "evil greedy ISPs" to take your money. Yeah let's show them by giving them money and no competition to their business... wait. Vote for less regulation, not just getting rid of NN but getting rid of the monopolies that exist at the local level.

Yeah! Once we remove all regulations, ISPs will be forced to compete with all the little ISPs eagerly waiting to provide service!

Net Neutrality does nothing to hinder competition. In fact, we need more regulation to force competition.

It's because of a lack of regulation that my city tricked into selling their amazing municipal broadband service to Comcast.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#252

Post by vacri » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 9:57 PM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #126

ambicapter wrote: post #6

This has been the weakest day of action I could imagine. I thought sites were going to be throttled. Turns out its just some color changes and, oh, reddit has a fancy "slow-loading" gif for their website name. A real wake-up call!

This is exactly what I thought. Went to reddit.com...where's the Net Neutrality protest? Oh I just realized they made their logo a gif that looks like it loads slow...and they made a post... Went to google.com...the doodle is unrelated and I saw nothing about net neutrality on the site... Went to mozilla.org and I see absolutely nothing about it. I feel like I must be missing something here. Hackernews...looks the sa…

Reddit didn't even change their banner announcement - it's currently promoting signing up for Reddit Gifts. The slow-loading logo only has a clue to what it's about in the alt-text; the link hasn't changed.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#253

Post by qb45 » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 9:59 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #201

dragonwriter wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net neutrality regulations were adopted to protect (and in some degree restore) the net neutrality condition ; the internet was largely neutral from its inception; though by the early 00s threats to neutrality in practice were becoming clear, and the FCC began discussion the issue, adopting open internet principles that it first attempted to promote via case-by-case action (which was limited by the courts), then Titl…

One thing I've wondered is why ISPs turned evil after so many years of voluntary net neutrality.

I think what changed is streaming services - huge and costly (to the ISP) bandwidth hogs which are just asking to be extorted because they make money on their content.

Maybe it's also a matter of competition with cable TV - if Comcast reduces Internet service prices and takes the money from Netflix instead, Netflix will have to rise their prices and be less competitive?

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#254

Post by takeda » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 10:04 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #80

mabbo wrote: post #19

If Google were actually serious about Net Neutrality, they would use their insane market power to protect it. How? Well, a simple statement saying "any ISP who abuses net neutrality will have their customers cut off from Google products". No Google search, no YouTube, no Gmail. Have those requests instead redirect to a website telling the customer what their ISP is doing, why Google won't work with them, and how to c…

I love this idea because I read too much cyberpunk. Why doesn't Twitter flex its muscle and cause a national crisis by tweeting "watch out China, nukes are coming" from Donald Trump's Twitter? That ruins trust in the platform, but what if they just banned the US president's account for TOS or something? Enormous amount of power. What if Musk's first ship to Mars had a hidden Railgun on it? "Anybody else that wants to…

This also goes deeper with things like GovCloud. Where government now no longer uses their own data center.

This theoretically gives a company power to shut the government if they really wanted to.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#255

Post by ucaetano » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 10:07 PM UTC

drcube wrote: post #206

ucaetano wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You talk like customers actually have a choice in ISP...

There's always a choice. Suppose your ISP started charging you $10,000 per month for the service you have now? Would you pay it? Could you? No, you'd probably just go without home service, or rely on your cellular data plan, or get dialup, or just take an internet sabbatical until the ISP cleaned up their act. For some people, their tolerance for bullshit is less than others. For those people, perhaps charging a doll…

We're talking about reasonably priced broadband services, no need to be pedantic or literal.

You can always put money on the lottery several times, win, buy your own satellite and have your own DTH service. Or kill yourself, so that you no longer need internet.

So no, there isn't always a choice in broadband service. And most times, there isn't a choice at all.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#256

Post by jameslk » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 10:07 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #19

If Google were actually serious about Net Neutrality, they would use their insane market power to protect it. How? Well, a simple statement saying "any ISP who abuses net neutrality will have their customers cut off from Google products". No Google search, no YouTube, no Gmail. Have those requests instead redirect to a website telling the customer what their ISP is doing, why Google won't work with them, and how to c…

Wouldn't this basically be a form of economic tort? If so, I doubt Google would want to be on the receiving end of the legal consequences.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#257

Post by abawany » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 10:07 PM UTC

J5892 wrote: post #248

abawany wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ever popular 'Free Choice/Freedom' angle? Removal of Net Neutrality ensures that the ISP gets to decide what the consumer watches. 'Don't let them tell you what to watch!' (followed by horrified alpha males watching Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman on Youtube or whatever else passes for horrifying nowadays.)

How dare you imply that Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman was horrible!

Ha, just passing along a tired old joke :). I personally never saw the show myself but plenty of shows had a good time making fun of it (Home Improvement, Red Green Show (?)) I guess I stopped watching TV after the 90s sitcoms stopped so my references are old and tired.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#258

Post by ben_jones » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 10:08 PM UTC

mattferderer wrote: post #189

komali2 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, something absolutely needs to be done about that. The only failsafe is a US soldier illegally disobeying orders. Actually, most soldiers that have a key would need to disobey orders, because it wouldn't take too many nukes to end life as we prefer it on earth.

Hopefully the soldier is like Stanislav Petrov. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

The world should have a national holiday in his honor. Possibly more deserved then any other human in history.

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#259

Post by chrstphrwrght » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 10:09 PM UTC

dmamills wrote: post #71

dmamills wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that HN hates "unproductive comments", but I feel my comment is as likely as effective of "raising net neutrality awareness" as the silly grey logo bar topping this website right now.

I'm glad this comment sits at the bottom of this post. It's reflective of how the zeitgeist actually cares about this issue. The Battle For the Net website mentions a vast range of online companies who apparently stood in solidarity to take action on this day. * Github: a blog post displayed on your feed. * Etsy: Nothing. * Kickstarter: Nothing. * Netflix: Nothing. * Twitter: Nothing. * Vimeo: A featured video on the…

Kickstarter has a full screen homepage takeover for users based in the US. If you're not seeing anything, it could be down to issues determining location.

https://twitter.com/fightfortheftr/status/885140707866017798

Re: Net Neutrality Day of Action: Help Preserve the Open Internet

#260

Post by cderwin » Wed, Jul 12, 2017, 10:09 PM UTC

satsuma wrote: post #9

ambicapter wrote: post #6

This has been the weakest day of action I could imagine. I thought sites were going to be throttled. Turns out its just some color changes and, oh, reddit has a fancy "slow-loading" gif for their website name. A real wake-up call!

I would like to see sites with severely limited usage as well but I imagine that would result in angry customers who don't give a rip one way or the other hurting the bottom line.

This is correct. I am not a fan of net neutrality and the level of "protest" that has appeared today already makes me uneasy. It's easy to claim that google is so monolithic that blocking its services for a day would be a crippling blow to the anti-net neutrality crowd, but it's really just blackmail. I don't think the public would be responsive to such a threat, and there are plenty of alternatives (even if the quality isn't quite the same). I'm sure one of those alternatives would be content to not force its politics on its customers.