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72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

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Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#14
If you're here, you can likely set up a VPN on a VPS provider. Do yourself a favor and spend the $5 / month for an instance. Get your hands on your parent's, spouse's, friend's, sibling's phones and get it set up for them too. Nobody needs to put up with this bullshit from ISPs or the Government.

There is a great and easy to follow tutorial from DigitalOcean here: digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-an-openvpn-server-on-ubuntu-16-04.

Edit: It seems as though this post is rubbing people the wrong way. I'm sorry to anyone offended by this post, that was not my intent. In my mind, one can simultaneously watch out for their own safety online and advocate for sensible internet policy.

Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#15

Can someone point to the best ELI5 article, or tell me the best metaphor? I think I don't do a great job trying to explain net neutrality to family members.

Do you know how you have to pay extra to your ISP to watch Netflix or Youtube? You don't because of Net Neutrality.

If they are old enough you can use this metaphor:

Anti-Net Neutrality is for turning the Information Superhighway into toll roads.

If they need further explanation, go with the highway analogy. Imagine if all of the roads in the country were privately owned, but still free to use. You pay your tax and the money is distributed among the companies. Now the company that services your neighborhood decides that they want more money, so they erect tollbooths at the entrance to the neighborhood but tell companies that they'll wave the toll if you're going to a certain company. So Wal*Mart might pay the fee and get you free access, while Mom&Pop shops can't afford it so you have to pay a toll to visit them. They claim it is necessary because the Mom&Pop shop gets too much traffic and they aren't helping to pay for the roads in your neighborhood, even though the shop is in the next town over and the extra traffic doesn't really cost the road company anything.

Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#16

Survey methodology and all that, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if most of the affected population didn't know. Net Equality would have likely perked up more interest.

> Net Equality would have likely perked up more interest.

yeah, marketing is nuanced like that and i think this distinction would have made a good difference.

net-favorism, anti-throttling, anti-discrimination, equal-access would have also done better, i think.

Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#17

Survey methodology and all that, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if most of the affected population didn't know. Net Equality would have likely perked up more interest.

Net equality - Perfect name to ensure that it becomes a great hot button issue along ideological lines in America when it clearly isn't one right now.

In America, 'equality' is not considered as a universally positive word.

Re: 72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is

#20

If you're here, you can likely set up a VPN on a VPS provider. Do yourself a favor and spend the $5 / month for an instance. Get your hands on your parent's, spouse's, friend's, sibling's phones and get it set up for them too. Nobody needs to put up with this bullshit from ISPs or the Government. There is a great and easy to follow tutorial from DigitalOcean here: digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-an…

This won't help you if your ISP decides to penalize all VPN traffic or all traffic that doesn't pay protection money. Also, you're throwing normal people under the bus; the point of net neutrality is to fix the Internet for everyone, not just geeks.
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