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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

I remember the intense response to the FCC repealing Obama era net neutrality rules on 2017.

The proponents of NN argued all these anti consumer and anti competitive practices that this will cause. It was framed as getting ahead of some of these abusive practices.

Now it's 7 years later. I haven't followed it closely but personally have not noticed many harmful or obvious exploiting of the removal of NN.

Am I just not seeing it? Do I have to wait longer? Were they waiting for this to become more permanent? What am I missing?

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I bet that they haven’t done it openly (maybe we haven’t discovered it yet?) because it’s a hot issue.

But there are examples where net neutrality has protected consumers.

In 2012, At&T blocked FaceTime on its network unless you were on one of its expensive plans.

> An AT&T spokeswoman, speaking on background, disputed it was using cellular FaceTime as a "premium" feature, but acknowledged the company was using it as a lever to get users to switch over to the new plans which charge for data usage in tiers.

(Source: https://www.wired.com/2012/08/facetime-net-neutrality-flap/)

I actually agree with AT&T on this one.

There is only so much cellular spectrum and the more it’s congested the more performance degrades for all other users. Rate limiting in that environment makes sense.

Rate limiting over fiber doesn’t though.

I understand that… As long as they rate limit their own video call service at the same rate as they do the competitions. Which I somehow doubt they’ll do (unless forced by law / regulation)

There hasn't been any fire lately, lets remove the fire extinguishers from the building.

Just because you don't see it happening overtly, doesn't mean that it's not needed. When dealing with private interests you have to presume that if something is allowed and will result in a marginal, even if insignificant rise in income, firms will do it. And considering that they've attempted to do it before, it's preferable to pursue regulation that would result in disincentives to pursue such actions, rather than let them to their own devices. You would remind a kid not to eat cookies before dinner, even if they know about it.

Are you saying we shouldn't trust these huge corporations to look out for our best interests? /s

The idea that these companies won't leverage the absolute hell out of rulings like this to nickel and dime the shit out of you (which we know 1000% they already do) is absurd.

The problem is, this leverage/throttling has been legal for seven years straight. We've seen tons of innovation during that time, these companies have had a long time to cause what we would see as very negative outcomes. It's a struggle to find any specific negative outcomes to point to.

Are you saying we shouldn't trust unelected regulatory bureaucrats to look out for our best interests? /s

The idea that these regulatory bodies won't leverage the absolute hell out of rulings like this to invade on free speech (which we know 1000% they already do) is absurd.

You might be thrilled at this incoming administration and their ability to appoint absolute incorruptible stewards of the public into these positions, but administrations change over time so they may eventually be handing it off to some people with bad intentions

> The idea that these regulatory bodies won't leverage the absolute hell out of rulings like this to invade on free speech (which we know 1000% they already do) is absurd.

blah blah blah blah blah freedom of speech blah blah blah.

> You might be thrilled at this incoming administration and their ability to appoint absolute incorruptible stewards of the public into these positions, but administrations change over time so they may eventually be handing it off to some people with bad intentions

What? What on earth does my stance on net neutrality have anything to do with the incoming administration? And yes, I will trust some unelected bureaucrat over the worst companies on this planet every time.

> What? What on earth does my stance on net neutrality have anything to do with the incoming administration?

You seemed very eager to allow the state to have more control over ISPs so I assumed you were bullish on the incoming administration since they're the ones appointing these unelected bureaucrats. I just mentioned that even though you may like this new administration, you may not like future administrations and think they are filled with self-serving billionaires with authoritarian tendencies and may abuse their power

> if something is allowed and will result in a marginal, even if insignificant rise in income, firms will do it

In a closed system, maybe. But there are some options and the threat of new entrants that keep the system in check (e.g. SpaceLink). Regulation has a cost, and it might be able to prevent some bad behavior but it keeps competition out. That's why the most regulated industries are often the most stagnant, expensive and awful to deal with (think education, legal, health care, banking)

There's a million examples of companies not naively maximizing profits. Why doesn't McDonalds charge for napkins and ketchup? Surely some pointy haired manager suggested this to squeeze out some profit, but it would piss people off and isn't worth it. And this is a better constraint on bad behavior than some unelected regulatory body.

Satellite internet can't meaningfully compete with other forms of internet at scale because it can't accommodate but a fraction of them. Even terrestrial wireless internet can't really replace wired even though its certainly cheaper to deploy.

Internet access is a closed system for a lot of the population. Satellite internet is not meaningful competition in that area given how much of our lives are channeled through an internet connection. 5G cellphone connections are closer but if you put all household data through a cell connection the towers would surely get immediately overloaded.

> Why doesn't McDonalds charge for napkins and ketchup?

If they did I could just go to Burger King. But someone living in a town where McDonalds is the only restaurant would be powerless. (and McDonalds does now charge for sauces they used to give away for free!)

The impact was mitigated somewhat by states adding their own NN legislation. There has definitely been an increase in zero rating certain services like Spotify etc which creates new barriers to entry for smaller businesses though.

Any link to carriers 0 rating Spotify? I believe you but am also in the same boat of looking for literally any downside to net neutrality being canned.

That said even this would hardly count as a negative for users though you're spot on about it hurting competition for other streaming services - on the other hand it's a way for ISPs to compete. Hmmm... still haven't formed an opinion on this issue yet.

positive for users of spotify, relative higher cost for users of other streaming services, cementing spotify's market position.

Which since spotify has turned to shit is in turn bad for consumers.

This is very common in Brazil. Most carriers give free WhatsApp and Facebook access. As many Brazilians are in the cheapest plans, this basically mean that that's all they can access on their phones.

>The proponents of NN argued all these anti consumer and anti competitive practices that this will cause.

And the opponents for their part suggested:

- Broadband rollout to rural areas would never happen with Net Neutrality in place

- Repealing Net Neutrality would lead to a surge in new private investment

- No private company would ever throttle traffic

- Encrypted traffic would never be treated differently

- There's no risk that private companies will leverage differentiation of traffic types to support surveillance, censorship, or data mining or selling of data

- it would restore the conditions of the 1990s and early 00s that lead to major new companies like Facebook

- Broadband prices would fall

- Special zero-rated forms of broadband traffic would become available

It's now 7 years later. I've only followed on and off, but I haven't noticed a transformative explosion in private market investment, new Facebooks, lower prices, or anything like that, that was tied to an assessment of Net Neutrality.

So, same question back to you. I've been looking for the explosion in new private investment, the steep collapse in broadband prices and the new zero rated product offerings, unleashed by the repeal of net neutrality. Was I just not seeing it? Is that just around the corner now that it's been struck down? We'll be able to come back to a thread like this in another 7 years and that will all have happened, right?

Some time a couple years ago or so, during a period of apparent network congestion, I ran a few speed tests using various services. Results from the popular service Ookla were always above the nominal speed of my service. Results from any lesser known service and my own ad hoc test were all significantly lower.

It's not proof my ISP was prioritizing the well known speed test's traffic to gaslight subscribers about the low network speeds, but I find it suspicious. After all, why wouldn't they? It's not illegal.

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