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Comment by dahfizz | Hacker News Reader

If you believed the scare tactics at the time, losing net neutrality literally threatened the end of the internet as we know it. But my internet has worked the same before, during, and after net neutrality. I really don't get what all the fuss is about.

However, if you really do believe this is a civilization defining piece of regulation, Why leave it to the FCC? It seems like people on both sides are happy to leave this super duper important decision to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats. Everyone loves executive overreach when its their side that does it I guess.

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Why did the mega providers so desperately want net neutrality to die? Why did so many lobbyists work to kill it?

"I really don't get what all the fuss is about."

This is a bit like the Y2K bug. There was a huge amount of noise and fear-mongering, and millions of developers spent an enormous amount of time fixing code and preparing systems. Y2K came and suddenly everyone is sure it was all just drama for nothing. What was the fuss about?

The massive amount of "scare tactics" made it a mainstream conversation. The images of tiered internet were spread far and wide and it put everyone on alert. We can't A:B universes, but I suspect that if net neutrality was quietly axed and no one noticed or cared, we would absolutely have had services very much like the worst-case images imagined.

>Why did the mega providers so desperately want net neutrality to die? Why did so many lobbyists work to kill it?

because they want more leverage in their negotiations with netflix, amazon, google, spotify etc. That's all it boils down to, how much one major corporation has to pay another major corporation.

There's a reason why they're only pushing for neutrality on the ISPs, if they were actually concerned about large corporations abusing their control over critical online infrastructure they'd be pushing to regulate other classes of "service providers" like google, amazon, cloudflare, etc.

> if they were actually concerned about large corporations abusing their control over critical online infrastructure they'd be pushing to regulate other classes of "service providers" like google, amazon, cloudflare, etc.

Many of the people who are pushing for net neutrality are also pushing for this. It's such an easy strawman counterpoint to just say "If people really cared about educating children, why are they only pushing for better schools? They should also be pushing for better in-home care and childhood nutrition!" ... um, they are?

You might be and if so then I'm glad you are, but in my post above I was specifically referring to all the large silicon valley corporations pushing for NN.

As for the legislation in the OP, they're not trying to accomplish that and TBH I really doubt the democrats[1] even want it to go further than the ISPs because they've been the beneficiaries of policies at companies like AWS that have deplatformed right-wing organizations[2].

[1] by which i mean the democrats that actually wield institutional authority in the american government, not every DNC party-member in general

[2] not that i agree with the organizations that are being deplatformed but there is a principle at stake.

Sounds like a great idea to me. Compute neutrality, storage neutrality, etc. Bits are bits, don't look any deeper!

Why did the mega streamers so desperately want NN to survive?

Because the mega streamers like Netflix, Youtube, and Amazon would benefit.

The argument is not that the internet would suddenly die, it’s that it would get chopped up and rebundled a-La cable tv. And we’re seeing isps give preferential treatment to services that pay them, just not instantly and only that because it’s been only 2 years (edit: comment below points out it’s been 5), business sales cycles are long and they aren’t stupid enough to immediately turn the heat up to 11 while the frog is still paying attention.

> because it’s been only 2 years

The net neutrality repeal took effect in 2018, its been 5 years

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/technology/net-neutrality...

Apologies idk where I got the 2 years from. But I still feel like this too short a time period to claim the experiment is run , especially when several states like California[0] have their own net neutrality laws since 2018. I feel it’s kinda like saying that we don’t need federal emissions standards because the sky hasn’t fallen without them (but they are in major markets like California).

[0] https://mashable.com/article/california-net-neutrality-can-b...

> The argument is not that the internet would suddenly die

From honest/informed actors, you're correct but the FUD campaign during the repeal was incredibly dramatic and exaggerated.

States passed net neutrality laws.

> But my internet has worked the same before, during, and after net neutrality. I really don't get what all the fuss is about.

Mine didn't. Verizon blackmailed Netflix and Google repeatedly for access to their network. YouTube and Netflix were unusuable for FIOS customers until they came to an agreement where Netflix gave piles of cash to Verizon.

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