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72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

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Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

22% (6% answered not sure). But to be clear, 22% SAY they know what it is. I guarantee that if asked to explain what it actually is, some chunk of that 22% would get it wrong. Anecdotally, most people I talk to IRL believe it will either lower their cable bill or remove their bandwidth cap.

Or it's just more Government regulation that is trying to control the internet and prevent free market competition.

I think the counter one liner to that is something like: Net Neutrality keeps big companies from controlling what you can access on the internet. But not totally comfortable with that because "access" is overstating.

Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#42
post #31

Are ISPs really going to stop abiding by Net Neutrality rules? Wouldn't that offer a big competitive opportunity for an ISP that supports Net Neutrality?

If there was choice, but running cables and utility poles leads to a natural monopoly. Nobody has pockets deeper than Google, and even they failed to break into it.

Personal anecdote, the past 4 places I've lived were suburbs with only one broadband provider, a couple of which had daily outages that they refused to fix because it was difficult.

Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#43

Survey methodology and all that, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if most of the affected population didn't know. Net Equality would have likely perked up more interest.

> Net Equality would have likely perked up more interest. yeah, marketing is nuanced like that and i think this distinction would have made a good difference. net-favorism, anti-throttling, anti-discrimination, equal-access would have also done better, i think.

I can't think of a hot name, but net neutrality is fundamentally about preserving a free market of information.

Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#44

Can someone point to the best ELI5 article, or tell me the best metaphor? I think I don't do a great job trying to explain net neutrality to family members.

This is a pretty good introduction article, written for a general audience: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/Net-Neutrality-in-a-Nuts...

Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#46

Can someone point to the best ELI5 article, or tell me the best metaphor? I think I don't do a great job trying to explain net neutrality to family members.

The internet isn't run by the government, it's mostly run by private companies. These private companies want to create and enforce a sort of tax policy around internet consumption. Companies can tax you in multiple ways (slowing page load speeds, censoring content, denying access to services etc...) and they can do it for multiple reasons (business interests, lobbying from their friends, censoring dissent etc...) Net Neutrality is the idea that private companies should not be able to create tax policy on core internet infrastructure, and instead it should remain tax-free for all users.

The ultimate irony here, is that this battle is pitched as Silicon Valley vs. the U.S. government, with Silicon Valley fighting for a free and open internet and the government trying to pass legislation to pave the way for private companies to enforce tax policy. But in actuality the battle for a free and open internet has morphed into the people vs. Silicon Valley, with tech companies as the villains in the story.

The arbitrary censorship on social media sites (such as Facebook, and Twitter) has gotten really bad. Platforms like Youtube for content-hosting and Patreon for fundraising have begun demonetizing and delisting their political opponents. Lower level infrastructure such as GoDaddy and Cloudflare have even now begun to enforce political delisting.

Wake up. Private companies are already enforcing a tax on your internet consumption if you are guilty of wrongthink. Whether it's Verizon, Twitter, Patreon or Cloudflare, who cares, it's the same thing.

Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#47

If you're here, you can likely set up a VPN on a VPS provider. Do yourself a favor and spend the $5 / month for an instance. Get your hands on your parent's, spouse's, friend's, sibling's phones and get it set up for them too. Nobody needs to put up with this bullshit from ISPs or the Government. There is a great and easy to follow tutorial from DigitalOcean here: digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-an…

You could do that. However you then paint a target on your back saying "FBI please hack me" under the rule 41 change.

Not at all. Rule 41 just says that if the FBI already has a warrant to hack your shit, they can hack your out-of-jurisdiction servers. This seems like good policy to me. Am I missing something about it that 'paints a target on my back'?

Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#49
post #20

If you're here, you can likely set up a VPN on a VPS provider. Do yourself a favor and spend the $5 / month for an instance. Get your hands on your parent's, spouse's, friend's, sibling's phones and get it set up for them too. Nobody needs to put up with this bullshit from ISPs or the Government. There is a great and easy to follow tutorial from DigitalOcean here: digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-an…

This won't help you if your ISP decides to penalize all VPN traffic or all traffic that doesn't pay protection money. Also, you're throwing normal people under the bus; the point of net neutrality is to fix the Internet for everyone, not just geeks.

Secure your own face-mask before securing the face-mask of those sitting around you.

A couple situations where it will help you: The justice department issues a subpoena for your IP address because you visited a website about a protest, your ISP wants to sell your internet history to the highest bidder.

I am fully cognizant that we need to be working on NN at a collective level but individual protection is incredibly important in 2017.

Edit: To answer the comment below that I cannot reply to -- I am the VPN provider and I wouldn't do me like that.

Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#50
post #34
post #31

Are ISPs really going to stop abiding by Net Neutrality rules? Wouldn't that offer a big competitive opportunity for an ISP that supports Net Neutrality?

But it would make too much sense to criticize the artificial monopolies created by the state instead of complaining about ISPs!

"artificial monopolies created by the state"

I'm sorry, what?

While I'm sure you're going to beat a drum about "regulation" and "free markets" it might be worth stepping back and actually assessing the issue from a practical, rather than ideological stance

Utilities naturally gravitate toward monopoly. Would you want to have multiple sewer lines running to your house, because your upstairs bathroom costs more money than downstairs with a different "provider"?

Stringing up competing sets of coax cable, telephone lines or fiber optic cables is a losing proposition for the ISP's themselves

Why subject yourself to competition, when you can simply carve out your own market and be "the" provider in an area? Comcast doesn't want to overlap with Time Warner, because Time Warner is the incumbent provider. Even if Comcast offered a faster internet service, they'd be building their market share from zero

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