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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

#201

Post by wfo »

travmatt wrote: post #193
return0 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When people vote for president, they vote for a bundle of positions on thousands of issues. Every person who has voted for a president has voted against their own policy positions, often hundreds or thousands of their own policy positions. Some issues are never discussed in any debate or media at all and presidents have as far as the public is concerned roughly zero position on them (for example, NN).

It is of course ridiculous to suggest that people voted for Trump hoping he would destroy a free and open Internet; we have clear and incontrovertible evidence that the vast, vast majority of citizens (90%? 80%? I think it depends on which poll you take) hates what he is doing. The president has a good-faith responsibility to represent the citizens and when they come down on an issue like this which was non existent or tangential to his campaign so fervently it's most certainly a betrayal of that consent.

When he tries to build a wall? Sure, he definitely has consent there. On NN? Not a chance. He does have power though.

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

#202

Post by ModernMech »

krapp wrote: post #196
TehCorwiz wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 governm…

It is true the EC elected Trump, but the popular vote is often used to demonstrate a mandate based on the will of the people i.e. "The people have spoken and this is their decision." Well in November the people spoke and the man in the White House was not their decision. It was the decision of the electoral college. A system, btw, which was designed to give majority slave owning states a greater say in Presidential elections.

We are not saying Donald Trump should not be President (for this reason), we are saying his agenda does not reflect the will of the people, and he certainly did not campaign on repealing net neutrality, so its hard to argue this issue was already decided by the voters. What he did campaign on was "drain the swamp". A Verizon crony working to dismantle consumer protections in favor of Verizon seems like exactly the opposite of that.

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

#203

Post by gbrown »

indubitable wrote: post #184
snuxoll wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would hopefully bite them in the ass if I had any faith in a Trump-appointed judicial branch. The FCC is required to take public comments into account when making regulations, this should be a fairly straightforward lawsuit.

Taking comments into account is different than simply having an opt-in vote which translates to who's e-petition can go the most viral (and let's not even get into fraud). And this is very much a good thing. In this case, even if I might agree with having some issue with net neutrality being repealed - I think most people have no clue at all what's going on and are voting based on fear mongering and sensationalism. F…

> what percent of people could explain why Pai thinks repealing net neutrality is a good idea?

Well, he says things like "increasing competition", and talks about "burdensome regulations", but I honestly don't believe he thinks repealing net neutrality will benefit consumers. I don't care who appointed him, to me he's an obvious, lying shill.

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

#204

Post by xr4ti »

collyw wrote: post #187
croon wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It actually seems like quite a refreshing mix of options to me. There is a right wing bias, but its far from the only viewpoint on there.

4chan -- pol in particular -- is an agitprop prototyping board, and about as unreliable a source of information as you can get.

Useful when you want to get a sneak peak at the propaganda campaigns, and internet brigade tactics and talking points that are about to be rolled out against the public (or A/B test some of your own), but not so much for serious debate.

Like 99% of the stuff you see on there is going to be deceptively worded or presented, or just factually incorrect. If you're letting 4chan influence your opinion, you're using it wrong.

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

#205

Post by ZenoArrow »

matt4077 wrote: post #106
ZenoArrow wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.…

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/08/lobbyists-euro...

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

#206

Post by guelo »

travmatt wrote: post #193
return0 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was plenty of propaganda targeted at pro-trump pro-neutrality types designed to make them confused about where Trump and Obama stood on the issue. A common talking point I saw was that Tom Wheeler had secretly been anti-neutrality.

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

#207

Post by travmatt »

wfo wrote: post #201
travmatt wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When people vote for president, they vote for a bundle of positions on thousands of issues. Every person who has voted for a president has voted against their own policy positions, often hundreds or thousands of their own policy positions. Some issues are never discussed in any debate or media at all and presidents have as far as the public is concerned roughly zero position on them (for example, NN). It is of course…

>When people vote for president, they vote for a bundle of positions on thousands of issues. Some issues are never discussed in any debate or media at all and presidents have as far as the public is concerned roughly zero position on them (for example, NN).

I don’t disagree with you on this at all, but again I think it boils down to ‘elections have consequences’. I don’t think that just because an issue was judged not as critical by voters (and therefore given relatively short shrift) means the interpretation is any less valid. That’s the function of the powerful executive branch made around the time of the new deal-ww2 era reforms, to manage complex federal issues. Just because I disagree with the decision and think most other Americans do as well doesn’t mean I think the president shouldn’t have the ability to make politically unpopular decisions.

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

#208

Post by Retric »

notyourday wrote: post #162
Retric wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pissing off customers has many failure points. Without video many people could just stick with their cellphone bandwidth and drop their cable plan entirely.

> Pissing off customers has many failure points. Without video many people could just stick with their cellphone bandwidth and drop their cable plan entirely. Congratulations, you have just made anti Net Neutrality argument.

No, I simply bounded what ISP's can do.

An ISP can leach off of internet traffic by shaping it so say Netflix is limited to low quality. But, that doesn't not mean they can simply block it without getting into issues. The problem is as demonstrated by China simply degrading websites bandwidth is is massive leverage.

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

#209

Post by dgzl »

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.

I really wish people would stop using the "he/she won/lost by 3 million popularity votes" line. Something I don't think people realize: 3 million people isn't that many.

Considering there are ~325M American citizens, ~231M are eligible to vote, with ~63M and ~66M actual votes going to the Donald and Hilldog respectfully, the margin between the two runners is pretty small. The Donald collected 27.2% of eligible votes, and Hilldog collected 28.5%. At best, Hillary won popular vote by less than two percent of the available votes, which even though it's a victory, it's still very very close.

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

#210

Post by leereeves »

ModernMech wrote: post #202
krapp wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 governm…

It is true the EC elected Trump, but the popular vote is often used to demonstrate a mandate based on the will of the people i.e. "The people have spoken and this is their decision." Well in November the people spoke and the man in the White House was not their decision. It was the decision of the electoral college. A system, btw, which was designed to give majority slave owning states a greater say in Presidential e…

Less than 50% voted for either candidate. Without ranked-choice voting we don't actually know whether Hillary or Trump was preferred by the majority of voters.

(It's also quite possible that if we had a ranked-choice system instead of the two party system, someone other than those two would have won.)

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