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Disapproval of FCC regulations a significant blow against privacy protection

nytimes.com

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Re: Disapproval of FCC regulations a significant blow against privacy protection

#231
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? 5 Ghz connections are capable of delivering > 1 Gbit over the... air.

:eyeroll: Sure, and MIT managed to transmit data wirelessly at 1 Tb/s one time. But we're talking about the real world and regular consumer hardware here.

TP-Link Archer C7 can do up to 1300 Mbps over 802.11ac, and costs about $85.

No university research equipment required.

Re: Disapproval of FCC regulations a significant blow against privacy protection

#232
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get you'd like to avoid spammers, bots and etc, but its not at all fair to claim you're not playing politics. > but that story wasn't touched by moderators. Is uncharitable as it gets. I cannot verify it. Based on 3163 days of intuition I can see "ahh yes sometimes stories get unfairly flagged automatically" but I can I also see that 1) Its political 2) It discusses a YC company in a not so appealing light. I'll ta…

Let me try to allay your concerns. The story you linked to was penalized automatically. There's no moderator penalty on it. No moderator may even have seen it. We don't moderate HN to protect YC startups—just the opposite. This comment summarizes the situation and has links to plenty more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13861389 . It's common—standard, in fact—for politically committed HN users to believe that…

Thanks for the detailed followup. I will admit that I have been less than charitable.

If this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404 had never happened I would have far fewer concerns. Since that week I've been keeping an eye on all posts that vanish from the front page or get severely punished and politics seems to get the axe more than not. Again this is N=1 and not a "study" and contains all of my biases.

Sorry for being disgruntled. I overreacted to what I perceived to be a policy that has continued for over a week.

Re: Disapproval of FCC regulations a significant blow against privacy protection

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people didn't care about privacy, companies wouldn't be so opposed to regulations requiring them to get consent before selling personal information. Advertisers wouldn't disguise targeting to avoid creeping people out. Uber wouldn't have deleted a blog post mapping one-night stands. Republicans wouldn't have had any reason to spin this bill as being about which agency should have authority. People do more to prote…

Some people care about privacy. Most probably may even care about it to some degree, but not to the degree where they sacrifice their convenience for it. Again, the media has done its best to scandalize the very real privacy concerns with companies like Google and Facebook. Did it hurt their success with the unwashed masses? If privacy was really such a big deal, why would Uber write that blog post in the first place…

I disagree that the media has done anywhere near its best to bring privacy issues to people's attention. At the same time, many stories that do get published offer lots of vague scares and no practical suggestions, which fuels people's sense that there's nothing they can do.

I don't know many people who have stopped using Facebook. I do know a lot of people who don't post things they would've 5 years ago.

Uber miscalculated, simple as that.

For targeting, I'm talking more about direct advertising. I think most people know by now that the sites they visit don't directly control the ads they see. Seeing the same ads everywhere is annoying but doesn't prove anything. A company you've never given your email address sending you offers for only items you looked at is creepy.

Re: Disapproval of FCC regulations a significant blow against privacy protection

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it dishonest for an article to say that corporations donated to a candidate, when they actually mean that a corporation donated to a PAC or that employees donated to a candidate. It creates an extremely misleading picture. Telecoms are major employers in places like Tennessee (which Blackburn represents). AT&T alone has 5,600 employees in Tennessee (more than Twitter has employees total). It's no surprise tele…

>Are all those votes suspect? No because those representatives didn't vote in a way that favors the companies that donated. If I bribe 10 politicians and 4 of them don't do what I want, does that that mean the other 6 who did are now above suspicion as well? Voting in a way that favors a company that donates money to your political campaign creates at the very least an appearance of a conflict of interest. In those c…

> No because those representatives didn't vote in a way that favors the companies that donated.

They certainly did. The Internet consists of server owners, content owners, and pipe owners. You can understand pretty much every political issue involving the Internet as a proxy war between these groups for advertising and media viewing dollars. Here, keeping pipe owners out of the advertising business directly benefits server owners.

Re: Disapproval of FCC regulations a significant blow against privacy protection

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell people to use the Opera browser. It has VPN built-in.

So you trust the company involved in the WoSign debacle with your data?

The question isn't about absolute trust.

It's about who you trust more with your privacy.

So yeah, I think I'd trust almost anyone more than my ISP now because they have an incentive to profit off my lack of privacy.

Re: Disapproval of FCC regulations a significant blow against privacy protection

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but there's a cost to exercise that right. Right now, the cost of protecting myself from my ISP is quite high. I need to maintain DNS and VPN settings for every device in my home... many of which are personal devices of other family members with little patience for such techno-babble. I want a product that reduces the cost of exercising my right to privacy, and allows me to pay that cost with money instead of t…

There are commercially-available routers which support running all traffic through a VPN. That should handle all the devices in your house.

Netflix for example does not work over vpn so the router would have to have a way to manage exceptions.

Re: Disapproval of FCC regulations a significant blow against privacy protection

#237
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me try to allay your concerns. The story you linked to was penalized automatically. There's no moderator penalty on it. No moderator may even have seen it. We don't moderate HN to protect YC startups—just the opposite. This comment summarizes the situation and has links to plenty more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13861389 . It's common—standard, in fact—for politically committed HN users to believe that…

Thanks for the detailed followup. I will admit that I have been less than charitable. If this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404 had never happened I would have far fewer concerns. Since that week I've been keeping an eye on all posts that vanish from the front page or get severely punished and politics seems to get the axe more than not. Again this is N=1 and not a "study" and contains all of my biases. S…

[deleted]

Re: Disapproval of FCC regulations a significant blow against privacy protection

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had an ISP willing to put 2km of copper wire to get my 15$ / month fee. (Not in the US.) I don't think the cost of wires is significant anywhere in the US either.

You may live in a country where the government subsidizes the laying of communications infrastructure. Laying fiber or even just coaxial cable is extremely expensive.

No, the whole reason we have great internet is that it took the government a long time to find out about it. The company had two 20-somethings spread the wire on existing poles :)

Re: Disapproval of FCC regulations a significant blow against privacy protection

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are all those votes suspect? No because those representatives didn't vote in a way that favors the companies that donated. If I bribe 10 politicians and 4 of them don't do what I want, does that that mean the other 6 who did are now above suspicion as well? Voting in a way that favors a company that donates money to your political campaign creates at the very least an appearance of a conflict of interest. In those c…

> No because those representatives didn't vote in a way that favors the companies that donated. They certainly did. The Internet consists of server owners, content owners, and pipe owners. You can understand pretty much every political issue involving the Internet as a proxy war between these groups for advertising and media viewing dollars. Here, keeping pipe owners out of the advertising business directly benefits…

If they take money from a company like Google that stands to benefit from more FCC regulation, I have a problem with that as well. I can dislike two things at the same time.

Allowing unlimited spending in the form of Super PACs just exacerbates your proxy war problem. In this case we have several companies with deep pockets that happen to be on the side of net neutrality, but their interests won't always align with the public's.

Re: Disapproval of FCC regulations a significant blow against privacy protection

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, competition will protect the consumer best. But we need that competition first :) In the meantime, it seems logical to take some steps to limit the damage that our currently monopolistic telcos can do and give someone power to enforce a rule that: "(1) applies the customer privacy requirements of the Communications Act of 1934 to broadband Internet access service and other telecommunications services, (2)…

The summary does sound reasonable on the surface. But read the whole whopping 73 pages. The regulations hurt small ISPs much more than national carriers. For example, there's a Mom & Pop cellular-based ISP that serves my small mountain community. They could certainly be put out of business by this type of regulation after they pay for lawyers, IT services, training staff on new operations, etc. -- and heaven forbid t…

The actual regulations are about 3 pages, 2 if you respect your customers' privacy. The previous 70 pages include historical context, rationale, explanation of related regulations, even an overview of the OSI model.

The FCC gave small providers a one-year extension and other concessions. And, as they pointed out, small providers generally collect less customer information and use it more narrowly.

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