Hacker News Reader

Comment by mhurron | Hacker News Reader

This has to be one of the most useless campaigns. Yet another slactivist 'don't really do anything but damnit feel like you did.'

It doesn't 'raise awareness' (more slactivism). People have heard of Net Neutrality.

This does nothing to educate about it. There is no information here, just Oggie Boogie scary shit might happen (but don't worry we won't risk clicks to show you).

And that's even if you see it. I've been to reddit off and on all morning, I happened to finally notice the very small black box in the corner with the stupid vague message. No idea when it showed up. I was starting to think reddit wasn't even going to bother with a banner. I'm willing to bet most people will be the same way since, again, no one is willing to risk some ad impressions to actually put anyone out.

When your solution to a problem is 'don't really do anything about it' don't be surprised when shit happens.

View on HN

I say the same thing every time I read a "slacktivism" post, but here we go again: if this is useless, what do I actually do to help? Seriously, I'm not posing this as rhetoric.

I've already filed a fairly long, unique comment to the FCC, but I've heard that the FCC ignores most comments unless they come from well-known players.

I donate money monthly to the EFF.

I've signed the letter to the lawmakers on Battle for the Net.

I don't have a personal website, so I can't put up a banner ad.

So, given that I've heard comments on this site and in person that all of the above counts as slacktivism, just makes me feel better, and doesn't contribute to an actual solution, what do I do to influence this issue? Ignoring the possibility of coming into large sums of money and buying myself a congressman of my very own?

Calling or writing letters (not emails!) to congressional representatives is another thing you can do.

FWIW, I think that donating money is pretty real.

Are letters taken more seriously than emails? That's good to know, thanks.

I don't know if they consider it consciously, but it's about the costs to the sender: emails are cheap and easy to fire off. Phone calls and letters a bit less so.

I've spoken to several reps and they say yes.

This is mainly because they get inundated with email. Letters and snail mail? Not so much. You actually have a captive audience to a degree when you send a letter.

As an individual US citizen, that is probably all you can do, though I would call "signed the letter to the lawmakers on Battle for the Net" slacktivism.

Slacktivism is - " "feel-good" measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it take satisfaction from the feeling they have contributed"

Donating money to the EFF, well you would hope it goes to paying the lawyers fighting these things in the court, so you are directly contributing to a practical effect. Comments to the FCC are actually part of the FCC's process, so while they may ignore them, that is the actual way to get your input to the FCC. Even more so when you send a personally written comment instead of filling in a form letter.

On the other hand, click to sign a petition, throw up a banner add, put a little black box on the web page, send a tweet, change your avatar, these do nothing. However because you feel like you did something because you had to change some html or upload some image somewhere people do these instead of anything that would require any real thought.

I can't tell you how many posts I saw exactly like yours regarding the Ice Bucket Challenge.

"What good does a glorified wet t-shirt contest do?"

"It's just a bunch of celebrities trying to participate in a pointless meme."

"You're all just a bunch of mindless lemmings. You'll do anything for the attention."

The Ice Bucket Challenge raised $111.1m as of August 19th, according to alsa.org.

You're thinking too broad. Think about what this is: a blog post from a CDN company. Who's the main audience? Tech-savvy people. Tech-savvy people will put this on their site that's most likely for tech-savvy people (who in turn have heard of Net Neutrality and hopefully have contacted their Congressperson about it). Any people who work for companies who have substantial traffic from non-tech-savvy people most likely would not be in a position to implement this near-worthless popup.

Face it, unless Google puts something up on their homepage (they won't), nothing's changing.

Your assumption that the audience for Cloudflare's post is "tech-savvy people" is accurate but your follow-up assumption that the websites that these tech-savvy people make are "most likely" for tech-savvy people is obviously incorrect. The website I built for music. Certainly, my users need not be tech savvy to use my site. So if I installed this popup, there is a good chance of showing it to some non-tech people. I would assume that a lot of people that read HN have built products for non-tech people.

So you're saying there's nothing we can do and we should just keep our heads down and pretend nothing's wrong because there's no way we can compete with big companies and lobbying groups.

Good plan, let me know how that works out.

Saying "this is not useful" is not the same as saying "nothing is useful".

Google may not be tech savvy, but I'm sure some of the tech savvy people reading the blog probably have a wife or non-tech-savvy friend who works at Google. Lots of tech savvy people in the value know at least one or two people at Google.

Is anyone else talking about the ice bucket challenge here?

Net Neutraility, Bandwidth saturation & peering link negotiation is far more complicated than what is being presented by this campaign.

I understand you are passionate about the Ice Bucket Challenge, but I'm afraid you have written what is called a "red herring."

You think anybody that dumped a bucket of ice on their head understands half of the medical science behind ALS? Do you think they honestly needed to? No, they only needed to recognize its importance, and then they further spread awareness and/or donated money to people more qualified than themselves to further champion the cause.

Awareness is the key. Even if people don't understand exactly what it is or why, you have to put it in their face over and over until they take action, whether by inspiration or frustration.

> Net Neutraility, Bandwidth saturation & peering link negotiation is far more complicated than what is being presented by this campaign.

Perhaps the complexity is the problem. I'm fairly tech savvy and when I've never heard a clear explanation of the problem and the solution.

There's a very clear problem with A.L.S.: if you get it, you die within a few years. It's not very hard to understand/sympathize with that.

The clearest explanations for the problem of lack of proper net neutrality are two examples:

1. Slower internet. If companies have to pay twice as much to get a proper connection to their customers, a lot of companies won't be able to.

2. A la carte internet. Pay your ISP $5 more a month for a priority connection to Netflix. Save now with our Social Media Bundle! Only $10 a month for access to Facebook and Twitter!

1. Why don't we have this now?

2. Why should ISPs be forced to provide more bandwidth for some companies at the same price? There are already tiers of service at the consumer level. Why not at the content producer level?

1. Why should a company have to pay an ISP they have no business relationship with.

i.e Netflix gets service from Level3, my ISP is Time Warner. Why should Time Warner get money from Netflix?

2. They're not forced to provide more bandwidth to anyone, but they shouldn't be able to restrict bandwidth to an endpoint to shake them down.

Again, I pay Time Warner for a 50Mbit connection, why can Time Warner say what I can use it for?

> Again, I pay Time Warner for a 50Mbit connection, why can Time Warner say what I can use it for?

At any given moment, there's a fixed amount of bandwidth that can enter and exit TW's network: only so much data between consumers and producers can pass through it. Tiers help you get more guaranteed bandwidth: you're buying some of the pipe. Why shouldn't content producers also have the ability to buy a percentage of that pipe?

When you bought more of the pipe, did it slow down someone else's, or did the ISP realize that it could make/compete more by building out its network, i.e. making the pipe bigger?

I realize monopolies can charge whatever for whatever level of service, but this notion that all ISPs must be forced to conduct their business like a regulated utility in all circumstances just baffles me. Local governments and public utilities are a big part of the lack of competition, but net neutrality advocates rarely address that fact.

http://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-jus...

If Time Warner is selling more bandwidth than they are able to provide, the correct solution is that they upgrade their infrastructure, not 'here's a 50Mbit connection, you'll pay more than the 20Mbit plan, but you get to use 3Mbit, have a nice day.'

> there's a fixed amount of bandwidth

This is being used as a bullshit excuse, and people buy it because they can visualize a set of physical tubes with a fixed width. However, isn't it funny that when Netflix paid off Comcast, they suddenly found enough bandwidth to stop throttling Netflix traffic back. I guess they got right out there and dug another trench for another tube.

Did you buy a connection to the Time Warner Network, or did you buy a connection to the Internet?

If they can't get external data fast enough for supplying your connection, TW has lied to you, and isn't delivering the service you paid for.

Also, interconnection is not in any way analogue to a pipe. It has no reasonable length they have to keep. It's just a matter of joining the 50Mb "pipe" they sold to you with the pipe the other party sold to the site you are accessing.

> If they can't get external data fast enough for supplying your connection, TW has lied to you, and isn't delivering the service you paid for

Is it really possible that everyone who pays for 50Mbit connection can get M0Mbit/sec directly from Netflix??? Is Netflix really capable of pumping that out of their datacenters?

TW lies about bandwidth as does Apple about battery life and performance. It's all about ideal (impractical) conditions and plain 'ol marketing BS that all the ISPs do.

There are already tiers of service at the "producer" level. Companies can buy more bandwidth for their servers just like "consumers". They can also distribute servers around the globe or even co-locate with ISPs. So, each Comcast user pays for their connection, and Netflix also pays for their bandwidth. But now residential ISPs want to charge Netflix again for delivering their data to customers, even though they're already being paid by both ends.

"People have heard of Net Neutrality."

"People" have, but most of the internet-using population haven't. Not saying this is the best method, but don't be fooled into thinking that everyone is aware of what's going on.

If they weren't, after this they're still won't.

Why? Are you saying the actual popup doesn't communicate the proper information? I said in another comment, my website is for finding and discussing new music. My users certainly don't have to be technical people. It would seem, seeing this message might very well give them some information they've never seen before.

First - When was the last time you read a popup? Hell, who doesn't have a popup blocker now?

Second - This is not information - "Cable companies could make this page so slow, it would still be loading..."

How? Why? What is this about? There is no information there. On top of that, many ISP's already are (people are familiar with throttling regarding their mobile data plan) so this doesn't even say that anything is changing.

Hell, who doesn't have a popup blocker now?

Again: the vast majority of people. Taking things that techies do and extrapolating to the internet population at large never ends well.

Most browsers ship with popup blockers, and they're on by default.

Popup blockers typically don't block pop-overs (in-page HTML elements).

Worse than that. The idea that if we don't have net neutrality the internet will suddenly run at dial up speeds is pure hyperbole. Yes, net neutrality is a good thing. Yes, without it will have a certain set of problems associated with it. But simulating a problem that is highly unlikely and annoying is unlikely to get my sympathy and only grudging support.

Reminds me of Critical Mass bicycle protest in San Francisco. As a life long cyclist and general lover of all things bicycle I should support the idea but they are so annoying I find myself pushed in the opposite direction...

Is Critical Mass a protest? I never noticed it being that. I thought it was just a bunch of folks riding? Maybe you just don't like them personally?

As far as I can tell Critical Mass is propaganda of the deed against pedestrians.

Well that's not cool. I don't support that either. In my experience (limited to places I've lived), Critical Mass is more about bicycles in the street with the autos than about bicycles in the sidewalk or crosswalk with pedestrians.

Originally in the 90's it was a protest of "cyclists reclaiming the streets". It may have morphed into something else. Still, causing traffic jams and blocking people from getting home on a Friday evening seems a bit selfish and more annoying than a way of garnering support...

The worst part about Critical Mass is that they can block people who are trying to save a life.

People who are on-call, like doctors and CRNAs and so on, don't get lights and sirens. They just drive normal cars, but if they don't get to the hospital within a certain short amount of time, someone is likely to die.

Critical Mass cyclists have no way of knowing who's on-call and coming in to a hospital. Even if they do make a path for all obvious emergency vehicles, that isn't enough.

Not to mention that just because what someone is doing isn't a matter of life and death doesn't mean it isn't important. Depriving a father of an hour he could have spent with his kids is a pretty screwed up thing to do in general.

I fully agree with you, but if you point the argument that way, CM supporters have an easier time claiming that their protest is more important than someone's day off.

They have a harder time arguing that their protest is more important than a CRNA going in to make an emergency c-section possible, where the lives of a mother and child are at risk, or a surgeon going in to perform an emergency craniotomy on a husband, father, and grandfather who just fell off a ladder.

I agree CISPA/PIPA were better, but that's because it was a much more clear message, and a more clear threat to all big companies.

The sad truth is ending net neutrality actually helps enough big companies (access networks for sure; large content sites who can pay, to reduce the threat from smaller sites...) that it's not going to face the same kind of opposition from tech.

A lot of the same companies that would win with anti net neutrality legislation being passed also supported SOPA/PIPA so I don't see the big tech divided don't do anything angle being applicable.

No one is willing to do anything that would give up ad revenue or clicks.

Shit like this makes donating to the EFF feel like a giant waste of money.

"September 10: The day like every other day we won't inconvenience you, please click our ads."

While that might be true that it won't have much effect on most people, why don't you focus your energy into doing something that you think will make things change instead? Also I don't think most people know what net neutrality is at all at this point.

Oh I don't know, the anti-SOPA campaign worked out pretty well.

Why is the reddit box so small? I'm pretty disappointed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com