Live data from Hacker News

Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules

arstechnica.com

41–50 of 70 posts

Re: Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules

#41
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biden for one: > An unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop. Folks like me who were Caucasian, of European descent for the first time in 2017 will be in an absolute minority in the United States of America, absolute minority. Fewer than 50 percent of the people in America from then and on will be White European stock. That's not a bad thing. That's a source of our strength. And that's a very innocent one,…

I missed the part in the constitution where it said America should be made up of mostly whites. If you want more whites in america, i guess you should have more children.

[dead]

Re: Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which should we do? Disallow discrimination against white people on the basis of race? Or dismiss discussion of such discrimination as "specious bullshit flogging the reverse racism trope"? I ask because those are diametrically opposed positions, and your second sentence illustrates why the first sometimes doesn't happen.

what are you talking about? this is about discriminating based on race, which includes the white race. your implicit assumption here is that anti-discrimination measures for minorities is discriminatory against white people. which is, uh, not a great take.

[deleted]

Re: Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which should we do? Disallow discrimination against white people on the basis of race? Or dismiss discussion of such discrimination as "specious bullshit flogging the reverse racism trope"? I ask because those are diametrically opposed positions, and your second sentence illustrates why the first sometimes doesn't happen.

what are you talking about? this is about discriminating based on race, which includes the white race. your implicit assumption here is that anti-discrimination measures for minorities is discriminatory against white people. which is, uh, not a great take.

> anti-discrimination measures for minorities is discriminatory against white people

That is often the case because that's what "antiracists" admit and encourage:

"The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

To that, I say, no, adding more discrimination to the world does not remedy discrimination.

Re: Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules

#44
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racism against white people exists, there’s nothing “reverse” about it. You can discriminate and exclude based on any skin color. Competition is what we need, look at cities where Google fiber is available, internet for everyone is faster and cheaper than anywhere in the country and there are of course no data caps in those cities. It’s why internet is way better in Kansas City than Silicon Valley. Kansas City has ac…

Systemic racism does not exist against whites in the US.

Labeling problems "systemic" or not is kind of meaningless. You seem to implicitly agree the problem exists. Should we not address non-systemic problems?

Re: Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules

#45
post #2

As they should - the rules are nonsense. From the article: A US law required the FCC to issue rules "preventing digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin," and gave the FCC some leeway in how to implement them. The resulting FCC rules let consumers file complaints about alleged discrimination and define the elements the FCC would examine when investig…

> I very much doubt ISPs are in the habit to turn down expansion in any area (and therefore more money/maintain their regional monopoly) because of the race of people living there.

Then presumably the law will have no effect.

Your conclusion is assuming bad intentions, but frankly the effect of most anti-discrimination provisions tends to be rather minor. It's extremely difficult to prove, unless people are blatant about it.

Re: Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules

#46
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much doubt ISPs are in the habit to turn down expansion in any area... That's like climate denialism. There is a documented 30-year history of ISPs not expanding their network while claiming subsidies for exactly that: https://newnetworks.com/bookofbrokenpromises.htm . ...even if it doesn’t make economic sense You're conveniently ignoring the "not justified by genuine issues of technical or economic feasibilit…

> There is a documented 30-year history of ISPs not expanding their network while claiming subsidies for exactly You are conflating two things. I haven't read the book but does the data show they did it in a discriminatory manner, that is they didn't expand to minority areas even when it made business sense?

Companies granted monopoly rights in areas don't get to do only the things they claim make "business sense".

Re: Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules

#47
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are politicians agitating against white people in the US. Doesn't get more systemic than that. Let's not even get into the think tanks, or the media explaining how whites becoming a minority is a good thing. And all this is okay, in the name of diversity. It's crazy, racism is racism and this rhetoric is only antagonizing. Nothing good will come of it. We have similar issues in my country but not to the extent…

Could you please give an example of a major politician agitating against white people? To be specific, I do not mean someone pointing out that our system has been built to privlidge white people at the behest of white people, but a politician specifically agitating against white people. Because I can find endless pages of the head of the Republican party agitating against Mexicans (they're sending rapists), Latinos,…

> but a politician specifically agitating against White people

The Senate majority leader refusing to confirm a judge because he is white: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/schumer-slammed-for-citing-...

Re: Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a documented 30-year history of ISPs not expanding their network while claiming subsidies for exactly You are conflating two things. I haven't read the book but does the data show they did it in a discriminatory manner, that is they didn't expand to minority areas even when it made business sense?

Companies granted monopoly rights in areas don't get to do only the things they claim make "business sense".

Hilarious.

Then why grant them monopoly rights in the first place? Why not remove monopoly rights instead of adding more regulations/bandaids?

Does a free market have monopoly rights?

Re: Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies granted monopoly rights in areas don't get to do only the things they claim make "business sense".

Hilarious. Then why grant them monopoly rights in the first place? Why not remove monopoly rights instead of adding more regulations/bandaids? Does a free market have monopoly rights?

>Why not remove monopoly rights instead of adding more regulations/bandaids?

Because it is in society's interest that utilities be available to all. We don't have a post office for only the areas profitable to deliver to.

Re: Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules

#50
post #5

ISPs: "You can't tell us how to spend money ensuring equitable deployment of critical infrastructure!" Also ISPs: "Ooh! Hey! Can we have some of that money in the jar labeled 'federal money for ensuring equitable deployment of critical infrastructure' ?" How about this. Take it all back. Public utilities with equal access and reliability for all. I’m not even going to try and address the other top level comment cryin…

Or just remove subsidies and enforce anti-trust laws to make sure there is real competition.

Can't. Physical infrastructure should be built once, and owned by the government, who rents out bandwidth capacity to retail ISP providers. Then you get competition in that much more ideal market.
Post reply on HN