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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

I may be alone, but this feels completely hopeless. This administration is the most corrupt, craven, and citizen-hostile in our history. Net neutrality is hardly the biggest problem facing America, and they keep doing much worse things, almost out of spite. And Congress has proven to be utterly feckless in their duty to hold the executive branch accountable. So I guess I just don't really see the point of engaging, because they. do. not. care. about. us.

At the end of the day, we need to flip control of Congress. I don't think anything else will work.

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I would say don't blame the administration. Blame the corps and don't wait to vote every 4 years in the elections, vote every day with your wallet.

To start, be reactive, switch to T-Mobile or any telco that is pro-net neutrality

Then start being pro-active. Look for bad patterns in companies and punish them. For example, Google says they support net-neutrality but are happy to block amazon devices from playing youtube. Maybe it is time to give a clear message to Google that behaviors like this are not accepted by you?

Replace Google with any X company. Don't be surprised if in 20 years X-company will only allow you to access X-stuff on X-devices running on X-network.

Money is what makes the world go around. Use your money to steer the world to the direction you want.

Or, you know, just keep using Google and Verizon because it is more convenient. But in this case you lose your right to complain.

The problem with that argument, is it's damn near impossible to simply buy your way out of a rigged system. It's a nice premise, shopping ethically, but much like recycling isn't going to stop climate change, there's only so much power an individual consumer has in a large and complex system with perverse incentives.

T-Mobile promotes a service called "Binge On" which is anti-net-neutrality: https://www.t-mobile.com/offer/binge-on-streaming-video.html Paying for a "fast lane" is anti-net-neutrality regardless of whether or not it is "pro-consumer"

Consumers tend to cast votes in favor of pro-consumer policies

> Paying for a "fast lane" is anti-net-neutrality

Who is paying for "fast lane" in this case?

Please do correct me if I am wrong, but the way I understand it, video providers don't have to pay T-Mobile to be part of binge-on.

You can read more in the original Net Neutrality declaration:

https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/201... on pp. 53-66, from "No Paid Prioritization" to "Sponsored Data and Usage Allowances"

Binge on also "optimizes" your stream for mobile performance, i.e. throttles it to the data rate of SD, which is also against the rules in net neutrality.

These are technicalities that are not important at this specific moment or applicable to the argument.

The important part is that T-Mobile is not one of the companies that want to destroy net neutrality.

Your fight may be just, but it’s for a later time, when net neutrality is saved.

> These are technicalities that are not important at this specific moment or applicable to the argument.

These technicalities are important, because they represent the bulk of the question: "what is NN?"

Also, the FCC rules from 2015 don't even apply to mobile carriers...

That is not correct. The 2015 order does in fact apply to wireless carriers:

https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/201...

pp. 9-10:

Consistent with the 2010 Order, today’s Order applies its rules to the consumer-facing service that broadband networks provide, which is known as “broadband Internet access service” (BIAS) and is defined to be: A mass-market retail service by wire or radio that provides the capability to transmit data to and receive data from all or substantially all Internet endpoints, including any capabilities that are incidental to and enable the operation of the communications service, but excluding dial-up Internet access service. This term also encompasses any service that the Commission finds to be providing a functional equivalent of the service described in the previous sentence, or that is used to evade the protections set forth in this Part.

> The important part is that T-Mobile is not one of the companies that want to destroy net neutrality.

T-Mobile gets free press and gets to publicly swipe at AT&T and Verizon (the big gorillas in the mobile data space), but what they are doing is called "zero-rating" which isn't very different from violating the principles of Net Neutrality.

The difference between data that is accessible versus partner data (NN) is that is gratis to access (zero-rating) isn't that much if you can barely afford your cell phone bill (which is about 50% of the US population if surveys about financial savings are to be believed).

I proved to you that T-Mobile is violating net neutrality and you respond with "T-Mobile is not one of the companies that want to destroy net neutrality"

You don't seem to understand what net neutrality means, but you're not alone, it seems like few do.

I didn’t say you are wrong, you are absolutely right; binge on is violation of NN.

I am just disagreeing on the timing; is it is a fight to fight another day, since T-Mobile is not actively pushing FCC to revoke NN.

Why would you recommend that people protest NN repeal by switching to a service provider that you claim is "pro net-neutrality" despite the fact that they built and delivered a product that is in violation of NN?

My theory is that your understanding of what NN means doesn't line up with what the law says.

Not everything is black and white.

You have a service provider A that is actively trying to repeal NN.

You have a service provider B that is not trying to repeal NN, but as you "proved" violated "net-neutrality".

Switching to SP B, it shows that you don't want NN repealed.

Ive never understood how such a system is profitable. Surely it costs them money to provide streamig service. How is it that they are able to sell it for free? Perhaps it is provided as a loss leader?

Business practices can be both anti-competitive and pro-consumer at the same time.

I think it helps them control costs. My understanding is T-mobile is basically providing a lower speed than normal pipe for video so it streams at a lower quality. On mobile it probably quality doesn't matter as much, so overall it reduces the overall network bandwidth.

Not to defend this administration, but we had to fight Obama on this too.

Obama's administration got a lot of things wrong too, but at least we won that fight, right? At least they eventually responded to their constituency? I may have the facts wrong though, please correct me if so!

Yep you’re right. I just want to make sure this isn’t a “left” versus “right” issue or an “anything but Trump” issue. This is about corporate sway of people who don’t have a lot of background in the subject.

We had to fight Wheeler, who then bowed to both public pressure and pressure from Obama to support net neutrality rules.

https://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/tom-wheeler-net-neutr...

Congress was feckless when the Democrats controlled it, too. Congress has been growing increasingly useless for the last 30 years at least.

Something is breaking in US politics. Or, rather, several things are breaking - decency, civility, honesty, common sense, and probably several other things. I don't know what the root cause is, or even if there is only one.

Simon Sinek has an interesting hypothesis about the cause of the breakdown in politics in his book "Leaders Eat Last". I'm giving a very brief summary, but in that book he suggested that most US federal politicians used to live a lot of their careers in Washington DC, attend similar social events and send their children to the same schools, which helped them relate to each other (across party lines). It is suggested that the closeness created decency and civility between them, but now that a lot of them still live in their home states, they no longer see the opposition as similar to themselves, and it's become a "us vs them" kind of thing for everything.

The problem is choice, or lack thereof.

The root of the problem is we only have 2 choices: red vs blue. 2 choices is only slightly better than no choice (1 choice). With just 2 choices, almost no one gets what they want. And every 4 years, one party just undoes what the last party did.

What we need is 50 different choices. Let each state do what it wants, give states most of the power. States should get most of the taxes, federal should get a small sliver. Federal government should be small, and only do things that can only be done at the federal level. States having all the power is how the US started out and that's how it was meant to be. We need to get back to that. The US is way too large for a 1 size fits all policy.

Oh happy friend! There is only one choice. All our congresspersons represent the rich and Princeton University did the analysis to prove it: https://youtu.be/5tu32CCA_Ig

So any polling method besides first past the post?

Sign me up

There's that and the fact that our federal representation being so heavily based on the arbitrary geographic divisions that are states is in practice a giant gerrymander in favor of rural voters. Some rural citizens of low population states (say, in Wyoming) have Senate votes that carry 100 times the weight of the Senate vote of a citizen of a large state like New York, California, or Texas. Their Congressional vote may have nearly triple the weight of that of a city dweller simply because of minimum district sizes in states with more than one district, and their Presidential vote 8x because the 2 extra electoral votes corresponding to the senate seats are diluted among fewer congressional districts.

As long as we have this system, our democracy and the ideal of "one person, one vote" is a joke.

Flipping congress isn't something that is just going to happen spontaneously. The change will take work and coordination from many people to accomplish that goal.

So engaging today isn't just about fixing this issue in this moment (which I'd agree is unlikely), but it's also about finding others who believe as you do and maybe crossing paths with them as part of a community protest activity on and offline, and helping to create communication networks that do help flip control of congress (but I'd add also reinvigorate the voice of more regular people) in the future.

I agree. This fight is already lost.

Other than that, I'm not going to wade into politics here on HN today (learned that lesson the hard way a few times) other than to say I think we are at a point where actual representative democracy is at stake over the next couple years, and net neutrality, while a huge deal, is small potatoes compared to the fights we need to figure out how to win.

Representative democracy is in real danger, if not already lost. To me, what's damaging it is that representatives regard themselves as representing Team Red or Team Blue, instead of their constituents.

I think the coming fight is over Constitutional limits to executive power. If we lose that fight, it's game over. If we win it, we can worry about trying to fix representative democracy.

It's almost tragic poetic justice that all the people on the right /and/ left that were trying to convince the middle that you don't concentrate so much unaccountable power in the Executive Branch during the Obama years only had to wait until the next election cycle to see what happens when someone truly unfit for that power grabs the reins.

Agreed.

I've been following this administration closely in the past year. It appears that they do nothing in good faith. Just look at how Congress tried to pass the health care bill and tax bills. If you want to fight for net neutrality you better turn out to vote for candidates who support your position. At the end of the day control of Congress is the only way to ensure this.

Have you considered that maybe there are thoughtful reasons why people might disagree with your policy views? If you really can't understand conservative policy aside from it being "corrupt, craven, citizen-hostile and spiteful", then I don't think you're giving the issues an objective analysis.

Disagreement is no longer permitted. No matter which "side" you're on, the other side is relegated to a platitude.

Perfectly said, but ironically, since I'm not on "the other side" here from a political perspective. I voted for Bush twice, Obama once, didn't vote in 2012 (sadly) but would have voted for Romney, and wouldn't be saying any of this if Mike Pence was president. But amusingly, you assume that my disapproval of Trump means that I'm "on the other side" and just spouting platitudes. Ironic.

eh, I only got the impression you were "on the other side" when you mentioned flipping control of congress.

For better or worse (probably worse) we have a two party system, and one party has full control of Congress and the executive branch. So "flipping control" in this case means breaking that lock on power. I don't really want Democrats to hold Congress and the White House either.

My view on this administration is about more than their policy positions.

For the record, I grew up conservative, my whole family is, I'm fairly libertarian in my views, and I didn't vote for either major party due to their policy positions. I understand conservative policy perfectly well.

You are being disingenuous at best, because Ajit Pai certainly has a principled argument against the FCC inventing Net Neutrality. You may disagree, but you are just making ad hominem attacks about corruption. I think this interview with Hugh Hewitt and Ajit Pai sums up his position clearly. TLDR: The FCC doesn't have teh authority to regulate the Internet, Congress does. If you want net neutrality, pass a law.

HH: Now I want to geek out with a fellow lawyer. Years ago, Dick Wiley tried to get me to become a coms lawyer, and I didn’t choose that path, and I’m glad about that. You went down that road, but I want to talk to you more broadly about the Chevron deference issue that came up with Justice Gorsuch in his confirmation hearings. The Congress has never passed anything about the internet. There is no predicate for you guys to regulate. And to me, that’s the beginning and the end. And the idea that we would have Chevron deference towards rules that have no predicate in a legislative act is extraordinary to me, Chairman Pai. Do your Democratic colleagues not get that?

AP: Well, I think they tend to think that the law is more elastic, that even beyond Chevron, if there is a gap in the law, that you can simply essentially make it up, even though Congress didn’t necessarily have the internet in mind when it crafted Title II in 1933 which I think is a fair assumption. Nonetheless, they think the worst thing in the world would be, to be, to have a market that is simply unregulated. We have to find some way to fit this square peg of 2017 into the round hole of 1934 laws. And that’s part of the problem, I think, is that Chevron presumes that an expert agency is acting within the scope of its expertise. And I don’t think it was here. It was more of a political impulse to, as I said, solve a problem that doesn’t exist. And that is, that’s buttressed by the fact by President Obama’s instructions who was to adopt these regulations. We didn’t adopt them of our own free will in 2014 and 2015.

HH: Well, this takes me back to why I favor what you guys do on the AM/FM band, for example, is rooted in a real law that existed, that was passed after radio came into being, and when people understood that there would be problems. When I bring up Mexico stations, it’s, I’m asking the FCC to do what it was intended to do. But obviously, nothing has ever been passed about the internet in the way that you are empowered to regulate concentration between AM and FM bands, and we talk about the subcaps. You are not authorized by the original Constitutional Article I authority to weigh into the internet.

AP: That’s exactly right. We are an independent agency that is a creature of Congress, and thus, we can only exercise the authority that Congress has given us. And the argument I’ve consistently made is like look, I know that this is an area of great public interest, but the right way to channel that public debate is through Congress…

> "corrupt, craven, citizen-hostile and spiteful"

For the record, I'm not much different from a stereotypical commie pinko in my views, but I agree that this administration is cynical and "for sale" on a whole new level, and would vastly prefer dealing with actual libertarians or conservatives. I'm actually somewhat conservative myself, in the sense of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." But pick your favorite issue, and there's a good chance that the Trump folk are on the wrong side.

I can sympathize with the idea of relying more on market-based approaches, but in my view that would require pretty aggressive anti-trust enforcement. In other words: I can see an argument for allowing monopolies but regulating them heavily (a-la the AT&T of old), or for light regulation in a highly competitive market (and relying on competition to prevent companies from screwing their customers).

It seems like most Republicans want neither significant regulation nor significant anti-trust enforcement, and I just can't see how they would honestly expect that to produce any result other than a small number of monopolies charging customers whatever they want and ramming whatever practices they want down their customers' throats.

There are thoughtful reasons why people might disagree with policy views, yes. And, speaking as a conservative, I appreciate you trying to keep people from painting me with their broad brush.

But (again speaking as a conservative) there is something completely abnormal about this administration. It rode to power on conservative votes, but it isn't a conservative administration. It seems mostly to be knee-jerk ego-driven reflex reaction to each day's hot news, rather than coherent policy.

In fact, I fear this administration.

> we need to flip control of Congress.

Yes, that will fix everything.

Nothing will fix everything. But that wasn't my claim, so I'm having trouble seeing how your comment is being made in good faith. Is this just a "whataboutism" to imply that Democrats are just as bad so it doesn't matter?

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