Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

hackernoon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 343 posts

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

#191

Post by nneonneo »

notyourday wrote: post #173
sanderjd wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on this a bit? I haven't heard this argument, and I just listened to a pretty long conversation with FCC Chairman Pai (on the Fifth Column podcast, if you're interested). His argument was that it will reduce the burden on small ISPs, which would then pop up everywhere, creating a pro-consumer competitive market. (Which is either magical thinking or just disingenuous, but that was his argument, such a…

Sure: "Pissing off customers has failure points" is the core of the anti-NN arguments. There's no need to regulate what ISPs can do with the traffic - if they slow down access to some websites, or stop providing access to some of them or increase prices on the access of the "entire internet", then the customers would go to competitors who do not impose such restrictions.

Of course, that’s assuming that competitors will pop up to do that. Sadly, the airline, cable, cellular plan and ISP industries have all demonstrated that oligopolies are alive and well - you can bet that ISPs will use the new income from enhanced market segmentation to shut out competitors, not improve their service.

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

#192

Post by _asummers »

notyourday wrote: post #173
sanderjd wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on this a bit? I haven't heard this argument, and I just listened to a pretty long conversation with FCC Chairman Pai (on the Fifth Column podcast, if you're interested). His argument was that it will reduce the burden on small ISPs, which would then pop up everywhere, creating a pro-consumer competitive market. (Which is either magical thinking or just disingenuous, but that was his argument, such a…

Sure: "Pissing off customers has failure points" is the core of the anti-NN arguments. There's no need to regulate what ISPs can do with the traffic - if they slow down access to some websites, or stop providing access to some of them or increase prices on the access of the "entire internet", then the customers would go to competitors who do not impose such restrictions.

What competitors? Many Americans have access to one ISP, and if they have access to more than one, it's often a false choice (DSL v Cable, e.g.) where the speeds are not comparable. I live in Chicago, the third most populous US city, and I have access to only AT&T and Comcast. I've searched for alternatives, but RCN isn't allowed to service my area for some reason, WOW! doesn't serve my area. So I'm stuck with Comcast. AT&T is completely insufficient for my needs, so if I don't like Comcast (which I do not, at all) what do I do?

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

#193

Post by travmatt »

return0 wrote: post #186
CydeWeys wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government governs by the consent of its citizens. It is never acceptable for the government to ignore the opinions of its citizens, and anyone in government claiming otherwise should be removed. I utterly reject your claim that we should just acquiesce in the face of such malignancy.

The consent was given in the ballot box, No?

Pretty much, elections have consequences and interpretations of federal regulations is the quintessential example of that. There are means by which the other branches could restrain or affect these interpretations, but I have a hard time believing most voters didn’t or couldn’t ascertain the intentions of most candidates regarding net neutrality this past election cycle.

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

#194

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #170
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if the customer's contract says that their packets need to all be treated with equal priority. But the whole point in repealing net-neutrality is to allow for contracts which don't need to treat all packets with equal priority. In that case the ISP isn't violating the contract and the customer wanting to spend %100 of their bandwidth talking to netflix for instance is the ISP's business too.

> In that case the ISP isn't violating the contract and the customer wanting to spend %100 of their bandwidth talking to netflix for instance is the ISP's business too That's garbage. I don't need my ISP shaking down the content business to be able to put their own content up front while requiring payment from others for equal level treatment. Taxpayers built this infrastructure and there are still regional broadband…

> "Taxpayers built this infrastructure"

ARPANET became obsolete and made redundant by private backbone providers, and so was decommissioned in 1990.

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

#196

Post by krapp »

TehCorwiz wrote: post #189
return0 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consent was given in the ballot box, No?

The FCC is appointed, not elected. And the current President, who appoints the FCC chairperson, lost the popular election by 3 million votes.

>And the current President, who appoints the FCC chairperson, lost the popular election by 3 million votes.

There is no "popular election" in the American system. Consent is, and has always been, given by proxy through the electoral college, as defined in the US Constitution. If you want to invalidate Trump's authority because of that, you have to invalidate every election prior as well, and claim that the US government has never governed with the consent of the people.

Mind you, I don't like Trump at all, but to imply that his authority is any less legitimate than prior Presidents would be specious, it's not his fault if the system that grants him power isn't designed to enforce popular will, it's the electorate's fault for not having changed it.

Or, to quote the legal scholar Ice-T, don't hate the player, hate the game.

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

#197

Post by acdha »

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.

Beyond the observation that ISP customers are paying lots of money so they can use things like Netflix, I wanted to expand on a key point made by DiThi and others:

Netflix gives away free servers to cache popular content near the users so the ISP doesn’t need to pay for the bandwidth to stream multiple copies of the same thing:

https://openconnect.netflix.com/

My ISP (RCN) uses this and we’ve never had a slowdown using Netflix, no matter what time it is. Using fast.com (which uses Netflix’s network to benchmark comnection speed) always shows that the limiting factor is that I use WiFi and don’t have a device which supports enough 802.12 channels to get more than 150Mbps.

When a large ISP complains about Netflix congestion it inevitably turns out that they have refused this help because they’re trying to use performance as an extortion point.

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

#198

Post by torpfactory »

arca_vorago wrote: post #58
torpfactory wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get money out of politics. No more superPACs. No more third party bullshit. My proposal: only contributions from individuals to official campaign organizations. Each person can donate a total of $100, split any way they want. I’m tired of so many decisions being made at the behest of some campaign funder whispering in a politician’s ear. Our democracy is being corroded by all this money.

I'm generally with you, but what do you mean by third part bullshit? I think the parties themselves are the problem, so independent s and third parties are what is needed. (Not looking to get into another argument about the mistakes in duvergers law, just curious for some clarification.)

By third parties I meant non-official campaign organizations, not political parties. It would difficult to the point of impossibility to regulate this (example: “issues” organizations that spew xenophobic adds to skew the debate on immigration policy).

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

#199

Post by bo1024 »

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.

Close: it's like you build an autobahn for everyone, and 37% of people choose to assign their space on it to one particular haulage company.

(And thanks to net neutrality, they can switch to another haulage company at any time.)

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

#200

Post by torpfactory »

strictnein wrote: post #53
torpfactory wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get money out of politics. No more superPACs. No more third party bullshit. My proposal: only contributions from individuals to official campaign organizations. Each person can donate a total of $100, split any way they want. I’m tired of so many decisions being made at the behest of some campaign funder whispering in a politician’s ear. Our democracy is being corroded by all this money.

Your solution has a clear result: only the wealthiest would be able to run for office.

I’d personally love to have publicly funded elections. And you’re right, my idea would work without also limiting the ability of wealthy individuals to spend their own money on campaigns. Maybe add the caveat that campaign organizations are the only ones who can spend money and that they are subject to the $100 per person limit as before.
Post reply on HN