FCC votes to restore net neutrality rules

And several states passed their own laws.

This isn't a hypothetical, this is the case now and it's not happened. The reason is because of public backlash which is a market effect.

No, it doesn't take this much time. It's just that net neutrality wasn't a priority for the Biden administration, so they dragged their feet until the very last minute. IIRC, there's been a flurry of rule-making just now because they are running up against a Congressional Review Act deadline.

It really didn't have to in this case. It would have been perfectly acceptable to crib California's NN law, ctrl-r "California" "United States of America" and call it a day.

> Even when net neutrality rules were in place, all major carriers imposed some form of throttling on unlimited plans when customers used more than a certain amount of data. They argued that it was allowed under the rules' exception for "reasonable network management." But while such throttling is generally applied only during times of network congestion, the Santa Clara Fire Department says it was throttled at all times once the device in question went over a 25GB monthly threshold.

> Even if Verizon's throttling didn't technically violate the no-throttling rule, Santa Clara could have complained to the FCC under the now-removed net neutrality system, which allowed Internet users to file complaints about any unjust or unreasonable prices and practices. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's decision to deregulate the broadband industry eliminated that complaint option and also limited consumers' rights to sue Internet providers over unjust or unreasonable behavior.

Soft caps for "unlimited" plans and content-neutral QoS don't seem like net neutrality violations as I understand it. If they started slowing down one internet service while allowing another on the same plan to run at full speed, that would be another story.

They still do... Get on AT&T and hist fast.com You are pegged at 4Mbps

Net Neutrality does not prevent throttling. Bandwidth + data volume limits still exist.

Rather, NN prevents throttling or preferential treatment based on content/services. (E.g. throttling the fire department's access to Netflix but not to Facebook.)

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Likewise, the CenturyLink example has nothing to do with NN either.

Data throttling during heavy load wont violate NN either.

And cell phone networks have long throttled video data connections even during NN. Not much of an issue nowadays because of robust networks.

They could not get away with it. Otherwise, they would. There is little to no competition in the segment. And that must change.

It's incredible bullshit that they can pull this crap, but... well, at least it's possible. Here, anyway. Dunno if they offer that everywhere.

CA making something a rule makes it a very strong incentive to follow it nationwide.

"Oh your power is out? Guess you should have purchased a ElektriciT+ subscription! YOUR FAULT!"

You seem pretty pro-free-market, so here's the free-market angle: things like zero-rated Netflix on your mobile plan and free "basic" internet are market distortions. Companies are abusing the lack of net neutrality to engage in bundling, discounting, and collusion practices, which are bad for you as a consumer - these are anti-competitive practices!

Everyone likes getting something for cheap/free, but that doesn't mean that it's actually good for you, other people, the market, or society as a whole.

I agree that most of the bad things that net neutrality advocates predicted would happen wouldn't, but the things that did happen are still bad.

Given that large states like California and New York passed independent net neutrality laws and there were continuing legal battles in almost half of all US states I don't think you can draw many conclusions. ISP behavior very likely never changed because they knew they were just one decision away from having to comply. Sort of proven by this very decision we're commenting on.

I can't comprehend why you think ISPs would feel compelled to be so altruistic without any government intervention.

Except, since when was free wi-fi an impossible thing to find? Ever been to a coffee shop? Even in the "free shitty half-internet for everyone" pipe dream, the costs of such a service don't just magically disappear. Either way, someone's paying for that free internet, and it isn't the ISP.

Telecoms likely didn't deploy anything because this was obviously going to get overruled by the next non-Trump FCC. Even Ajit Pai has a long record of advocating for modernizing the FCC, which would explicitly involve the regulation of internet services. Abolishing net neutrality is only universally popular among communities where the underlying philosophy is "government is bad, and I'm gonna prove it by running it badly."

I really want to better understand the thinking of people who hold opinions like yours.

Just like Obamacare, another gift from the left that has worked out so well...

They aren't a secret:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf

Trump came in and replaced the FCC head with this guy:

https://nypost.com/2017/08/10/fcc-chairman-under-fire-for-co...

https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/04/net-neutrality-wont-surviv...

It should be obvious here that even the most succinctly and universally stated rights have certain correct limits needed to protect society from individual selfishness.

So the fairness doctrine can be seen as compatible with the first amendment in exactly the same way that consumer protection laws against false advertising are compatible with the first amendment, because it is observably the case that a media institution selectively using its platform to attempt to control and direct the public mindset in a particular direction is itself a form of intentional public harm for selfish interests.

Boeing is like what, our one major airline manufacturer and because they're part of the military industrial complex, they get a free pass and get to murder whistle blowers after asking them to stay an extra day in town.

I was thinking the FCC regulations would have that power to implement such a ban based on national security, though I could be wrong. I'd have to look back at the Patriot Act as well, I'd expect that to offer similar powers but I don't remember for sure.

That is why Nixon created the EPA so that there would not be a Department of the Environment that was out of the hands of executive power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....

Unsurprisingly, Kavanaugh and the rest of the conservatives would prefer this approach be relegated to history. Of course, the areas of particular interest that he cites as examples (securities e.g, finance, communications, and environmental laws) just happen to be those where the two parties could not possibly be further apart in their approaches.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-d...

They don't typically require supermajorities to pass laws, and those in the minority don't have the means to substantively object to bills they disagree with.

A man can dream.

This is politics in the modern era.

Just because I happen to agree with the actions of the agency in this case is not enough to justify handing legislative power over to bureaucratic agencies that do not have any of the checks and balances that are supposed to exist in our system.

The network is not some amorphous blob.

If a new streaming company called Notflix enters the market (with dedicated hardware), ISPs will have to build dedicated infrastructure that connects that competitor to the network. One of the obvious ways of gaining a foothold in the market is to go where other services have poor connectivity and setup shop there. Of course the ISP that sets up that infrastructure will take big cut for their work, as they should.

With Net Neutrality in effect, the supply side of heavy use internet services becomes constrained, creating a barrier of entry for new competitors. It’s just plain old regulatory capture.

1. Installing a conservative super-majority to the Supreme Court. [Criminalized abortion in half the US. Blocked student loan relief. Gutted voting rights. Environmental protections. Health mandates. Firearm restrictions.]

2. Indiscriminate obstruction. [Months of crucial Ukraine aid. Blocked voting rights bill. Immigration reform. Firearm safety. Tax relief.]

It's honestly difficult to pick the Greatest Hits, given how much damage they've done.

Democrats have been calling on Biden to increase his power through just writing Executive Orders to act on their platform, and bypass all other branches of government...but THAT's not dictatorship?

What is a party? I think there still is a Republican Party that fits your description. I meet them in every day life all the time. They are reasonable, agree on many things, and are willing to seek compromise. I hope they are the majority, if not the voting majority.

But they are not well represented by 90% of the current Republican office holders.

Nothing will change until average Americans are fed up with the status quo, and force change - that goes for basic things like making the parties work together.

I do not believe the majority of Republican politicians today are trying to improve the country. I think the majority are self-serving, self-interested, and corrupt. This isn't the party of George Bush—who I disagree with about virtually everything, but seemed genuinely interested in trying to do a good job. This is now the party of Donald Trump, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, James Comer, Ted Cruz, and so on. There is no equivalent to any of these characters on the left. There is no compromising with obviously bad-faith actors like this.

It's a realistic view.

> The party or parties you disagree with may not share your views, but they do have many things in common with you. In

The major party I disagree with least doesn’t share my most of views but has many things, in broad focus, in common with me.

That’s very much not true of the major party I disagree with most.

> In order to build bridges with other parties, it’s important to believe that the majority of people who get involved in government, regardless of party, are motivated primarily by the desire to serve their neighbors and their country

Why would “building bridges with other parties” be a goal? A lot of people seem to have gotten ideas that the long realignment period from 1930s to the 1990s when the salient political divides were not along the same axis as the divide between the major parties (though they were approaching alignment at the end of the period) was a norm and not an aberration, and thus have fetishized bipartisanship which was simply a result of ideological factions crossing partisan boundaries rather than generally being contained within major parties. When that applies, you don't need to build bridges between parties, the factions inherently provide it; when it doesn't, you don't have a commonality to build on.

And, in any case, this is the fallacy of argument to the consequences of belief – you are justifying a belief in a fact claim not by any evidence that it represents the actual facts, but by the notionally desirable consequences of believing it independent of its truth. > Without that belief, it will be near impossible to form agreements across the aisle.

I actually think that its a lot easier to achieve agreements across the aisle, where there is utility in doings so, by observing the actual things that the specific goals the other side has in concrete terms and appealing to them, rather than fantasizing a distant abstraction like “serving the neighbors and their country”. The latter is only useful once you determine a concrete operationalization that comports with the actual behavior of the individuals involved, but that offers nothing between a low-level concrete model of interests that avoids any high-level abstractions.

Now, to the extent that its often a concrete low-level interest that they want to be seen as motivated by the desire to serve their neighbors and their country, that may be useful, but that’s different than believing that that is their actual motivation.

My parents don't want trans people to suffer: they want trans people to find happiness through the impossible avenue of just not being trans anymore. My parents don't want illegal immigrants to be incarcerated or murdered by border authorities: they want illegal immigrants to find liberty through the impossible process that is just becoming a legal immigrant, or living peacefully in whichever failed country they were born. My parents don't want people with substance abuse disorders to live and die on the streets: they want people with substance abuse disorders to overcome them through the impossible avenue of simply curing their own addiction without any outside support, safety, or encouragement whatsoever.

I cannot convince them that any of this is the case. On the other hand, people like Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh, and Glen Beck can convince them of just about anything. Why? Because right-wing talking heads have a foot in the door: belief. They abuse every belief that a conservative holds dear, and turn it into engagement. Critical thought has no air to breathe in a world made of belief.

It doesn't matter what people want. It matters what people do.

The sincere Conservative electorate had every opportunity to choose a less-sadistic option. They chose. OP's characterization is perfectly valid.

They used to have a a coherent positive viewpoint and policy to support it. And they sought to advance that policy through normal democratic means: convincing a majority of voters.

That has stopped being their approach. They no longer seek a genuine popular majority. They are turning inwards, adopting ever more extreme positions disconnected from genuine ideals. They seek only the power to impose their worldview on others.

They no longer feel constrained by long standing traditions and institutions. Any act is justified in their minds.

Government grows because what we do grows. We didn't need legislation on airspace and radio waves and net neutrality and cyber bullying when our Constitution was written. In many cases, powers simply come into existence, and I'd rather the government have those powers than a monopoly or oligopoly of private rich entities.

Rather than limited Government, I'd rather see an Open Government -- one that is accountable to, accessible to, and made up of us. Then why does it matter if government gets big? Government is us, after all. At least we can work toward that. Maybe?

The implication of the way you wrote your comment is that it's unfair and naive or disingenuous to say that the Republican party has no policy, because what you outline is their policy. But the rest of your comment just ... isn't their policy. (Which is, presumably, why you aren't a registered Republican.)

For instance, you say you don't like expanding Presidential powers. But the leader of the Republican party has a suit in front of the Supreme Court, right this moment, attempting to expand Presidential powers all the way to "immune from the rule of law".

Now, it could still be true that the policy of the Republican party is in disagreement with the desires of that person who is the leader of their party - that totally happens! - but unfortunately at this specific moment in time, "the desires of that person who is the leader of their party" is exactly as close as you can get to defining the party's policy.

It's a sad state of affairs! But I seem to frequently see this kind of wishcasting based on what people think the party's policy should be, except it has nothing to do with the clear policy of the party in actuality. (Note that this wishcasting thing is not actually unique to the Republican party.)

As an example, the cost of natgas on the east coast after California's rules limiting coal for power generation. People in nearby states with different COL pick up part of the tab.

I wish more people had this perspective.

The topic of packing the Supreme Court comes to mind. There are people who want Biden to do this, but if does it, what’s stopping the next Republican from doing it too… back and forth until the court is so big it can’t function. These easily won “victories” can just as easily work against a group as they can work for them. It’s very short-sighted.

The only reason the courts are getting involved as much as they are, is because Congress can’t get anything done. They make the law, the court interprets it. We need a functioning Congress to avoid the courts needing to give their best guess on what the law currently is for issues that aren’t well defined, or not defined at all. Packing the court as a solution is solving the wrong problem.

> This is an unfair analysis, and is either naive at best or disingenuous at worst.

It's fair given that the party literally produced no platform ahead of the last presidential election.

They don't cater to them as much as they convince them that they could one day be a member of the capital owning class.

The whole "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" line.

That's the kind of thinking that led to Bush in 2000. Say what you like about Gore, but his administration would have done a great number of things differently from how it worked out.

Additionally, you wouldn't see e.g. Trump's EPA turning up the pressure on coal power plants. In fact hundreds of effective EPA staffers left (/were purged from) the EPA in 2017/2018.

And that would be a first, because no one has tried "real socialism"(tm) before, right?

I actually see this too. The Republican party is on the verge of collapse not because of anything Democrats have done, but because of what Trump has done to the Republican party apparatus. He's redirecting all funds to his legal bills instead of electing candidates. He's causing them to lose in red districts because of abortion by previously unseen margins. He's telling everyone that voting is fraudulent so Republicans aren't voting.

I mean, Trump has never been the head of a non fraudulent, successful company in his entire life. Why would we not expect him to similarly destroy the RNC?

So if the Democrats are left standing, I see them cleaving in two, with one half being the Biden/Manchin/Romney axis. The other party would be more like the Warren/AOC/Bernie axis. MAGA types would be left in the political wilderness.

I would actually be fine with either of those parties in power.

Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen fit, but they are "too busy" fighting ideology wars.

Multi-party governments function largely because some subset of the parties agrees to compromises to gain a combined majority on a specific topic; none of them can do anything in isolation.

Perhaps earmarks were the result of an electorate that wanted more purity in decision-making (at the cost of stability). In other words, earmarks didn’t break cooperation. Corrupted cooperation led to the end of earmarks.

Earmarks probably do grease the wheels, but it’s important to remember a step existed before the compromise: a member of the congress could hold out until they received something, often unrelated to the matter at hand. That is wasteful and, to some, dishonest.

Now, did a removal earmarking result in more financial efficiency? Surely not. The budget deficit continued to grow, mostly because of Obamacare, Covid, wars, tax cuts.

So what of compromise? One might think compromise is dead, and yet we live in a world where Ukraine aid is tied to social media ownership.

Shruggy dude.

The big exception to this was the drafting of the Constitution itself, which arguably was easier to ratify than it is to amend. The problem of the practical impossibility of undoing past policies applies very much here.

At it's core, it is a technical issue - primarily network management. Under NN framework, ISPs would adhere to minimal straightforward rules that would disallowed them from prioritizing, throttling, capping, purposefully degrading, etc wireline networks. For most of 2 decades, this is where NN lived.

In apparent response to NN becoming reality, ISP funded representatives began echoing the talking points of ISP lobbyist groups and contention was born.

Before that it spent billions of dollars on covid aid.

Throughout that time it has appropriated billions of dollars to keep the government running.

This "paralyzed" narrative is something the press and politicians like to push because it serves their ends, though for different reasons. It's false.

It has meant lots of controversial legislation being forced through, but to many that's better than just letting the issues simmer for decades. Especially since many of those issues had no uncontroversial solution.

Trump came in promising similar action, but in hindsight did absolutely nothing besides further divide the country. Unfortunately at the moment neither side seems to have a candidate that's actually willing to do something similar. Biden will continue to make excuses about not being able to do things, and Trump will continue to focus more on PR and dominating the news cycle than actual work.

FCC commissioners must be approved by the Senate. Biden nominated Gigi Sohn in 2021. Republicans blocked her. Biden nominated Sohn again. I don't think he said why. But other Democrats believed Republicans would block anyone who would restore net neutrality. Republicans blocked Sohn again. Democrats took control of the Senate in 2023. Joe Manchin said he would block Sohn. Sohn withdrew. Biden nominated Anna Gomez. The Senate approved her in September. The FCC started the process for this vote a few days later.

Don't pretend like the Democrats wouldn't be just as obstructionist if it suited their political objectives.

What we actually have is lack of consensus, and excessively polarized factions that are unwilling to budge to create a consensus (or rather waste their energy making a great deal of noise on non-consensus issues and nonstarters and bickering with each other).

[1] https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/net-neutrality-will-make-...

The goal is to get people to think "Yeah! Taking action on non-competes is great! Darn politicized courts!", when in reality this is not something an executive agency should be doing without an act of congress, or it may not even be a matter that falls to the federal government at all.

Most employment law, for example, falls to the state in which the worker lives, and some have chosen to ban non-competes via legislation. This is much more democratic than attempting to craft law by executive fiat, even though I tend to agree that non-competes are more harmful than good in many situations.

Regardless of the winners of said election, expect a return to business as usual afterward.

The point isn't that Google can't build a better CDN. The point is that we don't want ISPs creating a situation where they've inked a deal with Google to prevent good performance from YouTube competitors. We don't want a situation where "YouTube is the exclusive 4K video provider on ISP-X."

The whole point of NN is to stop ISPs from "playing favorites" since they hold too much power over what we can access. But if you ignore the fact that a few big tech companies (which hold a MUCH bigger market share compared to comcast/other big ISPs) basically decide what gets seen and what gets hidden, it's the exact same problem in a different disguise.

Increased bandwidth = Increased costs

Who do you think is paying?