Hacker News Reader

Comment by EcommerceFlow | Hacker News Reader

The whole net neutrality discussion seems pretty hypocritical in hindsight, since huge portions of people who furiously supported NN stayed silent or encouraged censorship after 2016 (including the sitting president of the united states) on Facebook, Twitter, IG, etc.

Why would someone only advocate for an open, unrestricted internet at the hardware/ISP level? The whole point of NN was to ensure ISPs couldn't act as gatekeepers, yet people are fine with trillion dollar tech companies (that hold enormous market share) gatekeeping certain content now?

View on HN

Makes sense to me.

ISPs acting like a utility service should not offer special deals to some companies in a way that harms competition.

A social media site enforcing their terms of service appears entirely different.

If ISP's are the utility pipes, platforms are the water and control what flows through them.

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.

These are categorically different situations. In many places, people literally only have 1 or 2 choices for their ISP - not so for social networks. The degree to which the logic of neutral platforms applies depends on the availability of other options and the cost to switch; in the ISP case, the options are very limited and the cost is monetary and very high, and in the case of social networks the cost is low and purely social and there are many available options.

You can learn the difference by looking at what happened when Musk bought Twitter. Tons of people moved to other services like Threads, BlueSky, or Mastodon because all it takes is typing a different name into your browser.

When Comcast decided to double-charge Netflix, in contrast, what happened? Most people just had to put up with it because they only had one option for broadband or a contract. There’s no fast way to run new fiber or cable, so if your options are two companies with a history of network neutrality violations the best you can do is switch plans to whoever is currently not misusing their position.

ISPs are roads, and websites are businesses and homes.

Comparing Facebook to an ISP is highly disengenuous.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com