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Comment by AmIFirstToThink | Hacker News Reader

I soured up on Net Neutrality after seeking what YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit did to silence voices that they don't like on their platforms.

How does net neutrality matter if what travels on a perfectly neutral net is controlled anyway, actually controlled much more effectively, by a very few with agenda that goes far beyond just greed for money?

"Don't open and judge my TCP/IP packets. But, I will open and judge your video uploads all day, every day." - YouTube

How is that fair?

No, thank you. I refuse to be fodder for something, only to be surrendered at a later point in the fight for fairness.

"Bernie" taught me that lesson. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

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net neutrality ensures you can get to youtube\twitter\reddit\facebook without the ISP charging you more or throttling sites. It has nothing to to with free speech or altering the policies of individual sites.

Think of it like water. Your water company doesn't care if you are flushing the toilet or taking a shower. They just give you water and charge a rate. The internet works this way now and we want to keep it that way.

Opposing net nutrality means you will end up with this: http://www.wordstream.com/images/what-is-net-neutrality-isp-...

They are going to create a "slow lane" and charge you more to use it.

The slow or fast lane doesn't matter, if I am going to be denied at the destination anyway.

Free speech only protects you from government persecution. It doesn't control how owners of private property react.

You are still going to get banned and moderated, it will just be a lot slower and a lot more expensive for you.

And if you keep getting denied you should probably try and find out why people find you so toxic and repulsive.

People? They are many who would be OK with what I have to say.

The problem is the platform owners want full fairness when they talk (TCP/IP, the platform they use) but want full God powers when their platform is concerned (Social Media Sites, the platform I use). Do you see the hypocrisy of Google/Youtube/Facebook/Reddit/Twitter?

If Comcast shouldn't decide what travels on their wires, then why should Google get to decide what the Youtube video says?

> If Comcast shouldn't decide what travels on their wires, then why should Google get to decide what the Youtube video says?

Comcast doesn't get to decide for the same reason the water company doesn't decide what I use my water for.

And you are free to say what you want in my house but you'd be thrown out pretty quickly if I didn't like what you had to say. Your house is no different. And Google's house is no different too. This isn't a difficult concept

Google is not a private entity, it is a public corporation with share holders.

We hold government with highest demands for equality, we hold private individuals and fully owned businesses with most freedom to discriminate. We hold public corporations somewhere in between.

>Google's house

Sure. Nobody cared when things were being said about Egypt's Mubarak. But say something that some Google executives don't like, you are out of there.

Is there a difference between a private entity and a public corporation?

If I run my own plumbing company, I can hire my son without putting up an ad in the paper. Should a Google executive be allowed to hire her husband without putting up an ad?

We hold public companies at a higher standard that private individuals, correctly so.

What if Mead stopped you from using their notebook to write down a thought that they don't agree with?

Using youtube is a privileged, not a right. Google can censor because its user's agree to it as part of their terms of service.

And Comcast will make their ability to slow down or speed up packets a part of their terms of service. done.

Glad you agree that Comcast has that right, just like Google.

NN doesn't matter if Google can pay God with paying customers, who pay each month for gsuite products, got their account cancelled because Google didn't like what they posted. I would take slow lane over that every day.

Capitalism when I like it, socialism when I don't. That is hypocritical.

You are advocating for changes to laws you don't want because you have a very fundamental misunderstanding of some very basic concepts. Comcast cannot do this now because there are rules and regs to stop them from doing so. Killing net neutrality will enable comcast to dictate traffic. If you don't want them to have that ability, you should be in favor of net neutrality. How are you this dense?

Worrying about Comcast when Google/Twitter/Facebook/Reddit are stifling speech with impunity is like worrying about stains on the carpet when house is on fire.

I have written so much about NN that it could be a 200 page book, and made many donations to EFF. But, NN is comparable to carpet stain, restricting opinions you don't like on a multi-billion-people platforms like YouTube/Twitter is comparable to house on fire.

I would rather use NN being invalidated as a way to teach Google/Twitter/Facebook/Reddit a taste of their own medicine.

I hope someone at Google and Facebook is measuring negative sentiment generated by their actions against speech that they don't like.

Google is allowing ADL to tarnish their brand value. It is dropping like a rock. Google is doubling down on their Clinton campaign investment, they should cut losses and support pillar of American values, Freedom of Speech.

The similarities to "Bernie" telling Democratic party to wise up are too strong here. We are telling Google, the company that I absolutely loved and believed in till two months ago, to wise up or they will lose the affection people had about them taking the company down with it. I can't believe I have stopped using Google search, but here I am.

I am taking no action, no advocacy of NN this time around. Think of this as Bernie supporters telling DNC that Democrats do not represent them anymore. I will band together with the enemy, Ajit Pai, in this case, to make sure Google/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit pay some price for their censorship.

> Google/Twitter/Facebook/Reddit are stifling speech with impunity is like worrying about stains on the carpet when house is on fire.

Two different issues. Your Freedom of Speech only prevents government persecution. I don't know how many times I have to explain this. If you don't like the rules of the sites out there, don't use them.

> I have written so much about NN that it could be a 200 page book

From everything I can tell your voluminous objections are all based very incomplete and extremely incorrect assumptions

> I will band together with the enemy, Ajit Pai, in this case, to make sure Google/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit pay some price for their censorship.

look out boys, we have an edgelord among us. LOL

>From everything I can tell your voluminous objections are all based very incomplete and extremely incorrect assumptions

Those 200 pages were written in support of NN.

> How does net neutrality matter if what travels on a perfectly neutral net is controlled anyway, actually controlled much more effectively, by a very few with agenda that goes far beyond just greed for money?

Without Net Neutrality it becomes harder to choose platforms that don't censor or censor less. Especially since non-censoring platforms will tend to have less revenue to spend on access to customers due to presenting potential PR risks to traditional advertisers and business partners.

I don't want speech beholden to advertisers and business partners.

Net Neutrality has been a non-issue at best, or hypocritical at worse, for the content providers, in light of blatant censorship and political agenda carried out.

Youtube won't be able to open and judge your video uploads if you can't afford to upload a video with your ISP.

You'll be able to afford it, just be prepared to have a throttled, asymmetric upload speed to YouTube.

And when ISPs eventually resort to requiring you insert a root certificate to use the internet at all, your ISP will judge you.

Sure, but it's hypocritical for Google/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit to complain about someone else judging it in future, while they are judging it today with impunity.

We, as people, have same influence on current Google/Facebook/Twitter/Reddit censorship as we do on future Comcast/Verizon/AT&T/Charter censorship... none what so ever.

So the solution is to give up entirely?

No, but there is bigger fish to fry.

Censorship of speech is much much bigger issue for me than Net Neutrality.

I can't stand with multi-billion corporations claiming victimhood on subject of Net Neutrality, while at the same time playing God with people being able to speak their mind.

You can be an activist for more than one cause at a time. Additionally, those corporations (who I detest probably more than most people here) can still be legitimate victims, even if they are terrible. I don't like siding with them either, but if they are right, then their evil-ness is irrelevant.

>You can be an activist for more than one cause at a time.

I agree. But scale does matter. You are not going to be worried about if the person giving you CPR has cooties or not, if you are suffering through an heart attack.

>their evil-ness is irrelevant

It is relevant, because I think free speech is more important than speed of packets. I have to use this opportunity to point out the hypocrisy of these corporations.

You're just being stubborn now.

Speed of packets is part of free speech, as it affects how it's sent and received.

It's obviously in Google/FB/etc's interest to advocate Net Neutrality, but they'll still be using their algorithms to filter what their users see whether or not net neutrality is a thing.

If Net Neutrality wasn't a thing, FB/Google might have a blow to their wallet. But they can afford it. The hobbyist can't.

And if you can choose between a person with cooties versus a person without cooties to save your life, you'd go with the one without cooties. You have nothing to lose to make the more sensible choice.

>You're just being stubborn now.

I hear you. :)

Do I want Net Neutrality? Yes

Is Free Speech more important to me? Yes

Is pointing out hypocrisy of YouTube at this point important for me? Yes

Will I vouch for a guy who gave me finger at the last intersection, if he gets into an accident no fault of his own at the next intersection? Yes, without hesitation.

Would I have some choice words for him for giving me finger? You bet.

And with this response, it sounds like you agree with everyone in this comment thread.

I don't want Comcast looking inside my packets. I don't want Google looking inside my videos.

Deal?

Ideally, yes. But you can just host your videos yourself instead of with Google, which may be difficult to do without Net Neutrality. Most people don't have the luxury of choosing their ISP.

It sounds like you have a beef with how the US is currently handling corporate personhood, not necessarily free speech.

> But you can just host your videos yourself instead of with Google, which may be difficult to do without Net Neutrality.

The problem is not hosting, the problem is not slow speed, the problem is your audience being pulled from you without any legal due process. From listener's perspective, you are denied audience of the person you want to hear, because YouTube decided they didn't like what is being said and heard.

I find that more suffocating than an ISP slowing down my packets.

Google services were taken away, including youtube, gmail, google docs from paying accounts that Google didn't like. That's like Mead coming into your house and taking away the paper notebook they sold to you a week ago, because they don't like what you write in it.

Without net neutrality, you might not have an audience in the first place. I'm telling you, it's as big of an issue as Google/Facebook's algorithms and their account/video takedowns. It would become even more impossibly difficult to compete with their services. The problem is their monopolization, and a lack of net neutrality would kill their competition.

This is a bit of a tangent, but it sounds like you're wanting a social media platform that has:

1) Popularity (essential for any social platform)

2) Unbiased search functionality (Probably needs to be open source, and will frustrate users with how it underperforms at finding relevant results in comparison to search engines that are closed source and rely on user tracking)

3) Incapability to take down user files and accounts (Tons of legal issues here. Probably needs to be decentralized somehow, or hosted somewhere with lax information laws, otherwise the platform itself would be taken down by the server's location's government)

Edit: And as for your analogy, no. It's like renting a paper notebook, which the seller then takes back because you violated their terms of use by drawing lolicon in it.

>Without net neutrality, you might not have an audience in the first place.

DNS can be, and was, taken away without any due legal process. That was my wake up call. Google cloud is registering domains and has that control over it.

When it comes to dire situations, if my ISP does funny business, I can choose another ISP e.g. a mobile connection.

No different than taking another road to go to the bank. My account and money in there is still safe.

If the bank take away my account without due legal process, does it matter if the roads to get to the bank were traffic/pothole/toll free?

For a YouTube content creator, who spent years building brand and audience, one fine day to wake up and have videos demonetized and/or account suspended is like bank terminating your account without giving you a dime from your account. With bank, you can get government/FDIC engaged, with YouTube, they are the Gods of that universe.

>And as for your analogy, no. It's like renting a paper notebook,

Paying account holders of g-suite apps from google, faced account termination with no cause, no access to videos/files/emails. This is digital violence and much bigger threat that has materialized, and is far greater than NN.

If terms of service are enough to allow Google doing what it does, why can't Comcast do the same with their terms of service?

I didn't know it was that easy to do. Don't tell Comcast, please. They would be delighted to hear that terms of service is all it took to convince you to override NN.

You are renting their cable and ability to send traffic over their infrastructure, aren't you? How is cable infrastructure renting different than DNS/Video-site/email renting?

Finally, some good points.

> When it comes to dire situations, if my ISP does funny business, I can choose another ISP e.g. a mobile connection.

No, a mobile connection is hardly a replacement for a traditional internet connection. You can't host a site or connect to it with most devices, for example. And no, most people can't choose another ISP. Comcast will have run out all other competitors, or receive funding from the government to build their infrastructure and outlaw any other ISP's from providing service there (which happened in the outskirts of my hometown, despite us already having a much superior self-sufficient ISP with lower cost.)

> I didn't know it was that easy to do. Don't tell Comcast, please. They would be delighted to hear that terms of service is all it took to convince you to override NN.

Yes, their terms of service is all Comcast needs should there not be net neutrality. You are indeed renting it all from them. Net neutrality will stop them from doing what Google can already do.

I hardly doubt Google's account terminations has anywhere near the level of impact that the lack of net neutrality will have. Once again, you can host your site/media/email and manage your DNS elsewhere. The key to taking down Google's kingdom is to set up competition. Net neutrality will help with that.

And a sidepoint: You should always back up your videos/files/etc. Then if Youtube/etc is taken down somehow, or your account is terminated, you'll still be able to put it up elsewhere.

>And a sidepoint: You should always back up your videos/files/etc. Then if Youtube/etc is taken down somehow, or your account is terminated, you'll still be able to put it up elsewhere.

How do I backup my audience?

>The key to taking down Google's kingdom is to set up competition.

Tread one overlord for another, or be an overlord yourself.

I think anti-competitive behavior laws will play a role in taking down Google.

I can't believe I typed that. I loved, loved, loved Google two months ago. Few with political agenda have co-opted years of work of thousands of imaginative, hard working, caring engineers. Now, I want Google broken up by the government using anti-trust.

Just two months ago? I've been red-pilled for the past decade.

Red-pilled a year and half ago. I still liked Google, the technical parts. The political advocacy was uncomfortable, but OK, political agenda implementation is downright scary.

It would have taken you less time and effort to file a complaint than it took to post these responses. I really think that you are missing the forest through the trees on this one.

File a complaint? With whom do you suggest?

For me, Free Speech is the forest, NN is a group of trees in a corner.

Don't worry about that, I'll use a vpn to get to someone else's internet and that ISP can judge me.

YouTube will still judge me, even if I use Comcast cable or Verizon 4G to upload the data.

Well the good news, is that with NN you can post a video on your own server and other people will still be able to get there because it isn't excluded from their 'video plan'

NN means your packets get there. The TOS of a specific site has nothing to do with it.

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are multi-billion people platforms. Platforms that grew because of participation of the people.

Platforms that were open to speech. Nobody stopped Twitter because there were things being said against Egypt's Mubarak.

Now, the platforms are playing God and censoring speech.

Ever been unhappy about an Open Source project switching license on you, going from Apache to Propitiatory Enterprise after enjoying three/four years of community engagement? The social media platforms are pulling the same bait and switch on the people, allowed content for years giving people sense that these were truly open platforms, and then stepping in to push their agenda.

So it would be good if we protect the option to go access any site or thought on the net. If you want to get your opinion out there, you can literally write it down with no markup and share it on an http server. This won't be the case without net neutrality. It's not even that you're confusing the issues at play here which are private companies TOS and net neutrality, it seems that you're intentionally making them out to be the same thing in order to prove a point or something.

If you want the freedom to not be censored. Make it a point to allow ALL communication and ideas to flow over the network.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube have the right to allow or disallow content that they see fit, as do TV networks, News Papers and any privately owned company. If you'd like to change that, there are two ways, one is regulation and legislation which is outside of the scope of NN, and competition, which is only possible if NN exists in a robust form.

>If you'd like to change that, there are two ways, one is regulation and legislation which is outside of the scope of NN,

Is NN not a regulation? Is it voluntary?

My point is that NN is not as high a priority, given what corporate advocates of NN have done when it was their turn to play fair.

I am more concerned about power exercised over speech, than power over making packets go fast or slow.

>and competition, which is only possible if NN exists in a robust form.

Competition would allow NN to exist, not other way around. Monopoly of ISPs is the root of NN being challenged.

None of what you're describing really has anything to do with net neutrality. And getting rid of net neutrality would only weaken alternative outlets.

I'm thinking the problem you had with these services might have been your own fault, judging by your approach here.

Why not let Comcast decide if the video being uploaded to YouTube has a reference to an terrorist organization and then stop the upload?

Why is Google a better judge of what is terrorist content than Comcast?

>I'm thinking the problem you had with these services might have been your own fault, judging by your approach here.

Right. Those pesky packet senders themselves must be the problem because of which Comcast wants to send them to the slow lane.

> Why is Google a better judge of what is terrorist content than Comcast?

Google only gets to decide what you can do on google websites. Without net neutrality, Comcast, in its de facto monopoly position, gets to decide what you do on -all- websites.

Google has monopoly in terms of YouTube.

Instead of Comcast, I can use Verizon 4G.

Comcast, Verizon, may slow me down but YouTube just simply bans people for saying things that they don't like.

>Google has monopoly in terms of YouTube.

And I have a monopoly in terms of my living room, and have as much right to control what happens in my space as google does in theirs. Other living rooms, and other websites, can similarly set their own policies.

Yes, there's a point beyond which a single company can become so large and pervasive that it shades into monopoly, and antitrust measures become necessary. Whether Google is at that point or not is debatable, but ISPs certainly are. Congratulations on being in the minority of Americans that has more than one viable choice for broadband, I guess.

In any case, whatever your feelings about YouTube, this hardly constitutes an argument that therefore net neutrality is unnecessary -- in comments elsewhere you've made clear that you do in fact support net neutrality, so I'm really not clear what this contrarian posturing is aimed at.

When it comes to dire situations, if my ISP does funny business, I can choose another ISP e.g. a mobile connection.

No different than taking another road to go to the bank. My account and money in there is still safe.

If the bank take away my account without due legal process, does it matter if the roads to get to the bank were traffic/pothole/toll free?

There are private entities, public corporations and government. We hold public corporations to a different standard than individual persons.

If DNS can be taken away form you without due legal process, does it really matter if your ISP can throttle you or not. NN has become a fringe issue, yes, I do support NN, but at this point I would rather use NN to show hypocrisy of large monopolistic social media platforms. Free Speech is more important to me than NN.

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