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FCC Aims to Reinstate Net Neutrality Rules After US Democrats Gain Control of Panel

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-26/fcc-aims-to-reinstate-net-neutrality-rules-as-us-democrats-gain-control-of-panel

The US Federal Communications Commission is to announce plans on Tuesday to reinstate so-called net neutrality rules governing broadband providers, according to people briefed on the matter.

FCC Aims to Reinstate Net Neutrality Rules After US Democrats Gain Control of Panel

https://archive.is/RyFFH

37 comments

Maajmaaj

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Permanently Deleted

Toast

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Fuck Ajit Pai

danielton

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Blows my mind how many conservatives think net neutrality is a bad thing just because the TV told them it's bad.

None of them can even tell me what the hell net neutrality even is.

Dasnap

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They hear the basic description and call it internet communism.

rynzcycle

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Most I've seen haven't even gotten that far. They hear "neutrality", think it has something to do with the Fairness Doctrine, and panic that they might have to step outside the echo chamber.

sugar_in_your_tea

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Yeah, I don't get it either. All it means is that ISPs can't discriminate based on the site you're visiting, which is pretty important for individual freedom. Am I really free if all if my customers get throttled visiting my online store unless I pay ISPs to treat my site the same as my larger competitors? That's like saying it's fair for large companies to pay the police to make traffic on other roads slower so getting to my store is more convenient.

This really shouldn't be a partisan issue. Net Neutrality helps reduce the monopolization of the Internet, and it does that without making any top down rules, it just says you can't make anti consumer rules.

itsonlygeorge

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How about passing internet privacy laws? Or stopping the enshittification and commercialization of the internet? Or passing laws to protect youth from social media companies? Or curbing the reach of advertising companies? How about passing laws to keep our data from being sold to advertisers?

evatronic

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All cool, but not what the FCC can do.

To pass laws, look to Congress. Remember to vote for the candidates you think will help accomplish those sorts of things.

itsonlygeorge

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Congress is broken. Unfortunately a bunch of geriatric old fucks who care about corporate money are in charge. But yeah, the govt needs to do its fucking job.

Corkyskog

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You could run, but you would probably want them to raise their salary first. DC is expensive in of itself, let alone dual living residence.

sugar_in_your_tea

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Yeah, DC is expensive, but not unreasonably so. This article claims it's about 50% more expensive than US average. A US Congressperson, without any leadership positions, makes $174,000, which is ~2.5x higher than the average household income (~$71k as on 2021).

So income shouldn't be what stops you from running, it's more than sufficient for living in DC. However, for maintaining two residences, that depends on where that other residence is.

Corkyskog

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I mean the median income is like 90-110k depending on how you classify DC, thats hardly a huge pay bump for having to deal with national nonsense and the stress of the job. In my opinion minimum should be 250k. If we want to be real about rooting out corruption and voting for the public interest we need to pay them the appropriate wage to do so. We are talking about some of the most important people in the country, and they are making way less than easier jobs in other industries, given the education.

sugar_in_your_tea

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That may be a good idea.

However, you claimed that OP would probably not want to run because of the compensation, as in, they wouldn't be able to afford living there on that salary. $174k is plenty to live in DC (as you pointed out, it's kind 50% higher than the median income), so in terms of being able to live and work there, the income is plenty. It may not be enough to discourage corruption among other members of Congress, but that's not necessarily a concern here (OP didn't seem to be worried about becoming corrupted).

Compensation is set by Congress, so if OP found compensation issues leading to corruption, OP could be part of that solution.

Corkyskog

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Don't you still have to maintain another residence back home? Still confused on how thay works.

PHLAK

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You say this like restoring net neutrality prevents these things from happening. They're not mutually exclusive.

SupraMario

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I don't want the gov. Touching the Internet. You're asking for a bad time if you do. Commercializing the Internet is from people using it as such. Build your own site and host it. The enshittification is coming not just from the companies that created/own these sites, it's the people who use them as well.

CosmicTurtle

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The government "not touching the internet" is how we got here when NN rules were rolled back by that shit eating, giant Reese's cup drinking, FCC chairman that we had under Trump.

Not sure if we can do anything about enshittification though. That is shareholders demanding the line go up and I don't think we can change people's desire for greed.

Haui

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We absolutely can. Break up every company at 999 mil and we‘re golden. It’s the lack of competition that makes enshittification possible.

MajorHavoc

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Yep. There needs to be a legally mandated market cap after which the federal government automatically supervises the company breaking into smaller competitors.

Or, ideally, liquidated and sold a department at a time to existing competitors, to ensure actual competition.

teejay

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Or, ideally, liquidated and sold a department at a time to existing competitors, to ensure actual competition

Oh my sweet, summer child...

MajorHavoc

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Yeah, yeah. Wishes not miracles, and all that. I'll take world peace and a pony, too.

But there's value in discussing where the target belongs.

As long as we're belaboring the point, mehacompanies should be require to sell divisions of their choice (cough Amazon Web Services cough.) to competitors to stay below the market cap. That way we don't create a cliff, but still see things broken up.

Haui

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We have a sane person in this comment section! I love it. Can you please run for some public office?

PsychedSy

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The laws and regulations that make these behemoths able to exist should be fixed. Stop putting worse regulations on top of bad ones.

MajorHavoc

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Sounds like we agree in principle.

I'm willing to advocate for the kind of hammer that might scare some of these players into taking legal reform seriously.

I'm perfectly willing to accept other legal solutions.

I am also perfectly willing to support an administration bent on burning down the big players that are fighting for monopoly control.

itsonlygeorge

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So who is supposed to regulate corporations? I agree that the current government is not knowledgeable enough and is beholden to corporations. The problem we have is there is no agency that really governs and enforces any kind of rules.

The ‘build your own’ mentality is what got us to where we are. Just look at what Twitter has become under Musk. He is doing what he wants with a platform that was operating in a very different manner before he took it over and decided to make changes. It’s not a real answer to let everyone do what they want.

Btw, that’s how google and facebook get away with all the evil shit they do.

We need a governing body to make better rules for privacy amongst many other things. I agree that the government or even the FCC may not be the right fit. However, we need some kind of of oversight and regulation. Industry will never selflessly give up rights or power if it means they make less money. They only do what the laws tell them they can get away with.

PupBiru

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at the very least constant whip-lash from changes might see ISPs not being able to sign long-term contracts and businesses not being able to plan around availability of things like “fast lanes”, which might make them uncommon even if net neutrality keeps getting repealed

csm10495

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See y'all when it gets rolled back if/when the Republicans take office again.

rhacer

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Can anyone point me to any cases where the lack of net neutrality has harmed customers.

I don't believe I've seen any, but I also have not been paying very close attention to the subject.

wagoner

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Post trump FCC ending net neutrality, AT&T self-preferenced its online streaming service HBO Max, unfairly disadvantaging its streaming competitors. This only ended when California passed its own net neutrality law. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/atts-hbo-max-deal-was-never-free

To learn more on the subject, you could read: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/where-net-neutrality-today-and-what-comes-next-2021-review

rhacer

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Thank you. Much appreciated.

riskable

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Simple example every Comcast customer suffers with: Comcast services (including VoIP and streaming TV) don't count towards the monthly bandwidth cap. So if you watch 2 seasons of a show in 4k via Comcast's streaming service that doesn't count towards the cap but if you watch the very same show via Netflix it'll put you over your bandwidth cap, resulting in additional fees.

It's an egregious violation of network neutrality and, IMHO an abuse of their natural monopoly. Internet providers should not be allowed to also sell content/streaming services or own media companies! It's a huge conflict of interest that will always disfavour the consumer.

Furthermore, when Comcast streams their own services they get priority over all other traffic; even traffic going to your neighbor's Internet connections. So if your neighborhood is experiencing a bandwidth crunch and your neighbor decides to watch some 4k stream via Comcast's service the back-end routers will prioritize that traffic over any and all other traffic which will interfere with everyone's else's Internet connections. So if your video stream suddenly drops to 480p for no reason (wired connection, no bad weather) it's probably because someone in your neighborhood decided to watch something via Comcast's streaming service.

rhacer

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This fantastic. Thank you very much.

dandroid

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Imagine getting downvoted for admitting you are ignorant on a subject and asking a question about it to try to get educated on said subject.

makeasnek

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"Can anybody point me to specific examples where the government took away people's rights and civil liberties and it wasn't good for those people?". My god the implications of a non-neutral internet are obvious, we don't need to take those rights away in a real-world study to prove it.

rhacer

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Wait, rights? Civil liberties?

I'm probably in favor of net neutrality legislation (I'm not 100% sold on the concept as the whole issue of monopolistic ISPs is a government created issue, so asking government to resolve it doesn't necessarily work for me).

But you completely lose me when you equate Internet access with civil liberties and rights. We have no more right to an Internet than we do to an ice cream stand on the corner.

4am

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T-Mobile had plans for zero-rating preferred streaming services.

rhacer

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How does this apply here? "Had plans" sounds to me like they were never implemented. If they executed on those plans that worked certainly have been an issue.