The FCC's Ajit Pai now openly mocking net neutrality protesters with new video | Hacker News Reader

The FCC's Ajit Pai now openly mocking net neutrality protesters with new video

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To be fair - the guy has people literally photoshopping dicks on his face and other horrible things. This is considerably less overt "mocking" than that - and it's more at the outrage, not people individually.

Even if you think it's a horrible decision, I think he's allowed to make his case in an internet culture way.

If people get outraged enough at this, maybe this will be the impetus for people and startups to aggressively go after ISPs? You saw that happen when the T-mobile/AT&T merger failed, T-Mobile got competitive and is one of the major reasons you don't have 2-year contracts on phones anymore.

I'm not sold it's a great idea, but the people claiming Armageddon seem to be overplaying their hand.

It doesn’t matter. As a public servant you serve the people, period. Your conduct matters and the perceptions created by your conduct matters.

Whatever his position on the issue, Mr. Pai is out of line for mocking the citizens that he serves. It reflects a lack of class and reinforces the perception that the FCC is not serving the interests of the people.

So many apologists appearing out of nowhere. It's almost like a paid campaign.

You don't have to be paid to be a sucker. For clarification, by sucker I mean someone who is losing something in an exchange without getting anything in return and thinks they somehow got the upper hand in a situation.

Yes. I am definitely paid. Totally anonymous. Hard to find any records of me online. Very astute observation.

I often try to approach things from the perspective of empathy. To make that video he has got to believe what he's saying... Is that possible?

I agree that Ajit Pai is really hard to separate from how enthusiastically he defends his actions.

Like, there's three options, none of which I like:

1. NN is actually as unnecessary as he says and his memes are doing the country a service.

2. He genuinely believes the above statement despite most of the internet disagreeing vehemently with him.

3. He is really capable of shilling out for ISPs in such a in-your-face manner.

He certainly doesn't fit into the typical politician/regulator mold. It's baffling.

"He certainly doesn't fit into the typical politician/regulator mold. It's baffling."

He's a shining example of Trump's promise to evict the political class in exchange for the corporate class. Seems to make sense that he'd be so obvious about being a shill, that's what we (as a country, not me or probably you in particular) asked for when we elected Trump.

While I agree in general that this is a trend and we will see more of it, keep in mind that Pai was an Obama appointee (at the request of McConnell) in 2012 and Trump simply promoted him to Chairman.

True, but given Obama's stance on NN, if he had a theoretical third term I don't think Pai would be Chairman.

I also find him at the very least interesting. The first interview he gave after the announcement that they were going to pursue this was with a relatively small and irreverent podcast that indexes high for libertarians.[1] He's definitely hard to categorize as a stock corporate shill. Supporting point 2, Ben Thompson does a pretty good job of summarizing the case for Pai's views from a more detached position [2][3].

[1] http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/21/ajit-pai-we-are-returning-...

[2] https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title-ii/

[3] https://stratechery.com/2017/light-touch-cable-and-dsl-the-b...

Oh he totally believes it because this video shows all the truly trivial things about the Internet that makes it merely "cable TV on crack cocaine." Not the actual Internet that has been the most important force in culture and technology in a century.

To big incumbents like Verizon, your job is to eat what's shoved at you and crap cash. That's it. You're just an abstraction for these elites to buy their 5th home in Maui.

Corporate brainwashing by Verizon? I'm not fully serious, but at the same time you've gotta wonder...

I'd like to pay for the Democracy upgrade.

The industry got its money's worth with this stooge.

As a Canadian, I find it fascinating to watch this develops.

I'd like to say three things:

1. It may be a bad move. Reasons are many and rehashed to death. Let me skip this one.

2. It may be a good thing. Especially if it pushes people away from FB, Google, Instagram, etc. All of which are top supporters of it, have made billions off user free content, and have stifled all inovation by various means (patents, buying or suiting competition, etc). Maybe it will push people away from monocultures and bring diversity to this stabilized ecosystem. Heck I'm already seeing bunch of geeks starting their own ISPs in USA today.

3. Most likely none of the above, whoever paid for this will try to milk it in ways unimaginable. Trump+Aji appear to be great distraction so far.

This administration and the direction we are heading reminds me of the movie Idiocracy.

If "Office Space" chronicled the 1990s, and "Silicon Valley" the 2000s, "Idiocracy" may predict the 2020s. Mike Judge for Prophet?

Cringe.

I'm going to cry because he mocked me

Set aside for a moment your feeling on net neutrality.

We can all admire the way Pai is mocking the massive media machine that's been picking on him for months. I'm glad to see it, I'm sick of the monopolistic media machine.

I agree. I'm amazed to watch the right take on the popular media in a mocking and sarcastic way at the same time the left is approaching their own media issues with rehearsed statements and carefully-worded press releases. It's like the behaviors of the two parties have flip-flopped in the past ~3 years.

I've been hearing "The Left can't meme" for a few months now, and the right seems to be proving it to be true.

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