Comment by dingo_bat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dingo_bat | Hacker News Reader

I understand the motivations behind net neutrality. What I don't understand is why do we not extend this to all kinds of communication monopolies. Some examples:

1. Reddit is the monopoly in online newsboards. As long as it is there, nothing else can prop up and gain traction. However, I cannot exercise my right to free speech on the website without risking getting blocked by a moderator or even admins. Net neutrality should force reddit to carry my opinions and preserve my comments as I typed them. Also, they shouldn't be allowed to display ads. That results in a "fast lane" for people who pay them.

2. Facebook is the monopoly in social networks. As long as facebook exists, nobody can become relevant. Sure there is stuff like instagram and snapchat, but my Facebook profile is my de facto online phone number. Facebook should not be allowed to block my profile, flag my posts. They must carry my posts and content like anybody else's. Again, no ads can be allowed in a neutral net.

3. Youtube is the monopoly in user created video. They should not be able to block my account or pay me less money if their advertisers don't like my content. All content must be treated equally. Everyone should get access.

All of these areas are natural monopolies, just like last mile broadband/fiber. At any time, there can only be one "Youtube". It can be replaced by something else, but there will always be one highly dominant video website, which people will inevitably visit to see the latest movie trailer or music video. Why does net neutrality exclude all these?

I wouldn't be so quick to conflate market share with a monopoly. We're one a message board other than reddit, and I could name hundreds with 10K+ users. Is reddit popular? No doubt. But it's far from a monopoly. A monopoly is generally defined as having a high barrier to entry, combined with price discrimination.

You can certainly argue that the userbase/content of reddit/facebook/youtube constitutes a high barrier to entry. However, the userbase/content of facebook/reddit/yt is a feature, and not fundamental to the service itself (you can have a video sharing site with just a few videos). This is why these three are not natural monopolies. In contrast, serving packets is all an ISP can do. It either serves them (at some speed), or it doesn't. I would emphasize the barrier to entry is the real capital costs that are integral to the (sole) function of the service. It's simply not possible for every New Yorker to dig up the sidewalk to lay fiber. That is what constitutes a natural monopoly.

As to the price discrimination point, Facebook/YT/reddit do not, as far as I'm aware, solid control of ad pricing, although I'm sure they would love to. Your ISP, however, exercises significant pricing controls, especially if they are the only game in town.

> It's simply not possible for every New Yorker to dig up the sidewalk to lay fiber. That is what constitutes a natural monopoly.

It's simply not possible for every reddit user to code up their own reddit. Why is this not a natural monopoly?

It’s very possible — the full source to an older version is on github.

That aside, it might be a poor example and explanation on my part. Other than technical competency, there is nothing inherently stopping everyone from having a shitty one man version of reddit, independent of everyone else’s shitty one man reddit.

For the New Yorker example, everyone must work together — if I cut my neighbors line putting mine in, there’s crosstalk etc, the whole thing falls apart.

The point I am trying to make is that the ISP does one thing only and that thing requires cooperation. Reddit does lots of things, but cooperation is not integral to those things. Granted, it wouldn’t be worth a whole lot, but that’s not the issue.

This is an amendment to the first clause of the original comment. My point about pricing pressure still stands.

> It’s very possible — the full source to an older version is on github.

What makes reddit "reddit" is the millions of users, not the code (which is open and very basic).

> there is nothing inherently stopping everyone from having a shitty one man version of reddit, independent of everyone else’s shitty one man reddit.

There is: usage. My one-person reddit is useless if you and 100 million other do not use it actively.

> For the New Yorker example, everyone must work together — if I cut my neighbors line putting mine in, there’s crosstalk etc, the whole thing falls apart.

Exactly, everyone must converge on a single reddit. There can be a very long tail of similar sites but none of those will come close to within an order of magnitude of reddit. They "fall apart" if everyone doesn't "work together".

> The point I am trying to make is that the ISP does one thing only

What would that thing be? To me it looks like they do several things. Digging up the neighborhood, installing fiber, installing routers and switches, operating the network, connecting to the internet via bgp, etc. And what has the number of things you do got to do with the issue of nn?

> Reddit does lots of things, but cooperation is not integral to those things. Granted, it wouldn’t be worth a whole lot, but that’s not the issue.

It's exactly the issue. It is technically possible for me and my neighbor to dig up our street and make a private network among ourselves. Is it in any way a substitute for internet? It isn't. Just like a shitty one-man reddit.

Of course this is applicable to facebook, youtube and other such service, not just reddit.

> As to the price discrimination point, Facebook/YT/reddit do not, as far as I'm aware, solid control of ad pricing, although I'm sure they would love to. Your ISP, however, exercises significant pricing controls, especially if they are the only game in town.

I didn't understand your point that's why didn't respond to it earlier. Care to explain again?

Dunno if you're still interested, but here's my clarifications.

What makes reddit great is the millions of users. Millions of user are instrumental to its success and popularity. However, reddit can still exist if no one used it. It wouldn't be very successful or popular, but it can still exist. I fully agree a one person reddit is useless, but useless != impossible to exist.

In the network case, you make a good point. However, I think there is still a distinction to be made between an entity that lives on the internet vs an entity that supplies the internet, which I think goes back to the original barrier to entry argument.

If you decided reddit was awful, you could conceivably run your own with fairly little cost. On the other hand, digging up your street, putting up poles, buying switches etc is far more capital intensive, and that's just a network for two people! Even if both groups are shitty, one is clearly prohibitively more costly than the other. This distinction warrants a difference in treatment, where the ISP is subject to NN but reddit is not.

To put it another way, it's totally reasonable to create a parallel reddit, so much so that several exist. It may be popular, but it's reasonably possible. Creating parallel internet infrastructure is downright inconceivable. No one in their right mind would think laying fiber optic cable across the pacific for a parallel network is a workable idea because local_ISP is awful.

A monopoly isn't just defined by being popular and having a large market share. It needs to have several other features, one of the ones I think is especially important is price control. Google/Apple/reddit do not have price control, the ISP does.

Wikipedia has an excellent article on monopolies.

These are higher abstractions than the internet itself.

Net neutrality does not exclude these.

What happens if Comcast decides to dramatically slow down Reddit/Facebook/YouTube in favour of another service? Your point no longer stands.

> Net neutrality does not exclude these.

It does if my reddit blocks my account for posting in /r/fatpeoplehate. It does if facebook shows an advertisement post to more people than my status.

> What happens if Comcast decides to dramatically slow down Reddit/Facebook/YouTube in favour of another service? Your point no longer stands.

My point becomes stronger. This is exactly why we need net neutrality for youtube, reddit, and amazon. What happens if amazon blocks the sale of chromecast on their website? What happens if Youtube blocks me when I'm using an Aamazon stick? These things are happening and they are as wrong as Comcast slowing down Netflix.

1. Is Reddit the only online newsboard you can access locally? If the answer is "no", I don't see how it's a monopoly. Aren't you...here? Posting?

As I noted in my comment, it doesn't matter if I can access voat. Because reddit is much better and I simply won't get relevant news from voat. Just because you can access a 3G GSM network at home doesn't mean Comcast doesn't have monopoly.

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