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Something that is not mentioned often is the combined effect of losing net neutrality and the recent decision to let the ISPs sell your advertising data.

It's a two pronged attack on the internet. The ISPs data collection is going to be more valuable than Facebook or Google simply because they have everything and most importantly the ISPs can verify physical identities.

So internet ad revenue is being attacked from one angle and then they are extorting money for packet delivery on the other.

Another reason for all web developers to encrypt their websites.

That helps, but not entirely. The metadata of which sites you're visiting is still valuable advertising information - especially when browsing through a phone (geolocation).

This doesn't help - just a set of domains (and page count + times of connection) you connected to last month is a very precise and valuable identifier of who you are and what your interests are.

"It's a two pronged attack on the internet. The ISPs data collection is going to be more valuable than Facebook or Google simply because they have everything and most importantly the ISPs can verify physical identities."

Third prong: lawmakers advocating "closing the VPN loophole".

Because terrorism.

Would it be possible to connect to Internet w/o ISPs?

Also, ISPs could make pay both the companies providing a service and the customers of those companies. Just so that they can get in contact in the first place.

To companies: "You want your customers to have faster access to your services right ? Or we could cut you off."

To customers: "You want to access those services faster don't you ?"

Seems like a classic mafia move.

How's this different from priority shipping for example?

How do you debug your slow internet connection? What tools let you know you're getting what you're paying for?

In priority shipping, only one side pays the fee. If the post office or UPS said "oh you want it there faster, pay X" to both sender and receiver, and both were required to pay for it to be faster, then it would be the same.

So the burden of the cost is on the sending party?

In reality the cost is really distributed. The sender hands over the money to the shipping company, but that money comes from the receiver.

And the infrastructure is supported by the community at large.

So when I pay for gigabit internet, and netflix pays their "streaming priority" charge, I get netflix content at gigabit speed.

But when I pay for gigabit internet, and some random startup doesn't pay the ISPs "streaming priority" charge, I get them at some rate limited amount less than what I pay for (gigabit).

That is the problem. The consumer gets screwed, startups get screwed, and the ISPs profit from both consumer and businesses.

My guess is monopoly (approximately). ISP choice for the vast majority of US people is practically nil - you either have a cable provider (Comcast, Cox, Spectrum, etc.) or a phone provider (Verizon, AT&T). With priority shipping, if you don't like Amazon's non-subtle nudges to you to pay for Prime, you just move on to Walmart.com, Rakuten, or an eBay vendor. Treating ISP as a utility company was the right model and the current FCC is not doing consumers a service by killing this model.

The USPS doesn't also own the roads, rivers and skies they transport your package through, and can't blockade people from moving the package themselves, or with another service.

It'd be like if Amazon owned the only road to your house and said Amazon couriers get to use the left lane at 65mph and everyone else delivering packages from Walmart or Target use the right lane at 30mph, unless both you and Walmart pay extra to use the fast lane.

If Amazon owned the road, I would be fine with that. If a company owns a mall, I'm fine with them letting companies that pay them more have a bigger shop, and those paying them less have a smaller shop.

I'm also fine with them giving their own products preferential treatment. (This actually happens here - all mall companies have their own products, very visibly exposed.)

One way to explain it is to ask if your phone company (which is your ISP) should be allowed to block Skype/Facetime. After all, if you're skyping (or facetiming), then you're not paying them for a phone call! (Or should Skype be allowed pay your phone company to block Facetime (or vice versa)). Surely it's in the phone company's interest to not help their compeditor. (If your internet is from your cable TV provider, ask if they should be allowed block Netflix).

Examples like that are easy to show the downsides of net neutrality.

I like thinking of it like other utilities, such as water and electricity. Imagine if your electric company could block power to one of your devices because it's a competing device. Or if it could stop you from using water for drinking to promote some drink they have.

The data going through should be just as blind as water through pipes or electricity through cables.

Probably worth pointing out that this already occurs now for very large companies who have to pay for upgraded uplink connections or data centers inside the networks (Netflix et al). Also part of why the bigger companies aren't pushing too hard, they have to pay this stuff under the current rules so new rules won't help them much.

Some of the issue was that ISPs refused to upgrade their peering connections even when the other party offered to pay for both ends of the upgrade. They wanted to double dip, and anything short of that they refused.

Yes, and this is extremely corrosive to free market operation of the internet. Customers lose visibility into what sites cost (in time and money) because the cost of the deals that the ISP force onto companies are hidden on both sides of the transaction. Customers can't really make good market choices among sites or ISPs cleanly with these kinds of deals going on, so the market becomes much less efficient at delivering value to the economy.

Consumer choice between ISPs solves most of these problems.

How do you propose to enable that?

It's a hard problem that states and localities should sort out. High fixed costs, regional monopolies, etc. I get it.

I'm just saying that almost this entire, complex discussion can be reduced to that crucial point.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I suspect that the breakup of Ma Bell in 1984 should have been along service lines, not geographic lines. One company should have been given control of the physical wires, and that's all they do---they have have the right-of-ways to run cable and maintain the physical structure. And they have a mandate to provide service to any company that wants to provide a service (route data), and the other company provides the service, but they aren't in a monopolistic position.

What's the natural monopoly here? The physical infrastructure. What isn't? The service---phone, television, data. Could this still be done? Yes, but I suspect the politics would be worse today than in 1984.

> big companies like google or facebook (which, according to the website, do not support net neutrality [why would they, right?])

It doesn't quite say that. It says[1] that they didn't sign up to the event on the 12th. However, news outlets are reporting otherwise.[2][3] The Internet Association, which they founded, launched its petition site[4] on Monday. Microsoft is now also a member. Apple, for whatever reason, is not.

Google also has its own 'Take Action' page[5] but I'm not sure how old it is. Mark Zuckerberg has publicly stated support for net neutrality.[6] But both companies have been criticized[7][8] in the past for using a self-serving interpretation of the term. And, as the recent EU ruling against Google reminds us, telcos are not the only internet gatekeepers we need to worry about.[9]

[1] https://www.battleforthenet.com/july12/#participants

[2] https://www.recode.net/2017/7/8/15938164/net-neutrality-day-...

[3] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/12/google-amazon-protest-against...

[4] http://iadayofaction.org

[5] https://www.google.com/takeaction/action/freeandopen/index.h...

[6] https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102033678947881

[7] https://www.facebook.com/notes/access-now/open-letter-to-mar...

[8] https://scroll.in/article/717663/double-standards-facebook-a...

[9] https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/eu-google-antitr... (this article was written a year ago by someone who gets funding from various telcos and Microsoft: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Scott_Cleland )

KK, thx for clarification. I'll allow myself to not edit the original post, but I promise I'll stop bashing Facebook and Google in my head.

As a tidbit about Google: Take Action actually emailed me today about it. I opted in a long time ago, but they definitely sent out a very pro NN email. An excerpt from that email:

> Today, Google is joining other Internet companies, innovative startups, and millions of internet users around the country to defend these common-sense protections that keep the internet free and open.

> Net neutrality ensures that both new and established services, whether offered by an established internet company like Google, a broadband provider, or a small start-up, have the same ability to reach users on an equal playing field.

> we are living in a capitalism world

Far from it. Far far far faaaaaaaaaar from it!

And by that you mean that we live in what, communism? IMO what I can see 'around' is the capitalism at it's worst, with cash aggregation by top players. And who has the money has the power, as it was since the beginning of time.

It is possible to be far from a free market economy and still not be completely communist

I didn't mean that it has to be either capitalism or communism. What I meant is that IMO what we have right now is still a form of modern capitalism, albeit I agree that it became kind of twisted in comparison to the capitalism from the beginning of the 20th century.

If capitalism is getting to the form that Standard Oil followed at the turn of the last century, perhaps it is disingenuous to continue calling it capitalism?

Or maybe Standard Oil was a forefather of modern capitalism? Maybe that was a pure form of it? I'd say the idea that the state does not intervene in the market is heartwarming, but if the state doesn't protect it's people the market will abuse them. Anyway I'm sure that there is some economic forum, where this discussion would be more appropriate :)

And it is possible to be far from a free market economy and still be capitalist, because Capitalism and "free market economy" aren't synonymous.

Let me cite Wikipedia since it's good enough here: "Capitalism is an economic system and an ideology based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, wage labor, voluntary exchange, a price system, and competitive markets." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism)

> Characteristics central to capitalism

The word "central" here implies that this definition, or summary, does not define capitalism per se.

The ISPs are not operating in "competitive markets", so they are not operating in capitalist markets.

This is the core issue. ISPs rarely compete, so they have little incentive to make their customer's lives better.

IMO fixing this should be the central push for the "save the internet" folks.

The system is Capitalism and the markets exist within it. It makes no sense to claim that some of those markets aren't capitalist for lacking competition. In other words, while competitive markets are a characteristic of Capitalism, not every market within the system needs to have strong competition, especially because another characteristic of Capitalism is that successful competitors tend to crush smaller ones and form monopolies.

The ISP market is no anomaly but just another facet of Capitalism.

Or more generally, those who have a say in resource allocation, have the power.

Therefore, this is a blatant power grab by the ISPs - suddenly they get to decide how to allocate a resource, however artificial that resource may be.

To what extent would we need more capitalism? Currently, you have companies literally able to shut down countries (see examples of cigarette giants suing countries), and companies like Comcast being so anti-competition that they sue towns trying to set up faster internet fiber lines. That's not even involving the massive influence companies have with government officials in legal means via lobbying. Companies aren't charitable, and yet they give millions upon millions to politicians... And then of course there is the hilarious trends of a politician passing laws and then somehow, repeatedly, getting cushy jobs with big oil / Comcast / etc after they exit government work.

The point I'm getting at is companies have far more power and far more sway than any one person, Government worker or private citizen, so at what point does a world become capitalist? Do we have to shut down government and literally be run by Comcast before we consider it a capitalist world?

Companies shutting down other countries and bribes are not a part of capitalism. These acts are dick-moves that can happen in a socialist or communist system also.

So if it doesn't matter which system we live in because corruption can happen in any system, why not quit masking the real issue by making it about capitalism? The real problem here is corruption and lack of accountability. That's equally likely in whatever system we choose.

The difference is, a working Government works for the people. Note I said a working Government. A company has no loyalty, no core incentive to work for anyone but themselves. They have no reason to be nice, and not do "dick moves" as you put it.

We can't expect companies to have morals, they should operate within the law. Governments must keep them in check, keep the laws safe for humanity.

To me, I extend this to anything that "matters". Ie, I believe in reformed health care because health care is too important to me to be handled by corruption. Insurance companies are not aligned with the peoples incentives. Just like how Cable is not aligned with my incentives either. They want to squash competition, stifle innovation, and fundamentally change an equal playing field of access and bandwidth.