Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination rules
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
A US law required the FCC to issue rules "preventing digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin," and gave the FCC some leeway in how to implement them. The resulting FCC rules let consumers file complaints about alleged discrimination and define the elements the FCC would examine when investigating whether an Internet service provider should be punished for discrimination.
The FCC defined digital discrimination of access as "policies or practices, not justified by genuine issues of technical or economic feasibility, that differentially impact consumers' access to broadband Internet access service based on their income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin or are intended to have such differential impact."
I very much doubt ISPs are in the habit to turn down expansion in any area (and therefore more money/maintain their regional monopoly) because of the race of people living there. It seems like a way to force them to build out in non-white neighborhoods over other places even if it doesn’t make economic sense.
For one, that’s racism against white people by another name. We see that a lot now but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight it.
For two, it’s just an incredible waste of resources at the FCC. There are better ways to guarantee good internet for everyone instead.
That's like climate denialism. There is a documented 30-year history of ISPs not expanding their network while claiming subsidies for exactly that: https://newnetworks.com/bookofbrokenpromises.htm .
...even if it doesn’t make economic sense
You're conveniently ignoring the "not justified by genuine issues of technical or economic feasibility" in your own goddamn quote.
You are conflating two things.
I haven't read the book but does the data show they did it in a discriminatory manner, that is they didn't expand to minority areas even when it made business sense?
Then why grant them monopoly rights in the first place? Why not remove monopoly rights instead of adding more regulations/bandaids?
Does a free market have monopoly rights?
Because it is in society's interest that utilities be available to all. We don't have a post office for only the areas profitable to deliver to.
Yeah, which has nothing to do with race at all, and everything to do with population density. ISP’s don’t want to invest to expand to rural areas with few customers for obvious reasons, none of which have anything to do with discrimination of any kind.
Those proposed changes are not racist, they are simply and blindly anti-poor.
GP is saying that white non-economically-profitable neighbourhoods get no protection from that rule.
Also not if, for example, an ISP decides to expand to a minority area instead of a white area because of DEI policies.
In theory that should also be forbidden by the rule against racial discrimination, but in practice it's often not enforced that way.
You're doubting something that you made up.
>It seems like a way to force them to build out in non-white neighborhoods over other places even if it doesn’t make economic sense.
No, it doesn't.
> For one, that’s racism against white people by another name. We see that a lot now but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight it.
The thought of a person in 2024 who believes that the US government is systematically working to be racist against white people would be hilarious, if it were not so sad.
> There are better ways to guarantee good internet for everyone instead.
Like what?
This is the FCC press release on the announcement.[0] You might want to read it. Here are the actual rules[1]. You might want to read those too. And think about how peculiar it is that, out of all the groups defined, that you've chosen to focus exclusively on race. You know what the say. A man who has lived his entire life of privilege feels persecution in equality.
[0] https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-398477A1.txt
[1] https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-23-100A1.pdf
Then presumably the law will have no effect.
Your conclusion is assuming bad intentions, but frankly the effect of most anti-discrimination provisions tends to be rather minor. It's extremely difficult to prove, unless people are blatant about it.
Also ISPs: "Ooh! Hey! Can we have some of that money in the jar labeled 'federal money for ensuring equitable deployment of critical infrastructure' ?"
How about this. Take it all back. Public utilities with equal access and reliability for all.
I’m not even going to try and address the other top level comment crying “reverse racism” just WTAF.
The two are qualitatively different, it has nothing to do with news coverage.
California has more outages than Texas.
There is a difference between regulation and subsidies.
Texas has much cheaper electricy than California:
https://quickelectricity.com/texas-and-california-energy-sid...
> Texas is the top producer of renewable electricity in the US, followed by California. Both states are rich in renewable sources and actively working to expand their generation capacity.
Edit: Texas is not a free market! It has subsidies & regulations.
It is regulated to make long term reliability and capacity planning economically unviable.
California has more outages than Texas.
Mainly due to wild fires which are beyond anyone's control. The outages in Texas are mostly the direct result of political ideology and incompetence.
Do you have any metric that validates what you say? Becuase, a reasonable person can calmly make the opposite argument.
You can protect the grid against wildfires. OTOH, California's utilities also cause wildfires due to incompetence [1]. Texas had a record-low winter storm that caused a major outage.
Also, California's electricity is more than twice as costly as that of Texas.
https://quickelectricity.com/texas-and-california-energy-sid...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/pge-to-pay-55-million-fo...
> Pacific Gas & Electric has agreed to pay more than $55 million to avoid criminal prosecution for two major wildfires started by aging Northern California power lines belonging to the nation’s largest utility, prosecutors announced Monday
Followed by record high summer heat that caused outages too. Texas power grid operates on the verge of collapse --- because of bassackwards "free market" ideology. You don't have to take my word for it, several studies have said the same.
Also, California's electricity is more than twice as costly as that of Texas.
Texas uses tax payer money to subsidize their grid's inadequacy. They pay selected large enterprises to shutdown and stop consuming when their grid starts to fail.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-mining-cryptocurrency-r...
This is the prevailing "free market" ideology in Texas --- instead of making it economically viable for providers to add more capacity.
Competition is what we need, look at cities where Google fiber is available, internet for everyone is faster and cheaper than anywhere in the country and there are of course no data caps in those cities.
It’s why internet is way better in Kansas City than Silicon Valley. Kansas City has actual competition in their marketplace and common people provably benefit.
And all this is okay, in the name of diversity. It's crazy, racism is racism and this rhetoric is only antagonizing. Nothing good will come of it.
We have similar issues in my country but not to the extent I see in the US.
Because I can find endless pages of the head of the Republican party agitating against Mexicans (they're sending rapists), Latinos, Black people (shithole countries), Muslims (literally banned them after musing about how great it would be to kill them with bullets dipped in pig's blood), and Asians (Wuhan flu and China virus, over and over and over).
> An unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop. Folks like me who were Caucasian, of European descent for the first time in 2017 will be in an absolute minority in the United States of America, absolute minority. Fewer than 50 percent of the people in America from then and on will be White European stock. That's not a bad thing. That's a source of our strength.
And that's a very innocent one, but terrifying nonetheless. Imagine the same wording but about how a reduction in blacks would be a strength, all hell would break lose.
I guess that's the misunderstanding if I really stretch it, but it's just GP projecting and putting words in my mouth. I figured maybe having to re-read would help realizing that.
Can you understand the difference?
> An unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop.
> Folks [...] of European descent [...] will be in an absolute minority in the United States of America, absolute minority. [...] That's not a bad thing. That's a source of our strength
It can be interpreted as the nonstop immigration is a tool with the goal of changing the demographics. Why? What's so important and why do they put a value on proportions of race?
Just now in Texas you have federal and state employees fighting against each other, the former to let as many as possible in, the latter to prevent it. What is the goal here?
My take on not just this example but the race discussions in general are to divide and keep us busy fighting over useless issues to distract us from the corruption. Same with the east vs west endless war, we need an external enemy to be outraged against so we can ignore the enemies within. Otherwise we might be able to put the differences aside and collaborate to achieve something useful as a planet, but how would that help the elite to keep living like gods?
>you have federal and state employees fighting against each other, the former to let as many as possible in
Is flat out false. There are laws in this country and we have a process for asylum seekers. Texas is choosing to not follow those laws AND it thinks it gets to override the Fed on issues of border control, the law is real clear on both.
The Senate majority leader refusing to confirm a judge because he is white: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/schumer-slammed-for-citing-...
Maybe my view is over simplistic, but it seems the most obvious.
Do you have sources that detail the different "tiers" of racism? Is that even a real thing based on anything besides subjective opinion?
Don't all forms of racism fall under the core definition:
"Discrimination or prejudice based on race."
Shouldn't the end-game be to simply eradicate all forms of it? Instead of splitting hairs and starting infighting among those with that same goal?
https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...
I.e. It's one thing to have a lazy engineer, it's another to have Boeing safety culture.
Sorry, but I can't parse that one.