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Comment by jquery | Hacker News Reader

> Censorship by ISPs is devastating, competition cannot help, and it is impossible to circumvent and is a real possibility.

They're both devastating and difficult to circumvent, are they not? I'm at least confident if my ISP started blocking Netflix because they made a deal with Comcast, the hammer of the FCC or FTC would fall on them in short order, and there would be consumer outrage. I have no such confidence that Google or Apple will be forced to allow, say... Gab... ever. No consumer outrage nor any movement by the FTC or FCC. So if Gab is limited to technically savvy people, do VPNs really require much more savvy? Basically my point is that the results of the censorship seem to be roughly equivalent, which is a de-platforming of an online voice.

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>I'm at least confident if my ISP started blocking Netflix because they made a deal with Comcast, the hammer of the FCC or FTC would fall on them in short order,

What? What has possibly ever lead you to believe this? The FCC is doing everything in its power against massive popular demand to ensure that Comcast can do exactly this even though everyone is screaming about hating it. Perhaps Netflix would accept paying massive bribes to prevent this from happening, but the current FCC will never step in.

>I have no such confidence that Google or Apple will be forced to allow, say... Gab... ever.

I agree with you here, the monopoly and walled-garden system we use for phones is very bad. Users should have ultimate control over their own machines. And this should perhaps be mandated by law, i.e. mandatory jailbreak switch.

>No consumer outrage nor any movement by the FTC or FCC.

There is no consumer outrage because nobody cares about Gab, it is a niche service for extremist conservatives who were kicked out of other platforms for doxxing, horrifying racism and advocating and organizing violence and genocide. The twelve people who would use it connect through Tor to the daily stormer and are just fine.

If you can't download the Gab app, you can still connect through the web to the service. Iphones don't ban visiting certain websites. Your problem is that Apple controls what you can install on your phone, because the Apple ecosystem is closed and censored, but the web is open. But not for long. If your ISP blocks your connections to the Gab servers, it doesn't even matter what you can put on your phone.

It seems to me you want NN and also something stronger than that, which I'm completely on board with.

> I'm at least confident if my ISP started blocking Netflix because they made a deal with Comcast, the hammer of the FCC or FTC would fall on them in short order, and there would be consumer outrage.

You mean "while net neutrality is the law", right? Because that's exactly what you will lose if net neutrality is no longer required.

Don't condescend. My prediction for the odds of Netflix or other major site getting blocked by a major ISP still hovers at roughly 0% with the new FCC ruling. Even without Title II classification, there are other ways for the government to intervene in anti-competitive behavior (and indeed, they have). EDIT: It's worth pointing out that ISPs in general have shown much better behavior w/r/t censorship than content providers.

I didn't make a statement either way about likelihood of it happening, I replied to your naive hope that the FCC would still jump in and stop Comcast from doing so after net neutrality rules are abandoned. If you think that this would still be illegal, please do explain which laws and regulatory bodies would be involved and how it would be enforced. Also, it is not at all worth noting that a group who are legally barred from a behavior engage in it less than a group that is not legally barred. Why on earth would it be?

>Even without Title II classification, there are other ways for the government to intervene in anti-competitive behavior (and indeed, they have).

You don't actually believe this will happen or can be relied upon do you? There are ways for them to do it but we are at the mercy of whoever is in charge of the executive that particular year. This administration will never step in. Maybe if we get a new administration and never have a Republican in office again and the Democrats completely restructure their priorities and come out in favor of trust busting in contrast to their decades of moving right and doing favors for corporate power this is a feasible assumption.

Also, maybe ISPs will just choose to leave money on the table after they gut NN and do nothing because they really care about having a free and open Internet /s

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