More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by saladeen » Sat, Nov 25, 2017, 11:11 AM UTC

downandout wrote: post #109

keypress wrote: post #100

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.

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.

Most large bandwidth consumers do pay a 'kind of tax' to ISPs, by installing their own hardware at ISP's locations to lower the bandwidth use.

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

#142

Post by pdkl95 » Sat, Nov 25, 2017, 11:16 AM UTC

keypress wrote: post #100

bufferoverflow wrote: post #86

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.

If a ISP's customer wants to spend 100% of their bandwidth talking to netflix (or anybody else), that's their business. Netflix is sending that data only because the ISP's customer's asked for it.

> autobahn

An ISP isn't a shared commons. It's offering a service to transit data to/from other hosts on the internet, usually metered at either a fixed rate per unit time, or by the total carriage "weight" (bandwidth). Complaining about Netflix "using 37% of traffic in N.A." is like complaining about Amazon "using 7% of UPS' N.A. volumes"[1].

The way customer's actually want to use their bandwidth might not be compatible with the ISP's wishes or a particular business plan based on oversubscription or promoting local services, but that's a risk of being in the ISP business.

[1] https://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/news/2016/05/25/why-u...

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

#143

Post by croon » Sat, Nov 25, 2017, 11:17 AM UTC

saladeen wrote: post #139

bufferoverflow wrote: post #86

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.

Every social media website is dominated by 'people supporting net neutrality' because George Soros poured a lot of money into that. The site that was being peddled everywhere the other day, battleforthenet.com (and I hope noone will try and pretend that, for example, simultaneous pushing of that site to #1 spot on hundreds of subreddits was not orchestrated), is ran by org called 'Fight for the Future'; they are fund…

A Soros conspiracy theory, with a bonus 'Russian hackers' in quotes as if that part was the ridiculous one.

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

#144

Post by croon » Sat, Nov 25, 2017, 11:18 AM UTC

collyw wrote: post #133

bufferoverflow wrote: post #86

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.

4chan isn't, it seems quite mixed over there.

It definitely was a few years ago, when it was about memes and anime and before it went alt-right/Trump.

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

#145

Post by dawnbreez » Sat, Nov 25, 2017, 11:23 AM UTC

Danihan wrote: post #115

golf1052 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please take a refresher on what net neutrality is. Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality The government is not controlling the price, they are mandating t…

But all network traffic is not the same. So why should it be treated as if it is?

The obvious problem is that if an ISP wanted it could simply throttle Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon until they die out (which would be convenient for many TV/Telecom companies).

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

#146

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 25, 2017, 11:26 AM UTC

Alterlife wrote: post #74

colejohnson66 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure a lot of the pro duplicates are from websites that help the person post a comment, but they just use the form comment instead of adding their own stuff.

Wouldn't this logic apply to the anti nn side as well?

[deleted]

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

#147

Post by mrgordon » Sat, Nov 25, 2017, 11:28 AM UTC

Danihan wrote: post #126

simonh wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve already sold it to the consumer. If I pay an ISP for X bandwidth and Y latency, then decide I want to use that to watch Netflix, the ISP has no business interfering with my use of the Netflix service. It isn’t Netflix traffic, it’s my traffic which I’ve already paid the ISP for. This isn’t about protecting Netflix, it’s about protecting the consumers right to use the product they bought - internet bandwidth -…

Supermarkets don't have government price controls, and they also have very little government intervention. Yet I assume you don't worry about "back room extortion rackets" occurring with the pricing there. This is because there is a healthy amount of competition with supermarkets, something the ISP market lacks. Again, it comes down to lowering barriers of entry for new ISPs, rather than falsely labeling all network…

It’s simply unrealistic that the barriers to entry for new ISPs will be low enough any time soon for the free market to sort this out. There are many different reasons for this including:

1. Very, very high costs to get started

2. Exclusive agreements that buildings have with a particular ISP already

3. Many regulations that would prohibit laying new broadband connections to every house, e.g. because there are already houses and streets in the way

4. Economies of scale that prevent small ISPs from being profitable

5. Competition from megacorps that can treat broadband as a loss leader (or low margin side business) to get customers for their other services such as cable TV, landline telephone, or video streaming

6. Difficulty competing with much larger competitors since they would generally be offering a nearly identical commodity service without the advertising budget or brand recognition

7. Larger competitors actively lobbying against new rules that would devalue their investments

You might be able to find a way around some of them (like #7) but most of those issues are basically intractable given the current technology.

Imagine if a new company wanted to run cables to your building in a crowded city each month. You’d have to keep tearing up the roads and other infrastructure to make improvements and you’d have tons of essentially duplicated cables. You’d basically want to push for laws that required shared access to the cables to eliminate redundancy which leads quickly to either the government owning the cables and leasing them out (quite a good option in my view) or a major ISP like Comcast owning the cables and leasing them out.

Don’t get me wrong, governments should incentivize way more competition among ISPs. But we aren’t even close to it being an industry with low barriers of entry. Until we have better wireless technologies, we are probably stuck burying fiber which Google has shown is enormously expensive.

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

#148

Post by Nursie » Sat, Nov 25, 2017, 11:40 AM UTC

keypress wrote: post #100

bufferoverflow wrote: post #86

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.

That's not Netflix traffic, that's the consumer's traffic.

The ISPs are paid, by the consumers, to ship data to them. If they can't do this they need to fix their networks and charge their customers more, not try to extort third parties.

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

#149

Post by jazzdog » Sat, Nov 25, 2017, 11:50 AM UTC

dawnbreez wrote: post #145

Danihan wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But all network traffic is not the same. So why should it be treated as if it is?

The obvious problem is that if an ISP wanted it could simply throttle Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon until they die out (which would be convenient for many TV/Telecom companies).

And maybe less obvious is the start-up that Netflix once was has a tougher go of it because Comcast wants their content streamed nicely and has to keep the Netflix customers from yelling too loud and have to squeeze someone's bandwidth to make profit goals which is perfectly legal as long as they are transparent about it.

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

#150

Post by Retric » Sat, Nov 25, 2017, 11:57 AM UTC

likelynew wrote: post #113

eecc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 el…

But decreasing the average usage of customers, despite fixing maximum will mean profit. If somehow video sites get blocked, the average internet usage will very likely drop down many fold.

Pissing off customers has many failure points.

Without video many people could just stick with their cellphone bandwidth and drop their cable plan entirely.