FCC votes to restore net neutrality | Hacker News Reader

FCC votes to restore net neutrality

theverge.com

52 pointsNetBeck18 comments

Whew, glad we can finally use the Internet again! It's been a long 7 years since the Internet was entirely destroyed.

I suspect California's "California Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act of 2018" had a positive (from users' perspective) "chilling effect" on ISPs, as well as the center-stage focus on the issue itself. No one wanted to be the first to step out in front of that speeding train and get run over in the court of public opinion.

Comcast or Verizon would 100% have started plowing the fertile earth of "fast-lane fees" by now if they could've started doing so quietly.

How does it affect an American in everyday life? I've never known anything but net neutrality in Europe.

Finally!

I feel this is really important and am a bit concerned that it rests with an agency which flip flops around with the political winds.

Interesting that this has been brewing within the FCC since at least Oct 19, 2023 according to related articles in the stream at the bottom of the page. I hadn't heard about it at all (except for states' efforts).

This seems like really good news, although I assume this restoration is just as fragile as the prior enshrinement?

Finally, our long national nightmare is over.

Idk, did anybody notice any actual problems with net non-neutrality?

not really. I have no idea what went on "under the hood", but it certainly wasn't anything I noticed.

I do think NN is better than nothing, but I'm not sure it's exactly the right model either. iirc, the main risk called out was different QoS for different traffic types, possibly with the ability to pay to get yours prioritized? the teenage libertarian version of me very much liked the idea of the internet being a "dumb pipe", but I don't see QoS as being intrinsically wrong now. there are some applications (video chat, mp games, etc) where it is very important that packets arrive mostly in order and with minimal latency. there are other applications (async data transfer) where it doesn't matter as much.

to me, the core issue is that I just don't trust companies like comcast, and I rarely have a viable alternative. NN seems like more of a bandaid than fixing the root cause.

For fixing the root cause, are you referring to something like public broadband etc to eliminate the profit incentives (of e.g. comcast/spectrum), or some other antitrust type of action to stimulate actual competition in private sector?

honestly any/all of those. I'd prefer something that stimulates private competition, but I'm not opposed to public options. I also don't begrudge an ISP profiting on an important service, provided they do a good job at it.

breaking up Comcast doesn't seem directly helpful though. the issue is often with sweetheart deals at the local level. in a city I used to live in, comcast was given exclusive access to existing city-owned cable in exchange for connecting the remaining (largely underprivileged) homes. this kind of short term win seems irresistible to local politicians, but imo it's pretty bad for the long term.

What changes does this make to current services? I feel like this is a rule for restricting stuff that could happen in the future. And thus made out of fear.

"Don't make rules if people are not breaking them." -- Jimmy Wales.

California already enforces net neutrality, which is basically a de facto protection for the rest of the country. It is not unreasonable for the federal government to take over enforcement of something that is very much their responsibility (the internet is quite possibly peak interstate commerce).

Wouldn’t their legislation only affect California isp?

The big ISPs that could get away with shifting the status quo have some presence in California, and most of the big tech companies that you'd want to convince to pay you to prioritize their traffic are in California. Not to mention the fact that it can be difficult to tell if your customer is in California: what if their cellphone is connecting to a Nevada cell tower, but is actually in CA, and thus protected by law? What if the customer is using a VPN?

It's messy enough that, given the pretty limited upside, I can see why companies would be hesitant to try and work around it.

I remember the campaigns for net neutrality made it seem like if we lose it it would be the end of the internet as we know it. That never really happened. And now that it’s being restored, reaction seems to be “meh”.

> That never really happened.

A few reasons this might be true:

1. States like California passed their on laws enforcing net neutrality, making it much more difficult for national ISPs to implement the expected predatory practices

2. It takes time to implement new processes, and it was never clear that NN would stay dead, so ISPs wouldn't want to invest too heavily in fear of a day like today.

3. It might have happened to some users and you didn't see it. It of course was never expected that the moment NN was repealed, everyone's internet everywhere would turn to sludge.

4. Companies saw the backlash and didn't want the negative PR associated with being the first example everyone would point to.

That's because, to my knowledge, none of the major internet providers took advantage of it being eliminated, presumably because the idea of "faster internet access to Netlfix" or whatever didn't test well with audiences who were used to the status quo of net neutrality. Had the ban remained in place, it's possible that status quo would have been slowly been eroded.

EDIT: Upon reading another comment, and California's Net Neutrality law, it's also possible that ISPs didn't deem it worth it to see if California would sue companies that provide net-neutral service to Californians but non-net neutral service to out-of Californians.

Does this mean the ISP loopholes of offering "fast lanes" will be blocked?

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