11–20 of 180 posts
I don't know why Mozilla thinks it's okay to politically align themselves. Shouldn't they stay neutral if they want to make a browser for everybody and all of that? Reminds me of the Tor project calling themselves a "human rights project"
It's amazing how "politicized" net neutrality has become in the last 6 months. A year ago I couldn't find anyone honestly arguing to repeal it. Reddit, HN, everywhere I looked people (and companies) besides ISPs said repealing net neutrality was bad. In comes Trump and Ajit Pia, and suddenly there is another side, the "against government regulation". It's a talking point anyone who watches Fox News or reads the Wall…
The worst thing that ever happened was liberals wrapping their arms around Net Neutrality and claiming it as “their” issue. This immediately caused a knee jerk reaction in conservatives who will oppose anything liberals will support and thus the coalition to repeal Net Neutrality was born and ultimately triumphed.
I don't know why Mozilla thinks it's okay to politically align themselves. Shouldn't they stay neutral if they want to make a browser for everybody and all of that? Reminds me of the Tor project calling themselves a "human rights project"
Every software project has values, even if they're only implicit in the idea that the function of the software will have value for people. So even if there were something wrong with a non-profit having a set of other values (and I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with Mozilla having such values any more than there's anything wrong with the EFF having such values), it'd be perfectly consistent for someone making software to facilitate a given activity to also have a position about what kinds of legal, social, and economic policies facilitate that activity.
Mozilla makes a web browser based on a vision of the web. Net neutrality is a policy that serves that vision of the web, and there's a boatload of well-considered argument that vision facilitates a lot of economic enterprise and personal freedom better than the alternatives.
I still find it amazing that everything has degraded from the independent hacker culture of the 90s to continually begging for the government to control and regulate the Internet. If you ever posted “what the Internet could really use is for the US Congress to control it!” to Usenet or 1999 Slashdot you would have gotten flamed to a crisp. I mean, God knows I’m not going to use a Google product, so I’m sticking with…
It's amazing how "politicized" net neutrality has become in the last 6 months. A year ago I couldn't find anyone honestly arguing to repeal it. Reddit, HN, everywhere I looked people (and companies) besides ISPs said repealing net neutrality was bad. In comes Trump and Ajit Pia, and suddenly there is another side, the "against government regulation". It's a talking point anyone who watches Fox News or reads the Wall…
The worst thing that ever happened was liberals wrapping their arms around Net Neutrality and claiming it as “their” issue. This immediately caused a knee jerk reaction in conservatives who will oppose anything liberals will support and thus the coalition to repeal Net Neutrality was born and ultimately triumphed.
I don't know why Mozilla thinks it's okay to politically align themselves. Shouldn't they stay neutral if they want to make a browser for everybody and all of that? Reminds me of the Tor project calling themselves a "human rights project"
While I agree with you on companies aligning themselves, net neutrality isn’t a partisan issue. The only people who make it partisan are Congress
Has Mozilla said anything about FOSTA or fought against it in any way? I feel like NN is basically just a diversion to deflect attention and energy from things that are actually restricting freedom on the internet.
https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2017/08/02/fighting-crime...
I still find it amazing that everything has degraded from the independent hacker culture of the 90s to continually begging for the government to control and regulate the Internet. If you ever posted “what the Internet could really use is for the US Congress to control it!” to Usenet or 1999 Slashdot you would have gotten flamed to a crisp. I mean, God knows I’m not going to use a Google product, so I’m sticking with…
Some of what government does is formalize things people come up with on their own and provide various institutions for reinforcing and administering those things. Property itself, for example.
The relevant policy proposals where net neutrality is concerned mostly formalize the operating considerations that the "independent hacker culture of the 90s" came up with. When some private stewards of net infrastructure defect from those considerations to plans that have significant drawbacks and no plausible benefits beyond profit margins, it seems reasonable to trust institutions that are accountable to the public in a different way.
"Government control" also doesn't seem like a particularly apt characterization of net neutrality policy, but who knows, maybe you also characterize the FDA as government control of what you eat and assault laws as government control of your actions.
I still find it amazing that everything has degraded from the independent hacker culture of the 90s to continually begging for the government to control and regulate the Internet. If you ever posted “what the Internet could really use is for the US Congress to control it!” to Usenet or 1999 Slashdot you would have gotten flamed to a crisp. I mean, God knows I’m not going to use a Google product, so I’m sticking with…
I still find it amazing that everything has degraded from the independent hacker culture of the 90s to continually begging for the government to control and regulate the Internet. If you ever posted “what the Internet could really use is for the US Congress to control it!” to Usenet or 1999 Slashdot you would have gotten flamed to a crisp. I mean, God knows I’m not going to use a Google product, so I’m sticking with…
There's not enough independent hacker spirit to cover the whole country in decent internet. The big ISPs depend on government-enforced franchise agreements and all the public money they can get to eliminate competition. That said, hackers are citizens too, and we can at least fight for protections from the ISPs that exist.
And the same thinking has led to GDPR and FOSTA, and to ignore that is to ignore a pretty sad change in people's opinion: the government is now more trustworthy than tech companies in protecting people's use of the internet.
And maybe sadder is that this new thinking is probably warranted, but let's not make excuses. Warranted or not, NN needs to be called out for what it is.