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Comment by newsat13 | Hacker News Reader

It's obvious to the tech community that net neutrality is a good thing. Let me pose a counter view in any case: what if verizon/comcast said they will give consumers a 75% discount should they be implement the anti-net neutrality way? After all, this is what Google/Facebook does. Give things away for free and their version of net-neutrality is they get to decide who pops up in the first page results above all (ads).

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Your proposed situation is exactly why regulations are needed; there are very strong incentives to do things incredibly anti-consumer, and regulation is in many ways the only defense. It's generally not possible to find a new ISP, and even if I could find an ISP that didn't do this, they would be competing with the many that do.

Google and Facebook are not monopolies, as ISPs are in many cases. You have options.

Internet service is also far more vital than Facebook.

I would also agree that ISP are mostly monopolies. You can always decide to use FB or not. But you have to use Internet now, and it all goes through the same pipes.

Keep in mind those pipes were usually built with taxpayer dollars (sorry for poor source but I feel this is common knowledge)

https://www.quora.com/Who-funded-and-built-the-infrastructur...

> Internet service is also far more vital than Facebook.

Yes. So by lowering prices, more people will get access. I feel like you are adding a +1 here to the anti-net neutrality view (cue the internet.org initiative by facebook).

You're overlooking the fact that open access to the full internet would not be what a 75% price-reduced 'offering' would entail. We've already been over this argument in fact watching Facebook's 'free basics' attempt to lock India down. Paying less for something different is not really a reduction in price, either.

Pai, Republicans, and ISPs don't want or expect lower prices. They want higher profits. This isn't about wider access. The mission of public, for-profit companies is not to provide a public service -- it's to maximize profits. They're now doing it by engineering their own regulations.

When Google Fiber rolls into a town, prices from entrenched ISPs drop drastically. There's nothing stopping ISPs from providing cheaper and better service - except for the moral hazard of monopolistic control, free from the normal pressures of supply and demand.

When Google Fiber came into my area, the speed went up by 6 fold, I'm still switching the moment I'm physically able even if it were slower and more expensive.

That's extremely doubtful. There are already programs in place for low income households to get broadband for almost free.

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