John Oliver pleads with viewers to revive net neutrality fight | Hacker News Reader

John Oliver pleads with viewers to revive net neutrality fight

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134 pointsTomte105 comments

This is definitely a cause worth fighting for, but something that I've noticed is that nobody cares about these internet issues unless a major corporation's profits are threatened. The media was largely silent about NSA spying and as a result there was no organized movement against it. People said this was due to privacy being too abstract of a concept for people to care, but I fail to see how the issue of ISP's charging internet companies not to throttle them is any less abstract for the average person. There's something else at play here.

More people cared about NSA spying than net neutrality. But mass media and major corporations have a strong vested interest in net neutrality. So they amplify the people by covering it with news stories, engaging in "blackouts," etc. For Google, facebook, netflix etc. this isn't a philosophical or moral issue. They don't want Verizon and comcast shaving their profit margin down.

It's a fight between two groups of companies, for the most part.

Practically, there is little chance ISPs actually turn the internet into a walled garden. But they could skim off netflix and google.

Also, you might be in a "tech bubble." Net neutrality is a huge issue for people involved in tech (by business or hobby). Most of my friends outside that bubble don't really understand the issue at all.

> But mass media and major corporations have a strong vested interest in net neutrality

The have a strong interest against net neutrality. Anything that makes competition harder is good for them.

> But mass media and major corporations have a strong vested interest in net neutrality.

Major corporations like Comcast, and mass media like the NBCUniversal division of Comcast certainly have a vested interest in the opposite direction.

Not that I disagree with him, but Oliver does work for HBO. Net neutrality is definitely in his and his employer's interests.

We grew up and are now tired, and the next generation was born into walled gardens. We're not in a great place now.

How is the tech community responding to this this time? Are there plans for an Internet blackout?

The search on the FCC website he asked everyone to go to is broken. I emailed them and they said they are working on it. We'll see if it gets fixed.

Leave the title ll I Internet neutrality intact .

Everyone who works in an industry that delivers content via the web should be very concerned. This gives the larger established players the ability to crush any upstarts simply by throwing money at the problem.

> Everyone who works in an industry that delivers content via the web should be very concerned.

That's basically every site and service?

Every site and service that doesn't have the financial resources to buy preferential treatment and resources. So yes most of them.

Of course, Comcast is spending money to spin this:

https://twitter.com/comcast/status/857357059196452865

(Saw this as an ad in the mobile app.)

Does that mean they're actually worried?

Well sure, they're protecting their interests. It could also mean customers have been calling them to complain and they want them to stop (calls cost money).

It means they know they started to lose the obscurity advantage, and since now they are exposed, they resort to misleading the public, to reduce the impact.

Second part of their tactic is to say that Net Neutrality should be protected by the Congress, where they hope to have enough leverage to pass fake NN laws that don't protect anything, while pretending they support NN.

So if that happens, public will have to put a lot of pressure on lawmakers to prevent that outcome.

Oh finally John Oliver has picked up a topic that is actually relevant to my interest. I watched every episode of his show under Obama. But since he turned his show into an endless Trump Hatefest it is just unbearable to stay through all his negativity. Really unfortunate that he turned that great format into one based on one-sided angry know-it-all rants.

Not sure why you're getting so many down votes, but I completely agree with you. Some of his shows were incredible a few years back, two that come to mind: Televangelists[1] and Debt Buyers[2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxUAntt1z2c

Likely because it's tangential to the primary focus of the submission without really providing relevance, is largely based on personal opinion, and touches on incendiary political topics in a way that doesn't really further the discussion.

It's also slightly ironic that the complaint was that John Oliver makes the issue about Trump too much, and then the commenter introduces trump into this discussion. "It's nice that he's not bashing Trump finally. Now let's take this reprieve and specifically call that out so we can talk more about Trump." While likely not the intention of the GP, that's what it ends up being in practice if it's not curbed.

Yes, that was a personal perception/comment. And I am not even arguing that he is this time moving away from blaming it all on Trump. Just that it is this one of the few occasions I agree with the problem premise and that this is a welcome change from the rest of his feeding-the-hate stories.

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