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Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it. So is FCC just silently sneaking in anti net neutrality again? I thought they pulled that out after huge outcry. Were they just waiting for public to forget and move on?

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It's not "sneaking in," Pai has been explicitly against net neutrality and consumer protections for his entire tenure. This was one of the things Americans decided last November: a free and open Internet is bad thing, and access to it should be controlled by the big multimedia companies.

Turns out, you get what you vote for.

I don't remember this issue coming up at all during the presidential election. Although, I'd wager even if it had, the outcome of the election would not have been altered in any significant way.

Doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to realize Republicans are against regulations and favor big businesses over consumers. It was absolutely on my radar during the election, the Republican members of the commission have been exceedingly clear about their opposition to small businesses and consumer rights.

Sure, I just don't think we should make broad claims about the will of the people vs. consent to govern in broad way. To put another way, Americans may be happy to say they are against regulations, but yet still may favor a particular regulation if it was brought up in a poll.

It got some coverage[1] but I'm sure your second point is right: not a top issue for many voters and I'd bet that almost none of the few who do care strongly about it either way would have been pulled towards a candidate they otherwise wouldn't have supported.

1. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/10/hillary-clinton-...

You don't think they give up after one try, do you? Look as us Brits with the IP Bill (Snooper's Charter). May tried to push it through a couple of years ago as Home Secretary and the public backlash stopped her. Four months after she becomes Prime Minister she sneaks it in with barely a whisper.

You want a US version of events? Slipping CISA in its entirety into an Omnibus Bill in late 2015 after it was initially rejected as part of the National Defense Authorisation Act.

It's endemic.

It seems that these are symptoms of representation democracy. People elect someone to make decisions in their best interest and then they make decisions for their own interest because its so easy to hide them. There is really no solution to this except people being directly in charge and be able to block any bill they collectively wish. Representational democracy was the only economically viable option when voting was expensive but its no longer the case, at least technically. A simple direct democracy would be simply to have monthly electronic voting directly by people on whatever congress passed to either let it go through or block.

No, since the inauguration in January the FCC has been essentially sold (perhaps given) to Verizon and is now doing exactly as Verizon wants. Similar things are happening to every regulatory body in the federal government; we are entering a dark era of zero consumer protection, zero labor rights, zero work done by the federal government to help the country/citizens in all spheres of industry. It's a great time to be a CEO of a large company, a bad time to be just about anyone else.

The outcry worked when Wheeler was chairman of the FCC -- he cared/listened. The current chair takes calls from big telecoms, not from you.

Certainly what it seems like. Internet regulations are like Climate change-- not really tangible in a traditional sense and sometimes difficult to grasp. People are very focused on this immigration/Travel Ban thing right now, because it's real and easy to understand, comparatively. I don't expect there to be a lot of popular pushback on this issue right now there was earlier, mostly because public attention is largely elsewhere

There's a new chairman.

Watch some of the older videos with the last chairman, the new guy was always the one arguing on the side of short sighted business interests. The guy disgusted me when he was just a board member, now he's running the shop.

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