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ISPs Aim to Use Facebook Fracas to Saddle Silicon Valley with Crappy New Laws

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31–40 of 116 posts

Re: ISPs Aim to Use Facebook Fracas to Saddle Silicon Valley with Crappy New Laws

#31
post #13

Can we please lump the data leaks of Equifax and the like in with the need for these new laws that shift user data from something companies are mining to something they are protecting and disclosing?

ISPs are planning to get into the data game. They aim to have laws that limit SV type startups, rather than increase their future liability.

ISPs are going to have a hard time competing with the data gathered by Google Analytics and similar services given the accelerating push towards most sites being encrypted. If DNS encryption becomes more prevalent (edit: and users start taking advantage of privacy-conscious DNS providers outside of the control of their ISPs), they'll have an even harder time still.

connected to and transferred at just isn't that valuable compared to the highly detailed usage and interaction data gathered by GA and similar services. Even if you ignore the DNS point and add " looked up " to the above, it still doesn't come close to what GA/etc are able to collect.

Edit: Why the downvotes? Isn't this supposed to be a site full of technically skilled people (many of whom work in "ad tech") who should know that what I said is accurate? Would any of the downvoters care to explain themselves instead of using downvotes as an "I don't like this post" button? This site is starting to feel more and more like Reddit.

Re: ISPs Aim to Use Facebook Fracas to Saddle Silicon Valley with Crappy New Laws

#32

The ISPs are in an all out attack on competitors like Facebook/Google/Netflix/others. ISPs bought their way into the market with the ISP privacy protections being removed [1][2] and net neutrality being killed rather than innovating. The privacy protections being removed helped lessen the FCC grip on privacy and helped their case, with legislators not the people, to remove FCC net neutrality protections. It is obviou…

I’d rather have 10 ISPs competing but NOT innovating than one ISP bent on innovating. Innovation, to an ISP, means: ads, data collection, pushing their own content; basically everything except being a dumb pipe that gets bits from elsewhere into my home.

Re: ISPs Aim to Use Facebook Fracas to Saddle Silicon Valley with Crappy New Laws

#33
post #18

Silicon Valley needs new laws, accept that, and make the fight about ensuring those laws aren’t burdensome, anticompetitive, and downright stupid. If you spend your energy trying to make those laws not happen at all, they’ll be done to us and not with us. It’s time to accept that a significant (more than 65%) of people want regulations in the tech space, and calmly, patiently explain what kinds of regulations can be…

I think people are understandably wary of new regulations, namely because: * The US isn't immune at all to regulatory capture [0] * It's highly likely there are already existing regulations and laws that cover this but merely aren't being enforced (in which case, why would these new regulations be enforced either?) * ISPs undoubtedly have a huge conflict of interest here Which isn't to say that new laws are always a…

Every single regulation starts from an "untenable place", almost by definition. What happens in every industry is "abuse" -> "collective realization that there's a problem" -> "close the hole that allowed the abuse to happen". Self-regulation is only a solution if the industry at large addresses the concerns early and acts in good faith. That did not and is currently not happening with SV and data privacy.

The fact that FB can't give a straight answer, and it has to be dragged out with revelations of increasing scale, is a big part of why public sentiment favors more external regulation.

Re: ISPs Aim to Use Facebook Fracas to Saddle Silicon Valley with Crappy New Laws

#35

The ISPs are in an all out attack on competitors like Facebook/Google/Netflix/others. ISPs bought their way into the market with the ISP privacy protections being removed [1][2] and net neutrality being killed rather than innovating. The privacy protections being removed helped lessen the FCC grip on privacy and helped their case, with legislators not the people, to remove FCC net neutrality protections. It is obviou…

>The ISPs are in an all out attack on competitors like Facebook/Google. And TV, and Print. Facebook/Google could have had their cake and eat it too. It all can be tied back to when they decided to go all-in with Hillary and got the lefty content auditors.

[deleted]

Re: ISPs Aim to Use Facebook Fracas to Saddle Silicon Valley with Crappy New Laws

#36
post #13

Can we please lump the data leaks of Equifax and the like in with the need for these new laws that shift user data from something companies are mining to something they are protecting and disclosing?

ISPs are planning to get into the data game. They aim to have laws that limit SV type startups, rather than increase their future liability.

The only good outcome will be for this to backfire spectacularly with privacy protections that limit ISPs just as much as the tech companies.

The ISPs are already playing a dangerous game. Unlike their buddies at the FCC, congress is elected, and with enough popular pressure (and midterms coming up), they can be persuaded to do the right thing.

Re: ISPs Aim to Use Facebook Fracas to Saddle Silicon Valley with Crappy New Laws

#37

The people who make up the tech industry been a huge proponent of regulating all sorts of things at all scales, from individual actions to small businesses to large corporations. The use of the FB/CA "scandal" to promote knee jerk legislation that burdens the tech industry is just tech being on the receiving end of something they have no qualms about advocating for when it happens to a different industry.

This is a bit like the old adage about noticing how bad news reporting is in areas you're an expert, but then just blindly swallowing all other news. In this case it's regulation rather than news coverage.

Re: ISPs Aim to Use Facebook Fracas to Saddle Silicon Valley with Crappy New Laws

#38
post #26
post #16

Silicon Valley brought this to itself. I used to warn of this before, too, that they can't continue to do "evil stuff" and expect to have people's backing when the governments will come after them to regulate them for whatever reason. But they continued because they saw that nobody leaves them over the crap they pull so they thought there must be no consequences to their anti-consumer moves. The only downside I see i…

That's like what the game industry went through in the early 90s. When Mortal Kombat and the like were generating controversy and getting the attention of regulators, the industry proactively created the ESRB.

In that particular instance they had a clear playbook to follow, which was the film industry. I don't know there's quite as direct a parallel between game content and user data sharing / selling as there was between game content and film content.

Re: ISPs Aim to Use Facebook Fracas to Saddle Silicon Valley with Crappy New Laws

#39
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people are understandably wary of new regulations, namely because: * The US isn't immune at all to regulatory capture [0] * It's highly likely there are already existing regulations and laws that cover this but merely aren't being enforced (in which case, why would these new regulations be enforced either?) * ISPs undoubtedly have a huge conflict of interest here Which isn't to say that new laws are always a…

Every single regulation starts from an "untenable place", almost by definition. What happens in every industry is "abuse" -> "collective realization that there's a problem" -> "close the hole that allowed the abuse to happen". Self-regulation is only a solution if the industry at large addresses the concerns early and acts in good faith. That did not and is currently not happening with SV and data privacy. The fact t…

> Every single regulation starts from an "untenable place", almost by definition.

I guess I'd disagree with that. Many environmental regulations are highly defensible, for example, especially when they arise in light of new evidence.

I could also be wrong, but I don't believe most environmental regulations are proposed by powerful, monopolistic competitors of oil companies (which is a big part of what makes this proposed regulation untenable).

> Self-regulation is only a solution if the industry at large addresses the concerns early and acts in good faith

I don't think anyone's really proposing this as an alternative. The point's more that repealing a bad law is significantly harder than creating it in the first place, so it makes sense to be diligent.

Re: ISPs Aim to Use Facebook Fracas to Saddle Silicon Valley with Crappy New Laws

#40
post #31
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs are planning to get into the data game. They aim to have laws that limit SV type startups, rather than increase their future liability.

ISPs are going to have a hard time competing with the data gathered by Google Analytics and similar services given the accelerating push towards most sites being encrypted. If DNS encryption becomes more prevalent (edit: and users start taking advantage of privacy-conscious DNS providers outside of the control of their ISPs), they'll have an even harder time still. connected to and transferred at just isn't that valu…

Because it doesn't make sense. Why would they ISPs care that you are encrypting your dns requests in transit? The vast majority of people still use whatever DNS servers their ISPs tell them to use. So the ISP controls the other side of the encrypted communication, making the encryption useless for preventing them from reading it.
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