Pai: Twitter Is Bigger Threat to Open Net Than ISPs | Hacker News Reader

Pai: Twitter Is Bigger Threat to Open Net Than ISPs

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53 pointsLeoJiWoo46 comments

What a stupid point of view, because the entire point of net neutrality (title 2 or otherwise) is to ensure that it's possible for twitter et al to be overthrown by an upstart who gets a level playing field wrt Internet traffic.

If Pai gets his way, ISPs will be in a great position to cement Twitter and Facebook's monopoly with preferential treatment and free subsidized internet plans.

I guess this shows the true plan: make the big ISPs happy, and solve the problem of "net neutrality" instead by adding more government regulation into the picture to regulate the market of internet applications. Truly the worst of both worlds.

> If Pai gets his way, ISPs will be in a great position to cement Twitter and Facebook's monopoly with preferential treatment and free subsidized internet plans.

IANAL, but I wonder if this would open the door for anti-trust lawsuits by a future administration.

Net Neutrality doesn't "ensure that it's possible for twitter et al to be overthrown by an upstart who gets a level playing field wrt Internet traffic." Twitter/FB/Google don't need ISP's to build barriers to entry, they already have networks effects.

At best it takes away a rather unlikely method of reducing competition for twitter.

IMO, its more likely the ISP's try to extort cash from the web monopolies than accept cash to quash their competitors.

If Twitter really paid ISP's to block competitive services they'd get anti-trust sued into oblivion.

It's not paying to block competitors... It forcing a company to pay for their users traffic to not be throttled by the ISP.

I'd argue it is a necessary but insufficient condition for net neutrality to exist for there to be any competition for high-bandwidth (or perhaps low-bandwidth) usage internet services.

He spoke for an extended period, and this was one argument among many. Arguably, when Pai was speaking about Twitter, he was talking not about the net neutrality issue, but about threats to free speech on the web. (That is, he was making a response to arguments from net-neutrality advocates that net-neut enables a freer and more open forum for political debate on the web.)

To be honest, if I look back at my last 20 years on the internet, I have seen more colorable censorship from the Reddits/Googles/Twitters of the world than from the various satellite cos, ISPs, telcos, quagmiric microwave relay companies, and mobile phone networks I've used to get on the internet.

Disclosure: I am on bd of Lincoln Network, which put together the event in D.C. where Pai spoke.

I expect that if I send a letter to the editor of my newspaper, that they are free to edit out any cursing before putting it in their newspaper.

I don't expect (or want) the post office to open my letter, read it, and decide to charge an increased fee because I mention it.

I don't expect (or want) the post office to open the reply letter, and add an advertisement for the new government owned camping that just opened.

This is precisely what rubs me the wrong way about the current pitches for net neutrality and why you won't see the right budge anytime soon. NN is being painted as a censorship issue by the biggest censorship-happy organizations in SV. To date, the only threats to consumers have come in the form of possible throttling and not outright blocking of certain speech. The only precedent I know of regarding censorship of the net has been at the hands of Twitter, Google and Youtube, Reddit, and Facebook, who are happily deleting all the political content they feel like at the moment whether it's illegal activity being discussed or not.

As my peer below stated, Comcast was caught disrupting P2P traffic which I hope gets addressed, but that's not how NN it's being sold and sensationalized today.

Edit: Clarifications

Except each of those companies has competition. Voat and Gab, among others, were born out of the idea that Reddit and Twitter were being unfair. And one had the ability to join one of those alternative platforms, even while still remaining a user of the original, without friction, largely because of having a neutral net. If we get ISPs offering "social media packages", what do you think the odds that Voat, Gab, or even Mastodon will be included?

If you believe that what Reddit and Twitter are doing is wrong, then why on earth would a reasonable solution be to extend the ability to do more of that to actors that one cannot reasonably avoid? I have a grand total of 1 ISP to choose from. The vast, vast majority of Americans have 1 or 2 to choose from. If NN is revoked, and Cox (my ISP) decides they're going to act like Twitter, then I have exactly no recourse. Why do you believe that is the way to go?

I whole-heartedly agree that ISP's shouldn't be outright blocking anything. I'm Pro-Net Neutrality Net-whatever to keep the pipes open and unfettered by greedy corporations.

I'm just pointing out the sheer hypocrisy of the recent campaigns talking about censorship as a possibility when the right has been getting attacked/censored by every big SV company in recent years. Now they're crying about possibility when they're engaged in the very act themselves. I guess they're right, they would know, so yeah i'm pro-NN.

I disagree. If I unleash a horde of spambots on this site, posting spam, and they get removed, am I being censored? If I constantly use slurs and other insults at other users, and I get my account banned because of it, am I being censored?

Yes, in both cases.

Censorship is a problem in certain cases (government, especially viewpoint-based censorship, for instance), but not in all cases.

The example given by Pai was a terrible one. Marsha Blackburn wasn't blocked from advertising a conservative message; she was blocked from committing dangerously unscrupulous libel. Her ad was demonstrably untrue, and was likely to cause some lunatic to hurt someone.

It's true that Rep Blackburn has the right to express her opinion, but libel has always been an exception to freedom of speech in this country. Twitter is under no obligation to accept money in order to help someone spread libel.

"To be honest, if I look back at my last 20 years on the internet, I have seen more colorable censorship from the Reddits/Googles/Twitters of the world than from the various satellite cos, ISPs, telcos, quagmiric microwave relay companies, and mobile phone networks I've used to get on the internet."

Which is due to Net Neutrality!

Take away Net Neutrality, and the ISPs etc. can also get in on the censorship game.

That's exactly because people have treated the net like a common carrier. If the net is not a common carrier, you should expect to start seeing more censorship.

And there have been problems with ISPs - Comcast silently disrupting P2P connections, etc.

> I have seen more colorable censorship from the Reddits/Googles/Twitters of the world than from the various satellite cos, ISPs, telcos

As it should be! People have the freedom to use bandwidth to go to any site they like to.

Hypocrisy of the highest order. "We like the free market, except when we do not agree with it."

> People have the freedom to use bandwidth to go to any site they like to.

Especially if they are already paying for it monthly.

Google/Twitter/Etc can all at least say "you are not paying for this just mooching off of our infrastructure, don't whine when we delete your post".

So his argument is, "Edge providers censor content in a biased manner, and that's bad. Therefore broadband providers should be allowed to censor content." It's a non sequitur. If the ability of large edge providers to selectively censor content is a problem, it stands to reason that allowing broadband providers the same privilege would be an even bigger problem. And that's completely ignoring the fact that he's making his usual false claim of equivalence between edge providers and broadband providers.

whataboutism.

we need more competition between ISPs _and_ more ISPs to select from (I have 1 with speeds that would allow me to successfully work remotely on Long Island NY).

I cannot see any other way for the consumer to win in any situation.

in regards to twitter, I agree they all have issues including recently the censorship in Romania [0] -- that is a _separate_ issue that also needs to be dealt with.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15790687

edit - added links typos

Have you ever wondered why you don't have ISP competition in Long Island? If you live in Brookhaven, for example, it's because Verizon already started to build fiber and then the county refused to give it a franchise. But companies will build fiber if you let them. We already have FiOS where I live, and gigabit cable. Comcast recently extended its Metro-E network to a nearby business park, and as a result also started offering 2-gigabit fiber to surrounding residential areas for $150/month. Thanks to a loophole (you don't need a county franchise if you don't offer TV), they can build it out incrementally based on demand.

Companies want to build fiber. It's municipalities that are holding things up by lashing fiber build-outs to their social justice initiatives. Stockholm built its fiber network with no public money, neighborhood by neighborhood based on the business case, taking 18 years to cover 90% of the city. New York City, in contrast, demanded Verizon wire up 100% of the city in just 5 years.

ISPs are a threat to net neutrality. Large social networks are a threat to society in others ways (censoring, monitoring, "bubbles", no rights what so ever).

I hate his guts, but while his interpretation of the Twitter problem is wrong (its not about net neutrality/open web), considering Twitter to be a problem in a general sense is not wrong.

Net Neutrality is a necessary good and ISP content throttling is certainly part of the problem. That said, he makes an extremely valid point here. If the argument is that a few key monopoly-like players dictate what content we can access then the major online advertising companies are just as much a part of the problem as throttling ISPs.

He doesn't make a valid point, though. He makes a completely orthogonal point. If you believe his point, that what Twitter is doing is bad, then how can you justify expanding the ability to do that to other, unavoidable actors? If I don't like what Twitter is doing, I can choose to instead go to Gab or Mastodon or even just start my own blog. If Cox decides to get in on the censoring game, and I don't like what they're doing, I can't do a thing about it.

> If Cox decides to get in on the censoring game, and I don't like what they're doing, I can't do a thing about it.

Agree, that's the main issue. If you could choose between 3 ISPs then the one with less censorship and throttling would win and others would be "squashed" by the market. There would be no need for net neutrality rules. But in some areas there is just one provider so nothing can be done. And it's not a new thing, it's been years for the market to grow and develop, but it hasn't.

> If Cox decides to get in on the censoring game, and I don't like what they're doing, I can't do a thing about it.

It's a good point, however practically they have no financial incentive to censor based on content. Yeah if could one day, so you're at their mercy, but so far their censorship has been around extorting higher fees either from you or from services you connect to (Netflix, Google, Facebook etc). Verizon for example throttled my Youtube and Netflix even as I was paying a premium for high tier "FiOS" or whatever it was called package.

Google, Twitter, Facebook on the other has been engaged in a more dangerous censorship. We saw the story yesterday about FB squashing posts from Romanian protest organizers. So in that respect it is closer to the classic silencing and squashing of free speech.

Calling them out and taking a jab at them doesn't seem terrible. It won't save net neutrality at this point but if it forced or embarrassed those companies to reduce their censorship it seems worth it.

> If the argument is that a few key monopoly-like players dictate what content we can access

I can see how Comcast/Verizon/AT&T can dictate content, but Twitter? Really?

"Twitter Is Bigger Threat to Open Net Than ISPs"

So he admits ISPs are a threat?

I don't appreciate the direction the nn discussion has gone. To me the core and fundamental principal of innovation and growth is connectivity - pure, raw, naked and unfettered access to an open network. I am and always have been able to choose any "edge" provider or network service or content I desire, always. This is not true with regards to simple connectivity. These two things are being improperly (nefariously, imo) tied together much like the access and content mergers - these two things simply do not belong together - access is not content is not access. I do recognize and understand the broader discussion around content and services when it pertains to inordinate impact, influence or control via overly influential and controlling services - services which, for the most part, we can still all choose whether or not to use whenever we want.

The only true and immediate threats I can currently perceive are coming from those controlling the gates to access. We've been robbed of the basic premise of title II protections for a vital communications service because we allowed the topic of discussion to change. "Network Neutrality" was never a good hook and now it has enabled the loss of focus on the core problem that is ISP service in this country. Twitter content? No so much.

It's a conflation of two separate issues.

If you have open network access then you have access to alternative providers that will host people that may be banned or restricted on Twitter (see GNU Social and Mastodon).

If you have ISPs regulating what you can and cannot access then you don't even have that choice - you get the worst of both worlds - Twitter acts as a gatekeeper and your ISP acts as a gatekeeper on top of that.

It is a conflation and if Pai doesn't get this, then he has no business having the job he has.

I think he does get it though and this is a tactic that might work for him.

I think it's worth making a distinction over regulating the internet vs regulating ISPs. The internet should be unregulated but ISPs should be regulated. ISPs provide a telecom service while companies like Twitter provide an information service. They aren't the same thing at all and we shouldn't let telecom companies pick the winning info service companies.

Red herring. Twitter will never have the power to throttle competing websites. This is completely unrelated.

Almost all the Ajit Pai stories these days appear to be Astroturfing. They are cleverly manipulating the masses of voting population, which doesn't think like most folks here at HN, into believing that this is a great thing for them.

Astroturf and manipulation of media messages | Sharyl Attkisson | TEDx University of Nevada => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU

I don't like his argument.

I think we should regulate ISPS,DNS providers, Social media, and other parts of the Internet Ecosystem to be neutral.

Though I agree full with Pai's statement:

“what I know is not the right answer is that a cabal of ten tech executives with names like Matthew, Mark, Jack, . . . Jeff are the ones choosing what content goes online and what content doesn’t go online.”

I don't like this will be used probably successfully as a wedge to destroy net neutrality.

No, instead it should be a cabal of ten tech executives with names like Brian, Lowell, Marcelo, Thomas, and John - you know the good ol' boys who have made Pai rich and have jobs lined up for him as soon as he retires from the FCC. Those silly new-age-tech guys don't understand how the game works, and think that the constitution has any place in our "Democracy".

> Those silly new-age-tech guys don't understand how the game works, and think that the constitution has any place in our "Democracy".

What part of Pai's actions go against the constitution? Unilateral actions by the executive can also unilaterally be undone by the executive.

More durable change rests with congress or the courts.

>Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

If ISPs are allowed to put up a tollway preventing or slowing my access to the press - at their own discretion, that is absolutely a violation of the constitution.

That so-called “cabal” determines what content exists on their network of connected machines, not what content goes online. The nature of the Internet is such that it is not one machine, nor a small group of machines, that decides what content is accessible.

I think concern over censorship on dominant, privately-operated platforms is fair, but Pai’s statement reflecting those concerns is simply untrue.

He makes a good point that a small number of gatekeepers for what is accessible online isn't good but are we really at the point of being openly racist and sexist? It's not like it would suddenly be okay if the names were Aliyah, Marcus, Cho, and Katie.

Maybe it was lost in translation of the quote, I believe those were references to the names of actual executives: Mark (Zuckerberg), Jeff (Bezos), Jack (Dorsey)

I give him points for cleverness but saying 'names like' is still not so subtly saying that it's because they're white men.

So, I can have any kind of water in my house, but Pai wants to control whether I have crushed ice or cubes?

The thing I ultimately don't get, and that makes this entire argument disingenuous, is that, if you believe that what Twitter is doing is wrong, then why on earth would you decide that you want to enable more actors, especially ones that people cannot avoid, to be able to do that?

This guy is twisting arguments to spew a talking point favorable to his agenda

This logic is so flawed, it's a bit scary he has the platform to voice it.

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