Internet money is made by the "over-the-top" (Google, Facebook & co.) leaving ISP to pay for the infrastructure. Net neutrality will allow ISP to bill users not only on bandwidth, but also based on what you do on the net. Ie: do you want a fast Youtube? Someone will have to pay (google or the users). They will be allowed to slow down some websites and speed up others, and that's really bad.
Join the Battle for Net Neutrality
41–50 of 388 posts
Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality
#42Is anyone actually against net neutrality? I don't think I've ever seen a con argument.
There really isn't a sound argument against net neutrality.
Many do argue that the FCC shouldn't have the authority to regulate the internet, and often argue that idea to subtly change the subject.
If someone argues to abolish something, they should either argue in favor of a replacement, or argue that that thing should not exist at all. Unfortunately, I haven't heard even a flawed version of either argument.
Another faux argument I hear is the classic, "I am libertarian, and therefore must be against regulation of any form, and you can't change my mind." Obviously, that isn't an argument at all, and abusing libertarian ideology to look like an argument like that is seriously disappointing to any serious thoughtful libertarian, such as myself. This problem isn't specific to libertarianism either, but it is very popular in that community.
The core tenet to every position (not argument) I have heard against net neutrality is simply a position against regulation. The problem is that in the United States, we need to regulate ISPs, for several reasons:
1. There isn't enough competition: There are 6 ISPs in the US that control the majority of the market, and the majority of Americans are left with only one choice for >20mbit internet.
2. Net Neutrality is necessary to cultivate a free market of businesses that use the internet. Without net neutrality, the already centralized market of ISPs would cultivate centralized markets for each type of business that uses the internet.
TL;DR It is totally reasonable to be wary of regulation, or of the implementation of regulation. It may even be reasonable to consider net neutrality to be worthless or unnecessary in a truly free market, that has real competition between ISPs, but that isn't today's reality, so we would need to tackle that problem first.
Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
When SOPA was going on so-and-so years ago, there was a similar bout of over-exaggerated hysteria to get people in action. I was against it back then, but I think the last couple of years have shown that panic and outrage is what actually gets people motivated to do anything, rather than straight, boring facts. Why not harness it for something good then?
I'm sorry, what? The lesson of the last couple years is that we should act more like extremists drumming up outrage with misinformation?
He's not wrong. People are lead by how they feel and not facts. There are responsible ways to make pleas to emotion on a large scale and there are manipulative things that bad actors can do with it as well. You will not win hearts and minds with pure rationality when your opponent doesn't give a shit about that. Emotional lives are just as real as cold hard facts, and as we've seen, can be so real that they manifest the expectation.
I'm not an expert, nor am I an activist, but I have been reading about people studying 4chan's tactics in a post prez45 world. How a culture of open dialog to extreme gave a small group of people a weapon. Erudite "rationals" considered this sort of thing to be stupid nonsense, but it trained an entire culture to be massively effective at steering people's emotions. Their ideas can move faster without the absolute need for sensitivity or maybe because of a pathological need to offend. The current interest is in finding ways to work that radical acceptance into progressive discourse. It's important but I don't think anyone has a playbook yet.
Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, Ajit Pai says it stifles investments. Apparently investments fell by 5% or so over a period of time since the Title II classification. While I love NN, I also hate no viable competition to cable/ISP monopolies. I don't think NN would be an issue if everyone had at least 3 viable choices of broadband providers. That's the right (tm) way to address it, or should I say market-based, by fostering competition via po…
Lack of competition is because: 1) ISPs agree not to compete; and 2) It is expensive for new entrants to build infrastructure. It would be ideal to solve NN with free market. But the ISPs have monopolies that prevent competition. Making net neutrality necessary today.
This problem sounds familiar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incumbent_local_exchange_carri...
Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality
#45Is anyone actually against net neutrality? I don't think I've ever seen a con argument.
Well, Ajit Pai says it stifles investments. Apparently investments fell by 5% or so over a period of time since the Title II classification. While I love NN, I also hate no viable competition to cable/ISP monopolies. I don't think NN would be an issue if everyone had at least 3 viable choices of broadband providers. That's the right (tm) way to address it, or should I say market-based, by fostering competition via po…
> Apparently investments fell by 5% or so over a period of time since the Title II classification.
That is a correlation expressed as a causation.
Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
One could argue that without net neutrality, internet providers could provide substantially cheaper internet services -- e.g. just Facebook for $1 a month. However that breaks down once you consider the fact that it's not practical at all. Not to mention that providers would have no reason to offer such cheap offerings, either.
Is anyone arguing that? Links?
Facebook tried such a system in India [0].
"Called Free Basics, it provided only limited access to the Internet through a suite of websites and services that, unsurprisingly, included Facebook"
https://www.cnet.com/news/why-india-doesnt-want-free-basics/
Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm against net neutrality. It's essentially a wealth transfer from the infrastructure industry to the ad industry. It's pretty dumb imo.
ISPs are free to compete with Google, Facebook, etc by offering competitive web services. Instead, ISPs want to leverage their almost-exclusive control of Internet access to unfairly crush competition. Users can choose not the use Facebook. Many users cannot choose not to use Comcast, because Comcast is the only ISP in the area. Lack of competition among ISPs make them different from web companies.
> ISPs are free to compete with Google, Facebook, etc by offering competitive web services.
By definition you're devaluing the infrastructure. This is saying, infrastructure does not deserve to make money, only ads deserve to make money.
I'd rather ISPs not compete in web services and instead make money providing the pipes as it's an important job in its own right.
Your logic leads to bad incentives for ISPs, leading to long-term degradation in a important industry. Letting ISPs make more money will introduce more incentives to compete with them too. Why did Google Fiber fail? At least partially because there's no incentive for Google to fully invest in a 10% profit margin service while it's ad business has 60% profit margin.
End net neutrality, let ISPs charge internet companies fees, and we'll suddenly have ton more money in the industry, competition in the market and we'll see an end this era of shitty internet.
Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, Ajit Pai says it stifles investments. Apparently investments fell by 5% or so over a period of time since the Title II classification. While I love NN, I also hate no viable competition to cable/ISP monopolies. I don't think NN would be an issue if everyone had at least 3 viable choices of broadband providers. That's the right (tm) way to address it, or should I say market-based, by fostering competition via po…
> Apparently investments fell by 5% or so over a period of time since the Title II classification. That is a correlation expressed as a causation.
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Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality
#49Is anyone actually against net neutrality? I don't think I've ever seen a con argument.
We have had the internet for a long time without net neutrality why do we all of sudden need it?
Re: Join the Battle for Net Neutrality
#50Is anyone actually against net neutrality? I don't think I've ever seen a con argument.
Some organizations such as the Wikimedia Foundation, Google, and Facebook believe that their services are more important than others. As such, they consider themselves deserving of cheaper, free, or the "fast lane" internet, especially in less developed areas without sufficient infrastructure to serve all websites. The rationale is that providing a limited set of websites for free is better than if those areas have no access to internet at all.
Note: The views of the mentioned organizations do not necessarily reflect my own views.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Basics
[1] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/08/01/wikipedia-zero-and-net...