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

Ajit Pai says you’re going to love the death of net neutrality

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 77 posts

Re: Ajit Pai says you’re going to love the death of net neutrality

#51

Post by falcolas »

gfosco wrote: post #10

Anyone willing to consider that maybe he's right about this issue?

Given that the US ISP industry has shown that it is wholly on-board for zero-rating their own services, have been questioning "why should YouTube get free access to our pipes", and have displayed an active interest in tiering the internet by site and not bandwidth... No. Ajit Pai is not right.

The information to make an informed choice between service providers is meaningless when most of us in the US have no practical choice.

Re: Ajit Pai says you’re going to love the death of net neutrality

#52

Post by Someone1234 »

bthrm wrote: post #13
gfosco wrote: post #10

Anyone willing to consider that maybe he's right about this issue?

As a European: he’s right. You’ll love zero-rating. I do. :-)

You love this[0]? Ick.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating#/media/File:Screen...

Re: Ajit Pai says you’re going to love the death of net neutrality

#53

Post by bkor »

bthrm wrote: post #13
gfosco wrote: post #10

Anyone willing to consider that maybe he's right about this issue?

As a European: he’s right. You’ll love zero-rating. I do. :-)

As a European: T-Mobile is charging companies for their music zero rating. If you love paying twice for things it might be a good thing. Zero rating is crap.

Re: Ajit Pai says you’re going to love the death of net neutrality

#54

Post by bajsejohannes »

gfosco wrote: post #10

Anyone willing to consider that maybe he's right about this issue?

I did consider it, but at least for me, it's only a negative. The key quote:

> [The repeal] will protect consumers and promote better, faster Internet access and more competition

First of all: I think the "competition" in question is along an axis that I'm not interested in; e.g. does this plan give me faster Netflix or unlimited Facebook. So now I have one more thing to worry about when picking a plan, which is very likely going to make me less happy with my choice.

The better/faster internet he's talking about is probably along these lines too, e.g a deal being struck with Netflix to make just Netflix faster.

So, for me as a consumer, I think this is terrible. I'm going to be spend more time thinking about my plan and be less happy it. It will also be worse in the sense that ISPs are spending time and money on a feature that I didn't want in the first place.

I also think this is terrible for new companies, but that's for another post.

A great book on this is The Paradox of Choice

Re: Ajit Pai says you’re going to love the death of net neutrality

#55

Post by bajsejohannes »

bthrm wrote: post #13
gfosco wrote: post #10

Anyone willing to consider that maybe he's right about this issue?

As a European: he’s right. You’ll love zero-rating. I do. :-)

You're being deceived. The price you pay is either baked into your monthly bill or comes in the less tangible form of reduced competition for those zero-rated services (i.e. startups have a much harder time entering the stage).

Re: Ajit Pai says you’re going to love the death of net neutrality

#56

Post by sctb »

marvindanig wrote: post #7

Whatever is happening in America these days is tipped in balance towards whoever owns the gun. If the gun owners say "no net neutrality" what the other 99% say doesn't matter. A confidence by way of vote in the next election might reverse this but it is no mystery that the weight of a bullet is still much higher than that of a vote. Basically, choosing between death vs. a shepherd. I wouldn't be surprised if a flip o…

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ajit Pai says you’re going to love the death of net neutrality

#57

Post by zelon88 »

amelius wrote: post #12
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #2

Part of me really hopes the internet heads into the crapper within the next couple years. It's time for a reboot anyway, to clear the cruft.

Back in the old days, the internet was run by government agencies and universities. Universities invented the protocols. Companies provided only the hardware. Nowadays, companies run the internet and own our data. Let's go back to the old model. Let universities research federated protocols/algorithms and such. Let the government own the fiber. And let companies build the hardware.

"Let the government own the fiber..."

So instead of getting the backdoor they always wanted they literally have the entire house, foundation and all.

Re: Ajit Pai says you’re going to love the death of net neutrality

#58

Post by thomastjeffery »

gfosco wrote: post #10

Anyone willing to consider that maybe he's right about this issue?

His main point is that by allowing corporations to use abusive practices, there will be incentive for competition.

First of all, there is practically no competition to start with. Six ISPs control the majority of the market, and the majority of customers have only one ISP to choose from. Getting rid of net neutrality will not make other companies suddenly appear.

Secondly, one company doing worse does not make a competing company better. It makes it relatively better. That doesn't matter, especially if there isn't another company to begin with.

Put these together, and it's trivial to see that getting rid of net neutrality will not bolster competition. Pai's conclusion is nonsense. In our reality, we are only left with worse options.

Re: Ajit Pai says you’re going to love the death of net neutrality

#59

Post by thomastjeffery »

barneygumble742 wrote: post #22
gfosco wrote: post #10

Anyone willing to consider that maybe he's right about this issue?

Given his past actions, why give him the benefit of the doubt? He has proved to be a liar and a shill for the telcos. He lied about the FCC's fake DDoS attack and refuses to investigate all the bots on the FCC's comment site as the NN open commenting period was coming to a close. He's the Scott Pruitt of the FCC.

It's not even about whether we trust Pai. His conclusion is clearly nonsense. We can do just fine fighting his words without fighting his person.

Re: Ajit Pai says you’re going to love the death of net neutrality

#60

Post by pavel_lishin »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #16
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think anything better will emerge from the wreckage?

I don't know. However, I doubt anyone can come along at this point and beat FB, Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft, etc. without a major shakeup.

They are not synonymous with "the internet".
Post reply on HN