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Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

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171–180 of 316 posts

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#171
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my dog bites somebody, I'm on the hook. It should be no different with companies--otherwise there's no incentive to avoid funding shady behavior. Stock ownership is rewarding because it's risky. Let it be risky.

I will not silently go to prison because my 401k worth under USD 20k owns 0.0015 shares as a part of some mutual fund. The CEO and the board do not do my bidding. Send them to prison.

That sounds like it would be a very strong incentive for investors to avoid potentially bad actors and instead favor non-criminal investments such as bonds. This is a feature.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#172
post #110

I remember debating with a guy I know about Net Neutrality leading up to this. He was a sales director at a company that ran network backbone and fiber lines. He was insistent that the Net Neutrality debate was dumb, because it was trying to negate the peering agreements that make the industry run. The way he told it, anyone with a big backbone chooses to invest in peering arrangements with other companies who also m…

Is Netflix 'pushing' the traffic onto the ISP or are the ISP's customers asking for and pulling in that traffic though?

Depends which side you're on ;-)

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#173
post #169
post #110

I remember debating with a guy I know about Net Neutrality leading up to this. He was a sales director at a company that ran network backbone and fiber lines. He was insistent that the Net Neutrality debate was dumb, because it was trying to negate the peering agreements that make the industry run. The way he told it, anyone with a big backbone chooses to invest in peering arrangements with other companies who also m…

If Netflix wasn't sharing costs in upgrading peering links I agree, but I never understood that to be the point of the debate. Instead it's that ISPs want to rate and charge differently for different providers / content types. This allows them to try and charge the customer more, but possibly more importantly to charge service providers for access to their customer base. The alternative is that you pay your ISP for X…

My friend's argument was that the "Meta" i.e. what the debate was really about was about Netflix and others trying to avoid paying their fair share for peering arrangements.

And that the stated reasoning behind the neutrality debate was null and void, because it wasn't what the debate was really about.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#174

My problem with Net Neutrality is what is its the "wrong way" to deal with a pesky problem: entrenched local monopolies. Net Neutrality is "oking" monopolistic behavior, under a narrow set of stipulations. I don't trust Comcast any farther than I could throw their CEO. I just don't see this ending well. I think the alternatives: expanding access, increasing competition, improving technology and promoting innovation,…

Without net neutrality you are oking monopolistic behavior on the internet service level.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#175
post #98

> LCX and Lead ID were responsible for many of these fake comments, letters, and petition signatures. Across four advocacy campaigns in 2017 and 2018, LCX fabricated consumer responses used in approximately 900,000 public comments submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Similarly, in advocacy campaigns between 2017…

I’m curious if prosecutors could try someone for 900k counts of a crime.

[deleted]

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#176
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will not silently go to prison because my 401k worth under USD 20k owns 0.0015 shares as a part of some mutual fund. The CEO and the board do not do my bidding. Send them to prison.

Technically you own shares of a mutual fund, and the mutual fund owns the stock. Unless the mutual fund only owns its shares via ownership share in a bank, which owns a derivative which owns the 0.0015 shares. Which is generally why responsibility stops with the board of directors, because there’s no way there was criminal intent through four layers of indirection. (Except shell companies, of course.)

Intent sure, but negligence?

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#177
What a disappointing penalty. People have been freaking out about foreign influence in politics and voter fraud, but when there is an actual, proven and admitted fraud that has significant impact on the legitimacy of governance, it’s a tiny flick to the wrist? SMH

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen amazing progress over my lifetime, and I see enormous potential in current social movements. It's not guaranteed, and I see incredibly destructive social movements picking up speed as well, but I do believe it's possible.

I see forward movements regarding social issues, but I don't think I can recall anything for my entire life, which has been a win against capital. That's not to say it isn't possible, but that it's unlikely should we continue the same way.

I think that there are many overlapping and mutually supporting systems that produce injustice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriarchy), so progress on for instance LGBT rights moves forward the broader cause of creating a more just society and makes progress along other axis more tractable. Eg, LGBT bigotry and the accompanying rigid gender roles provide a buttress for abusive elements in our society, for instance by telling men that an element of masculinity is to endure any hardship without complaint, thereby sabotaging their ability to recognize they are being taken advantage of and organizing to support each other in opposition to, say, an abusive employer.

I think people are starting to understand that our relationship to work and to resource extraction is untenable and that momentum is building. Of course this has been understood for a very long time, but anything remotely opposed to capitalism has been demonized and had almost no role in mainstream discourse (at least here in the US). I think that's changing pretty quickly.

On a long enough timescale, my confidence we can build a utopian society approaches 1. I think the trick is surviving long enough to get there. I suspect that a more just society is an attractor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor). It may not be the only attractor, there may well be a totalitarianism attractor, but if we can get sufficiently close to the just society attractor we can get caught up in it's influence & remain stable in that state for a long time. Not by magic, it would take lots of work to maintain that society at it does to maintain ours, I'm saying society would reliably produce the people and conditions that allow it to maintain and improve itself. My diagnosis would be that our current society can create people with the ability to improve it but can't reliably create the conditions for them to succeed - but just because it isn't reliable doesn't mean it doesn't happen every now and again, so the trick is being able to make the best of whatever cards you're dealt and to stay in the game until you get a good hand.

This is mostly speculation based on my experiences and observations, I can't prove to you this is true (I can't, beyond a shadow of a doubt, prove it to myself). But it gives me hope, and I believe it reflects a truth about human nature rather than being a vain hope. So I offer it to whomever it may be useful, and if that isn't you, that's okay, feel free to discard it.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the rhetoric for net neutrality was pretty extreme. According to the rhetoric of the time, we would be living in a world of internet "fast lanes" right now if net neutrality didn't pass. Only services affiliated with the big greedy telcos were going to be given a pass while all the other services on the web were going to require additional fees to get adequate bandwidth to/from. That was a major fear mongerin…

What did these companies get out of pushing to repeal it then? If the regulation was banning a business model that no one was going to use anyway, I don't see the impetus to commit mass fraud. Does net neutrality prevent anything beyond fast lanes and censorship?

They want to charge you for access, but they also want to charge who you are connecting to, even if through a middleman.

Just because Netflix paid their providers, your local isp wants their cut as well.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#180
post #138
post #110

I remember debating with a guy I know about Net Neutrality leading up to this. He was a sales director at a company that ran network backbone and fiber lines. He was insistent that the Net Neutrality debate was dumb, because it was trying to negate the peering agreements that make the industry run. The way he told it, anyone with a big backbone chooses to invest in peering arrangements with other companies who also m…

Doesn’t seem like a dumb argument to me, although I don’t think net neutrality would have actually interrupted or replaced most of those peering arrangements in practice. If you’re pushing 15% of all internet traffic you’re going to end up peering, the best I can see net neutrality doing for Netflix is it sets the default payment to $0, giving them a better bargaining position going into any negotiation about peering…

Internet traffic is not “pushed” onto ISPs. The paying customers of ISPs request data from providers, and they pay those ISPs to receive and deliver that traffic.
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