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More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

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Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#101

Every social media website is dominated by people supporting net neutrality. I don't even remember seeing an opposing opinion, except from Trump's government. Maybe I'm living in some weird bubble, but it seems to me the argument is really not an argument, but an artificially created nonsense.

I'm up for net neutrality, but what do you about one or two pigs hogging the network? This quotes netflix as having 37% of traffic in N.A. http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/20/netflix-boasts-37-... It's like you build an autobahn for everyone, and then one monster haulage company moves in and dominates the road, and the road isn't really as useful as envisaged.

But the truck stops almost everywhere to deliver its load.

Ps. They had the same arguments for YouTube and torrent. What's next

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#103

Every social media website is dominated by people supporting net neutrality. I don't even remember seeing an opposing opinion, except from Trump's government. Maybe I'm living in some weird bubble, but it seems to me the argument is really not an argument, but an artificially created nonsense.

I'm up for net neutrality, but what do you about one or two pigs hogging the network? This quotes netflix as having 37% of traffic in N.A. http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/20/netflix-boasts-37-... It's like you build an autobahn for everyone, and then one monster haulage company moves in and dominates the road, and the road isn't really as useful as envisaged.

It's not really any business of the ISPs which services their customers want to use. If demand for bandwidth increases such that the price isn't viable anymore, charge customers more if necessary. You don't find restaurants charging potato suppliers because diners like to eat lots of fries.

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#104
post #97

Every social media website is dominated by people supporting net neutrality. I don't even remember seeing an opposing opinion, except from Trump's government. Maybe I'm living in some weird bubble, but it seems to me the argument is really not an argument, but an artificially created nonsense.

r/The_Donald/ has some particularly impressive mental gymnastics going on to support repeal. Breitbart comments are fascinating.

Being against government price controls == mental gymnastics?

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#105
post #42

There was also a lot of direct copypaste spam on the pro-NN side https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*Sc4-R2waeRrGnNL90...

The clincher, though, is that the significant majority of the natural language, individually written comments supported Net Neutrality. Yes, there are vested interests prepared to commit fraud on both sides. But all of the people feel the same way about this. I suppose the question therefore is, if the politicians are prepared to upset all of the people , they must be pretty confident they'll still be re-elected next…

We just need to move to full-on direct democracy. Not representative.

Then there would be fewer questions about "what the people actually want."

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. First: it can't happen "behind the scenes" because almost all the money goes into TV advertisement. You can't hide TV ads. Second: it just doesn't happen. Third: It's counterproductive to push such cynical, almost nihilistic, conspiracy theories. If you just accuse any politician of corruption, you remove all incentives for them not to be corrupt. I have met many politicians, and worked for some. And b…

> "Second: it just doesn't happen." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xMuUEd6w54E

yeah, that's some conspiracy docutainment on Youtube...

Of course there are cases of corruption. That Maltese EU commissioner last year comes to mind. But it is vastly different than the problem in the US.

That's because the US has largely legalized corruption. First, through corporate personhood and "money is speech", corporations (and people) won the "right" to give almost unlimited money to candidates's campaigns. And just recently, the standards to prove outright corruption were raised. It is now no longer corruption if a politician and some business regularly exchange gifts/money (one way) and political influence (the other way). For it to be illegal, it must now be proven that some explicit payment is directly linked to some explicit political action, in a clearly defined quid-pro-quo.

None of that happens in the EU. The first is easy to check, because, as mentioned before, campaign spending is quite obviously visible. Otherwise, it would be useless. In a competitive state in the US, every third TV ad is for a candidate. In the EU, a typical station runs maybe four or five per day in the last days before an election.

Corruption by direct payments in exchange for favors is harder to quantify, obviously: The absence of cases can mean none happen, or that that none of them come to light.

But specifically for the EU, it just wouldn't work very well. There are so many people involved with any given decision, you would have to bribe two or three dozens to start making a difference. Between the commission, parliament, council, and subject-specific bureaucrats in each of the member states, any unusual actions favoring special interest are bound to be noticed.

There is also no clear indication of any such shenanigans in the laws and regulations actually passed. Yes, I'm sure there are many examples of regulations people might disagree with. But it is hard to characterize EU legislation as anything but pro-consumer. Case in point: surely the European telecom industry would have managed to stave off free international roaming if it were that easy?

Of course there's lobbying. That's how it works. Business are not, after all, the mortal enemy of societies. And consumer- or environmental-protection, pro-science, or pro-transparency groups have over the last years become much better organized, and influential.

The EU specifically is terribly afraid of public opinion. That regulation about cucumbers and their bending was repealed a few years back, even though it didn't hurt anyone (and is now unofficially enforced by the market itself). It was simply used to attack the EU so often, the people working their got annoyed and scrapped it.

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#107

Every social media website is dominated by people supporting net neutrality. I don't even remember seeing an opposing opinion, except from Trump's government. Maybe I'm living in some weird bubble, but it seems to me the argument is really not an argument, but an artificially created nonsense.

I'm up for net neutrality, but what do you about one or two pigs hogging the network? This quotes netflix as having 37% of traffic in N.A. http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/20/netflix-boasts-37-... It's like you build an autobahn for everyone, and then one monster haulage company moves in and dominates the road, and the road isn't really as useful as envisaged.

I don't see the problem. The analogy breaks a bit. If people want to stop using Netflix, they don't occupy any "road".

They occupy 37% (trusting the source) because that's how much people want to use their service, not because they force themselves on "the internet".

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#108

Every social media website is dominated by people supporting net neutrality. I don't even remember seeing an opposing opinion, except from Trump's government. Maybe I'm living in some weird bubble, but it seems to me the argument is really not an argument, but an artificially created nonsense.

I'm up for net neutrality, but what do you about one or two pigs hogging the network? This quotes netflix as having 37% of traffic in N.A. http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/20/netflix-boasts-37-... It's like you build an autobahn for everyone, and then one monster haulage company moves in and dominates the road, and the road isn't really as useful as envisaged.

Well, if you as an ISP advertise and sell subscriptions for 200mbps (with the “up to” hidden in 7pt, 10 pages down into the contract) and customers buy the service it is none of your business how those 200mbps are being used, only to shuffle them along at the speed that has been paid for.

If the sold speed is only achievable when nobody else in the neighborhood is using the service then it’s a lie, and it’s no one else’s fault but the ISP’s if they get caught

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#109

Every social media website is dominated by people supporting net neutrality. I don't even remember seeing an opposing opinion, except from Trump's government. Maybe I'm living in some weird bubble, but it seems to me the argument is really not an argument, but an artificially created nonsense.

I'm up for net neutrality, but what do you about one or two pigs hogging the network? This quotes netflix as having 37% of traffic in N.A. http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/20/netflix-boasts-37-... It's like you build an autobahn for everyone, and then one monster haulage company moves in and dominates the road, and the road isn't really as useful as envisaged.

Everyone worries about slippery slopes, but I think that limits should exist. Perhaps if you are consuming more than 10% of Internet’s bandwidth, you should have to pay some kind of tax to ISP’s, and those funds should then be required to be reinvested in the network to make it more reliable or increase bandwidth. That seems like it would be an all-around win.

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#110
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm up for net neutrality, but what do you about one or two pigs hogging the network? This quotes netflix as having 37% of traffic in N.A. http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/20/netflix-boasts-37-... It's like you build an autobahn for everyone, and then one monster haulage company moves in and dominates the road, and the road isn't really as useful as envisaged.

I don't see the problem. The analogy breaks a bit. If people want to stop using Netflix, they don't occupy any "road". They occupy 37% (trusting the source) because that's how much people want to use their service, not because they force themselves on "the internet".

The 37% is accurate for peak usage. What makes it more complicated to measure is that Netflix and Google have private networks, CDNs that are uploading all of that data during peak usage, which is much closer to the user geographically. They've basically spent billions of dollars to unclog the internet backbone already.
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