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Comment by RIMR | Hacker News Reader

I am firmly in support of net neutrality, but I am also sick and tired of all the ridiculous misinformation about what it actually is. At least on Reddit, people would have you believe that the Internet is about to become Cable TV.

Net Neutrality is very important to a free and open Internet, but the kind of scaremongering I see going on is absolutely insane.

We won't win this fight with scary lies. Do your part and make sure your peers are educated as to the real consequences of this repeal. None of this "You must pay to view additional posts on this website" or "Imagine if EA were your ISP" nonsense.

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The cable bundling isn't scare-mongering, it's a real scenario (but a worst-case one).

It also serves the purpose of being something I can explain to less-technical relatives at the Thanksgiving table, and they immediately grasp the importance. If I started talking about Title II and common carriers and peering agreements it would have nowhere near the same impact.

You are wrong. One of the many bad consequences of this legislation is that Internet service will almost certainly become exactly like cable TV, as has already happened in places without such rules, in that you will be allowed to access a subset of the Internet for free/cheap, and will have to pay more for broader access.

Why on earth would you think this would not happen? Because the tiny handful of telecom and cable companies, already protected from competition by various laws and regulations, will decide to leave hundreds of millions of dollars on the table so that people like them more?

> Why on earth would you think this would not happen?

How about the fact that in the prior 20+ years it did not happen. Comcast was just as powerful five years ago, as they are today. The access market was just as limited in terms of competition, 5 or 10 years ago.

Your premise is that due to limited competition, it must occur. If that were how things actually worked, it would have occured before net neutrality in a very big way.

First, 20 years ago, in 1997, it wouldn't have worked. Hop in your time machine and go back and ask random people on the street how many of them want to pay a monthly fee for "internet access". Follow up with a bonus question of which they'd keep if they had to choose, TV service or Internet.

Second, you are right, Comcast would have loved to turn the Internet into cable TV five years ago, and as a member of the protected oligopoly, they would be in a good position to do so, except... oh yeah, net neutrality regulations prevent that.

Third, now that we are in modern times where most people do use the internet, it already has occurred where no preventive measures exist. There are examples in this very thread; click them.

You're missing a key piece. As opposed to 20 years ago their core businesses (home telephone, cable television) have been in decline. As people cut the cord(s) these companies will need to further monetize the ISP aspects of their businesses to compensate.

It's not fair to look to the past to make predictions about the future here because the world was very different from a business perspective.

And people are 'cutting the cord' because TV content is boring trash, and the media/news channels completely controlled by a few megacorps. You can't get independent or personal views, you can't get personalized shows, you can't get streams from completely random nobodies.

TV is monopolized to hell and back and full of advertising people can't stand. The internet provides everything you could want, without the cancer that has infected television. People wouldn't cut TV out of their lives if TV actually provided what they want at a fair price.

When SOPA was going on so-and-so years ago, there was a similar bout of over-exaggerated hysteria to get people in action. I was against it back then, but I think the last couple of years have shown that panic and outrage is what actually gets people motivated to do anything, rather than straight, boring facts. Why not harness it for something good then?

I'm sorry, what? The lesson of the last couple years is that we should act more like extremists drumming up outrage with misinformation?

He's not wrong. People are lead by how they feel and not facts. There are responsible ways to make pleas to emotion on a large scale and there are manipulative things that bad actors can do with it as well. You will not win hearts and minds with pure rationality when your opponent doesn't give a shit about that. Emotional lives are just as real as cold hard facts, and as we've seen, can be so real that they manifest the expectation.

I'm not an expert, nor am I an activist, but I have been reading about people studying 4chan's tactics in a post prez45 world. How a culture of open dialog to extreme gave a small group of people a weapon. Erudite "rationals" considered this sort of thing to be stupid nonsense, but it trained an entire culture to be massively effective at steering people's emotions. Their ideas can move faster without the absolute need for sensitivity or maybe because of a pathological need to offend. The current interest is in finding ways to work that radical acceptance into progressive discourse. It's important but I don't think anyone has a playbook yet.

>You will not win hearts and minds with pure rationality when your opponent doesn't give a shit about that.

Where are these hardline radical pro-Comcast types?

>There are responsible ways to make pleas to emotion on a large scale and there are manipulative things that bad actors can do with it as well.

Frankly, the net neutrality movement has failed that test miserably in this latest campaign in particular. It's disappointing to see this from the side I support, to the point that I find myself alienated from the viewpoint altogether and have to remind myself that the policy is the only part that is important.

Exhibit A: https://imgur.com/gallery/CD9H7QU

>I'm not an expert, nor am I an activist, but I have been reading about people studying 4chan's tactics in a post prez45 world. How a culture of open dialog to extreme gave a small group of people a weapon. Erudite "rationals" considered this sort of thing to be stupid nonsense, but it trained an entire culture to be massively effective at steering people's emotions. Their ideas can move faster without the absolute need for sensitivity or maybe because of a pathological need to offend. The current interest is in finding ways to work that radical acceptance into progressive discourse. It's important but I don't think anyone has a playbook yet.

Liberals (in the academic/international sense) used to see these unfortunate behavioral quirks of humanity exploited by fascists & autocrats and vow to be better than appealing to basic instincts and herd mentality. I do not look forward to a world where radicalization and alarmism are viewed as standard tools in a campaigner's belt and reasonable people intentionally spread hyperbole or outright lies to convince the public to go their way.

I don't like that future either, but it's not quite what I'm saying. I definitely feel you on the fatigue. My point is that it's a mistake to just say "I'll wait till they come around" and not try to figure out how to make ethical communication based on facts that has as much pull as carpetbagging alarmists. Hardline pro Comcast types would be any Neo-Liberal, Big biz Republican, and some libertarians.

We lost this battle a long time ago[1][2] is the real issue. However, they don't have absolute control over sending electrons around in a box, nor how distributed systems work in absolute. Innovation has stagnated as an entire generation of the greatest minds build an advertising scheme. The internet is fucking broken in a bizare way. As it continues to fragment, it will be a lot like our transition from AOL to an open web.

People not in the know will be given palpable bullshit to keep the fat cats in slow braised bushmeat. People with a pursuit of knowledge and innovation will move to platforms that are harder to access by the masses, fragmenting the utility we have now but giving a lot of power to the people on the inside track.

This is already happening in restrictive places like China as well as basically everywhere else. Hiding information and connections in aggregates of other data. Building out online dark nets as well as physical mesh networks. I see the LimeSDR playing a huge role as the web gets shittier than it is. An open source transceiver on a chip that can do everything from UHF to 5G, you can connect to an existing provider, but at any sort of density removes the need to rely on single points like cell tower networks. Also expanding to use any bandwidth or multiple with a software modification. I just bought their $3000 "Network in a Box"[3] and am building an LTE neighborhood darknet (3 Kilometers!) with my buddy. We are going to get repeaters and DIY phones to anyone in range and grow from there.

The alternatives to the system don't exist yet, but innovation will not stop just because they want to sell more Thor DVDs. I'm pretty tired of it too and it feels bullshit to say "this" is over, but it is. Now we just have to take what we've learned, build something better, and learn how to bring the ignorant on our side to prevent it from happening again.

I know it won't happen, but it is an absolute fact that no one actually needs facebook. Every single one of us could shut down our account at the same time and change the world in a big way.

There isn't a google replacement yet (don't tell me DuckDuckGo), but maybe we can bring webrings back.

[1] https://thenextweb.com/eu/2017/06/09/pirate-bay-founder-weve... [2] https://webfoundation.org/2017/04/sir-tim-berners-lee-respon... [3] https://www.crowdsupply.com/lime-micro/limenet

What would stop ISPs from turning the Internet to Cable if Net Neutrality is removed?

Other than common sense?

Targeted policy?

> Targeted policy?

Hmm, good idea. Let's see... maybe we could have a policy something like If you are one of the few companies providing Internet service, and are protected by various laws and regulations that limit who may provide such service to end users, then you must not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.

How about something like that?

That way, we could promote neutrality with regard to people's network access.

I don't have a problem with zero rating, the policy you describe prohibits it.

I identify with the fundamental concept that "it's all just bits streaming" and that it could "stifle competition".

But to me both are an oversimplification.

"It's all just bits" except sometimes it's 100 megabytes of video a second and sometimes it's a 100kb HN post and delivering those things satisfactorily does not take the same levels of resources. There was a time when I think that analogy was satisfactory, and I think we've left that time.

And it definitely could stifle startups trying to become the next Google... except I get the feeling zero rating won't be why the next Google doesn't form between patents issues, Google just buying them outright, Google having better response times because of peering, and a million other issues (replace Google with any tech incumbent as wanted)

To me this entire issue is a red herring, the real issue is a lack of ISP competition. That's why we're even willing to entertain the idea of our ISPs turning the internet into cable packages instead of realizing that with real competition no ISP would have the slightest inclination to do something so blatantly anti-user.

You are right that it's an oversimplification.

And you are right that real competition between Internet providers would solve the problem, better than net neutrality regulations do.

However, the most important point is that we have net neutrality rules right now.

The chance of somehow achieving meaningful competition between Internet providers in the United States is vanishingly, infinitesimally small.

The actual conversation isn't "net neutrality vs. competition", it's "oligopoly with some restrictions imposed on their behavior vs. unfettered oligopoly".

> "It's all just bits" except sometimes it's 100 megabytes of video a second and sometimes it's a 100kb HN post and delivering those things satisfactorily does not take the same levels of resources.

Don't strawman. "It's all just bits" is talking about the resources needed per bit.

It's not a strawman, the amount of resources X required to deliver at least Y bits per second is not a linear relationship.

Doesn't the non-linearity work against the argument for zero-rating? The big fat video costs significantly less per bit to deliver.

Besides, net neutrality is 100% compatible with charging different prices for different connection speeds. Just make a free 1mbps tier and don't discriminate between HN posts and low-end video.

> common sense?

Common sense says that, as a corporation, if I have a regional monopoly on internet access I should exploit that to the point that maximizes profitability.

>I should exploit that to the point that maximizes profitability.

And not take overly egregious actions that would force a government intervention which would probably lead to actions that damage my monopoly and harm profitability.

Or just bribe people in the government and have them appoint one of your lawyers to the governing body meant to regulate you.

Why care how egregious your actions are when the government listens to you and your bags of money, and not the people you're fucking over?

This is pretty much circular at this point. I’d say the risk/reward (no matter how much money can divert risk) is not great enough or we’d have already seen this happen pre-Open Internet

Ajit is literally an agent of the industry that is changing the rules to profit said industry and when it is done he will quit and move back to the private sector.

Look at what ISPs do in Portugal, which lacks any kind of net neutrality. They are already trying to bundle sites and protocols like cable channels. It's not far fetched at all.

Here's a screenshot from the Portuguese ISP's pricing page: https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701871092441088

Exactly like a cable bundle.

I'm all for net neutrality, but it feels important to note that this is for mobile service:

https://www.meo.pt/internet/internet-movel/telemovel/pacotes...

Also, it looks like the same company provides gigabit internet for $50/mo:

https://www.meo.pt/pacotes/mais-pacotes/fibra/net-voz

Again, I support net neutrality, but it's still technically better than my Comcast.

>I'm all for net neutrality, but it feels important to note that this is for mobile service:

The current net neutrality regulations apply to both fixed and mobile broadband.

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/04/13/2015-07...

Those are flat rates for unlimited access to certain services.

If you scroll down there's also per/mb pricing with no services listed.

Of course, if you use per/Mb pricing, then those services suddenly become much more expensive.

Which means that any competitor to those services now faces a high barrier to entry - they can't just compete on features, they have to be that much better to overcome the cheaper cost of mobile data for the product they're trying to compete with. Which leads to easier formation of monopolies.

Which is exactly the kind of thing that was pointed out as the problem requiring Net Neutrality in the first place.

That's a misleadingly vague description of what the page is for. Mobile data providers in US already offer similar deals, like T-Mobile's "Binge On".

>Portugal... lacks any kind of net neutrality.

Last I checked, Portugal is in the European Union. Presumably it has the same net neutrality rules the rest of the EU does.

Yes, but these net neutrality rules have loop-holes for zero-rating. It's not as ironclad as it should be. Portugal just seems to be on the forefront of abusing these.

All other privately controlled electronic media does that, and you haven’t offered any reason to expect less here, so why not?

Of course, net neutrality is an issue of control and regulation. Losing net neutrality, mind you, involves private companies having less restraint and more control. What will they do with it? Reddit doesn’t know for sure any more than you do, and that’s the problem, of course.

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