It was obvious at the time. I recall many people reporting that fake comments antithetical to their own beliefs had been submitted using their identities.
Why was FCC head Ajit Pai able to get away with citing fraudulent evidence? How can we stop such blatant corruption of the FCC's policy-making process in the future?
To be fair, the FCC ignored the automatically generated comments and focused on comments that were unique, detailed, and relevant. The actual scandal should be what they did with those comments: those that supported rolling back the NN rules were accepted as fact, those opposed (i.e. those in favor of NN regulation) were dismissed as "not compelling." I know this because my comment was among those dismissed as "not compelling," including specific sections that dealt strictly with the factual errors in Ajit Pai's proposal. The only reason they bothered citing my comment (and numerous others by actual technical experts who took the time to comment) was to avoid being sued for ignoring the public comments (they are legally required to consider public comments when making a decision).
It is also worth mentioning that Ajit Pai differed from his predecessor Tom Wheeler. Wheeler had intended to introduce rules that allowed various NN violations but changed course in response to public comments and went with the stronger regulations. Pai never cared what the public had to say and made that very clear in his public statements, where he basically said that the only thing that would change his mind would be comments concerning the FCC's legal authority (not that there was any serious dispute about that legal authority).
These consultations are just legally-mandated hoops that the regulators jump through. The fact that you or another individual put forward an interesting or important comment really doesn’t matter at all, no matter what side you’re on.
To be clear, I don't believe Wheeler's statements about his motive for changing course; I think he changed because the administration believed it would be politically advantageous.
I disagree. Comments cited by the FCC's final report and decision are part of a permanent public record that can be scrutinized, including in lawsuits (such as the one filed by the EFF) and by politicians considering legislative changes in response to regulatory failures. Ajit Pai was forced to publicly dismiss comments containing only facts related to the technical details of the Internet, which made it harder for the FCC to defend its decision in court (as they are supposed to consider those technical details).
Also, it may seem hard to believe, but some regulators do actually care and they do pay attention to expert comments that the FCC (or whoever) receives. Sometimes they will invite the author of a well-research comment to meet with their staff and discuss the issue in more depth. The system is not as completely corrupted by money as people sometimes claim (not that there is no corruption at all; it is almost obvious that deep-pocketed corporations have outsized influence in these processes).
I think the vast majority of regulators really care, and almost none are paid shills doing it for the money. It seems they're happy to discuss the academic nuances of their positions, but vanishingly unlikely to switch sides.
This is not accurate, and it feels like it is the only clear detail provided in your post:
Ajit Pai was forced to publicly dismiss comments containing only facts related to the technical details of the Internet, which made it harder for the FCC to defend its decision in court (as they are supposed to consider those technical details).
People had claimed their own email address had been used to post a message. The messages themselves were repetitive and clearly had generated names. Someone ran the entire thing through and reduced the bulk messages down to a handful. I believe there were some attempts to add filler words, but for the most part someone just put together spam bots.
This absolutely happened. My parents, who have never heard nor cared about NN, had both their emails used by bots posting anti-NN comments. It was blatantly obvious to anyone who didn't have a stake in killing NN.
My mother, who is dead, somehow rose from the grave and posted in support of repealing NN. That there will be no criminal consequences makes me very, very angry.
Hopefully by then we have some sort of anonymous “voting” technology so that each individual can have a vote on all public issues. It’s a pain to hold a referendum now, but if we could answer in 2min on our phones and know that our vote was secure, reliable, and 100% anonymous, we could reshape bureaucracy in an instant.
What I don't get is why this is so important. Someone spammed a web form but... this isn't a vote. This is a chance to provide information, which spam by definition does not contain.
If they wanted to make legal or technical points, it doesn't even matter who they are, the points are true (or not) no matter who said them.
So I just don't see what the big deal is here, because someone spammed meaningless comments into a comment form and it's not like they really took any of our opinions into account when making the ruling to begin with.
The Chair of the FTC used the number of comments against Net Neutrality as "proof" that people did not want Net Neutrality. He then refused to investigate the obvious forgeries.
Ouch. It's disturbing to see a politically nominated official, who is in his position presumably because of world-class leadership and communication ability, be SO OUT OF TOUCH that he doesn't recognize that what he is doing appears as satire.
Appears? This guy was constantly making jokes and memes and he did so to appeal to the internet trolls that were his base. Right leaning millennials loved this guy; you must not have seen his back and forth with John Oliver over his Reece’s cup. For context https://www.chron.com/national/article/net-neutrality-repeal...
The thing is, I don't for one minute believe that they would've made a different decision if the comments were different. This is just a legally-mandated hoop they jump through before doing what they want to do.
For the record, I support the goal of NN, I just am too cynical to believe that these comments ever mattered.
They matter because the inevitable lawsuits can/will point to the multitude in support of NN and demand the FCC explain why they decided against keeping it. They’re not just a bureaucratic hoop to jump through; they actually have to consider and weigh them all. A reason of “it’s ‘Obama era’ regulations that we don’t need” isn’t enough. “It’s bad for economic growth” would require them to explain how.
Obviously, one that just says “** you Ajit” or whatever doesn’t need to be considered, but ones voicing concerns or similar have to be.
Even if you say that, that just means it's the contents of the comments that matter--not who sent them. So the wrong thing is faked under that analysis.
I agree that Ajit made the wrong decision, I just facepalm when I see people raising this as an argument as to why when there are so many better arguments than whether someone spammed an insecure comment box.
I can't imagine anyone believing that there is some grassroots concern about net-neutrality. Ordinary people don't care about this. You and I may care about it, but not the general population. And I only slightly care about it -- say a lot less than copyright extensions but a lot more than hair extensions.
The level at which the grassroots don't care about anything is not even funny. If Fox News did not talk about this incessantly, and people "cared" about it - something was wrong.
The headline news is that they do so with impunity and achieved their goals at no cost. The corporations ("like AT&T, Comcast and Charter"), their association (Broadband for America), the lobbying firm (unnamed - who is it?), and the FCC, to the degree it failed its duties, suffer no consequences - and indeed the corporations get what they wanted; their plan worked.
> The report said investigators had not found evidence that Broadband for America or the lobbying firm it used for the campaign were aware of the fraud. But, the attorney general said, several “significant red flags” had “appeared shortly after the campaign started, and continued for months yet still remained unheeded.”
> The attorney general’s office said it had reached agreements with three “lead generation” services that were involved — Fluent, Opt-Intelligence and React2Media, companies that gather customers for clients as part of marketing efforts. Under the agreements, the companies said they would more clearly disclose to individuals how their personal information was being used. The companies also agreed to pay over $4 million in penalties.
If I were the president, I'd start up a DoJ tasks force to prepare for anti-trust proceeding and start some rumors about nationalization of such "critical infrastructure."
Maybe the tanking stock price that results will force the Board of Directors to replace the top brass at these companies with someone much less brazen. If not, whelp, maybe there was some truth in those rumors.
> The report said investigators had not found evidence that Broadband for America or the lobbying firm it used for the campaign were aware of the fraud.
How could they NOT have known? I mean... surely they were seeing these fraudulent comments, and the internet was stirring about it because we all knew they were fraud. Claiming that the ones who paid the fraudsters were unaware seems like a stretch. Did they not look at what they paid for?
I find it hard to believe these investigators truly think Broadband for America had no idea.
Nope. Plausible deniability is a thing. It's not uncommon corporations and lobbying firm to pay contractors large sums of money for 'image management' and intentional ask no questions about how it gets done.
Everyone knows what's happening, but as long as no one explicitly asks (in a documented form), the benefactors can feign innocence.
> I find it hard to believe these investigators truly think Broadband for America had no idea.
The individual investigators likely know full well that Broadband for America knew what was happening, at least in broad terms. But knowing something and being able to prove it in a legally actionable way are two completely different things.
It only works if you don't hold actors responsible for consequences, only for knowingly doing wrong. For example, if Tesla cars periodically exploded when the batteries drained to zero, Tesla couldn't say 'well, we didn't know'. Nobody cares; it's your job to know. In fact, it adds to the failure that you didn't know (though knowingly selling that product might not be so hot either - not a perfect example).
When does law and regulation require knowledge? When is knowledge part of your responsibility? IMHO, there are civilians and soldiers. The mom & pop convenience store can say 'we didn't know' about some things; Whole Foods, with its resources and expertise, had better know.
Personally, when I'm doing something professionally, I never want to say 'I didn't know'. It's embarrassing. Unless it's some oddball thing that isn't even worth thinking about, it's my job to anticipate and to know. 'I didn't know' means 'I wasn't doing my job, and I don't even understand that my responsibility or what it means to be professional.'
I see your point. On the other hand, wouldn't these companies (Fluent, Opt-Intelligence and React2Media) that fabricated comments on a federal filing from real people, using their addresses, be guilty of identity theft?
Using someone else's identity to influence federal law seems like it would be a crime, but I'm not a lawyer and I don't know how that would hold up in court.
I used to work for a PR firm in Chicago that would work with AT&T to do astroturfing. I never knew the details but the gossip about the contract with AT&T was interesting.
Internally, they would never say the word, "AT&T" but had a client code #, like client 750, or something like that. It was always sketchy and everyone in the firm knew it was sketchy but they tried their best to keep the details from the employees.
What they would do is work with "community outreach groups" to create fake outrage about certain "bad" legislation that, people participating in such protests, problem didn't even know who was ultimately behind it.
Overall, pretty disgusting behavior and the fact that we let corps behave like this with no repercussions, speaks a lot to where we're at as a country and why. The US rewards sociopathic behavior.
The PR firm: Jasculca Terman strategic communications. I believe their contract with AT&T was severed many years ago but I don't know the reasons why. So, I doubt that particular firm worked on this astroturfing but it doesn't matter because companies like AT&T have a whole bevy of companies at the ready to do this work for them.
Good idea. Who will enforce it? Because those with the most to lose will always, by definition, have the most money to throw at un-separating them.
I am not implying that it cannot be done, but I like to encourage people to think long and hard about why things are the way they are and what systemic changes would be necessary when they propose that "society should do X". Most people would agree that we shouldn't have big companies running the government. So why do we keep letting them do it?
Because in many ways, companies control the narrative. I don’t mean that in a conspiracy kind of way, but more in a way where all companies share a vested interest into keeping close to the political body. One good rule would to introduce a law that would remove the ability to revolve door between a company and a political position. Another to show the sponsors directly and transparently for each political official. That would be a start.
Two systematic changes that could help.
When separation of church and state was implemented, churches were very powerful. I wonder what the differences are between their power and modern corporations.
In general, the people and groups in the US that hold real power largely hold power because they have realized that as long as you keep cheating, eventually you will control the people and agencies responsible for punishing cheating. Rigging a process or stealing an election is fine because by the time the court case gets a hearing from a judge, the answer will be "well, the process/election is over, so we can't do anything about it."
As time passes we see more and more groups intentionally exploiting this and exploiting it more often, and it feels like it will only get worse, especially since we can see it happening overseas in major political referendums or elections. The impact only grows bigger as these systems are exploited to put people in lifetime positions, so that the damage can't be undone for decades.
It's really unfortunate because the knowledge that the system works this way makes it very easy for people to make false claims about a particular election being stolen or the methods used - people seriously making claims that "fake ballots were flown over from China" [1] or things like that when the reality is that theft is simple and not the work of foreign spies, illegal immigrants, or hugo chavez [2] - it's our neighbors, fellow citizens, elected officials, etc
> they have realized that as long as you keep cheating
Incredibly, what they're doing isn't cheating at all. Lobbying (newspeak for corruption) is 100% perfectly legal.
NOTE: I'm not saying I agree with at at all - I'm just saying this is what it's come to. The people with all the power and the money are making the rules to suit themselves.
> Lobbying (newspeak for corruption) is 100% perfectly legal.
Lobbying itself is neither good nor bad. There are aspects of it that are both. The more excessive negative portions even pass into illegality, but that doesn't mean there's no good from it.
The EFF meeting with lawmakers and explaining how their proto-legislation is not only impossible in practice but has many negative consequences they should be aware of is the exact definition of the benefits of lobbying as envisioned by the system in place and something we should not lose sight of. Babies, bathwater, etc.
I agree that it's good for elected politicians in a democracy to meet with and hear the concerns of their constituents.
That is literally their job, and the reason they were elected. If they're not doing that..... then we have no use for them and should eliminate their position entirely, because it obviously doesn't serve a purpose.
The problem I have is when this "meeting" involves giving those elected officials money, because then you can just buy whatever laws you want. The more money you have, the more you have laws that agree with what you're trying to do and squash everyone else. [1]
> The problem I have is when this "meeting" involves giving those elected officials money
But that's not lobbying, and that's against the law. The problem is the weird edge cases, like inviting the politicians and their families to a summit to discuss the issue that just happens to be in the Bahamas, or less obviously all the different dinner meetings that add up, etc.
Honestly, those examples aren't so much edge cases as much as entrenched obvious problems some of which are explicitly illegal and others grey, but there are lots of edge cases that are much harder to track down, where the quid-pro-quo is separated by time or other things, such as businesses of close or not so close family members and friends getting more consideration, etc which then flow back to the politician from someone else (can a politician's cousin not invite them on a family vacation and offer to foot the bill?).
Lobbying isn't so much the problem as corruption is, and lobbying just makes some small part of the corruption easier to do in the open, the explanation of what's wanted, because that's an obvious thing you want politicians to hear from interested parties in the areas they represent, whether businesses or individuals.
Blaming lobbying for corruption is like blaming encrypted messaging for terrorism. Sure, they help those using them for nefarious purposes, but getting rid of them doesn't eliminate the problem, it just makes it slightly easier to see at the expense of the people that used those for good purposes. In both cases I would argue we're better off leaving those communication mediums available and attacking the problem from a different angle. I'm not sure what that is for lobbying, but "you're not allowed to talk to your politician" doesn't seem like it's it.
> "As time passes we see more and more groups intentionally exploiting this and exploiting it more often, and it feels like it will only get worse, especially since we can see it happening overseas in major political referendums or elections"
Out of curiosity, what election or elections are you speaking of?
After the Brexit referendum concluded, the Leave campaign was officially found to have violated the law and fined. There were plenty of additional accusations that were never addressed. In the end, you can't undo something like leaving the EU even if voters feel they were lied to.
I don't mention this to claim that foreigners are somehow worse - the US specializes in doing this at home if anything, even if we also love to interfere in foreign elections.
No, sigh, it's the other way around. The people who believe the law was broken were lied to, by a corrupt set of regulators. Very apt, given the topic here.
The Electoral Commission spent a long time trying to build cases against Leave campaigners. It did so because although theoretically neutral, like a lot of British government institutions it's run by people who are openly biased and happy to make strongly political statements on the record. The EC is literally run by people who made public statements saying Brexit and the Tories are bad, and that they wanted Remain to win. They also never bothered speaking to the people they were fining as part of their investigation. Not a good start.
So they worked over-time to try and prosecute people who campaigned for Leave, but they themselves (fortunately!) do not have law enforcement powers. This is indeed fortunate because every single case they referred to the CPS and Police was dismissed on the grounds that no crime had actually been committed. The High Court has repeatedly criticised the EC for appearing not to know what electoral laws actually say. Or in other words, the people you are claiming "officially found" one side to have violated the law, had their investigations/decisions labelled by the High Court as "unconstructive", "arbitrary" and lacking "any rational basis" (quoting the judgement itself there).
The Metropolitan Police stated the EC itself had broken the law in its attempt to submit a case against Leave campaigners due to withholding evidence and not complying with criminal evidence and procedure law:
Part of the reason the EC's arguments were dismissed is that the EC is responsible for issuing interpretations of electoral law. In at least one case, the Vote Leave campaign requested such an interpretation, was told what they were going to do was entirely legal and OK, and then later the EC changed its mind and decided to fine them for doing it. That sort of thing is hard to explain: either the regulators are corrupt, or incompetent, or both, but it's certainly not the fault of people who explicitly requested clarification about an unclear rule and then were put in Kafka-esque no-win situation.
Naturally they ignored quite blatant violations of electoral law when it was done by Remain campaigners like the famous mailshot to the entire country that mysteriously didn't count as campaign spending, or this one (who they eventually DID fine, but only after a lot of kicking and screaming):
The EC's quite transparent campaign against anyone who campaigned for Brexit, certainly motivated by the biases of the people appointed to run it, is a classic case of exactly the same problem Americans are complaining about in this very thread w.r.t. net neutrality. The regulator was captured by a certain viewpoint and appeared to care very little about even the appearance of doing their job properly let alone neutrally.
If you have any specific examples of anything in those articles that's wrong, please do present them. Otherwise, ignoring all the factual matters discussed in them has no intellectual merit.
The telecoms weren't even fined. The telecoms formed an association (of some sort) called Broadband for America; Broadband for America hired an unnamed lobbying group; the lobbying group hired three lead generation companies, Fluent, Opt-Intelligence and React2Media.
The lead generation companies paid the fines. See how it works?
If not, let me give another example that's more familiar, from movies: The mobster wants someone dead. The mobster tells the head of their criminal syndicate, who talks to another criminal syndicate who specializes in this sort of thing, who hires some outsiders to do the job. The police catch the outsiders, who take the fall; the DA prosecutes and convicts them, and says 'justice has been done!'
The NN debate online was a massive propaganda warfare campaign between two teams of huge corporations, neither of which had any of our interests in mind. We were squeezed in the middle of it and everyone was pressured to take sides.
This! People forgot the whole "why should we pay for this, when we can politically club the providers over the head?" arguments here. Netflix was having interconnect issues, and didn't want to pay for a reasonable solution, so they made a hissy fit and progagandized the issue.
And I will also admit that I DID OPPOSE NN regulations, as they were "specified" (if any one remembers, they were only released AFTER being accepted by the FCC). Specifically in the "why fix what's not broken?" sense (ref stratechery for a more detailed consideration than I can give: https://stratechery.com/2017/pro-neutrality-anti-title-ii/) . It was not clear to me that they would provide any benefits that propaganda claimed. It was also clear to me that the quite reasonable thing of Netflix to pay Comcast (and other Tier 3 providers) to skip interconnect issues, which was being done before the whole argument came up, would also possibly come under scrutiny by the new regulation. And so I threw up my arms and said "If real technical solutions are going to be abandoned because of some misunderstanding of technology, I'm not on board".
The vitriol that still exists over this from people who this never really effected nor even understood the technical problem. Moreover, I was appalled at the lack of care here to even consider this from a technical perspective. Complete blindness to consideration due to tribalism.
Now were people wrong to use other's info without consent, sure! I 100% agree there.
Companies like Google and Facebook were running around screaming Chicken Little about how companies like Verizon and Comcast will use their monopolistic powers to dominate public speech, screw over users, and screw over startup competitors. Interesting where we ended up today.
The propaganda framed it like sites like Netflix would be really fast because they could afford to pay for it and startup competitors would be very slow, but economic incentives would have actually caused the exact opposite. A startup video hosting site is of relatively no burden to an ISP compared to a behemoth like Netflix so they would have no reason to slow down the startup speeds. If the startup succeeds because it has a competitive advantage to Netflix, then when they become big they get a new customer they can bully into keeping their speeds high.
Yes ISPs will take a cut of the fees they charge content providers, but they will also be able to pass those savings onto the average consumer because the Netflix customer, who is already using most of the internet bandwidth, is helping pay for the service connection. Market forces would force streaming services to go up in price and ISP costs to go down. It would be generally fairer.
>The propaganda framed it like sites like Netflix would be really fast because they could afford to pay for it and startup competitors would be very slow.
The irony is that this is how Netflix already operates. They sign direct interconnect agreements with ISPs to host their servers directly at local ISP network distribution hubs. They have a competitive advantage that is literally built in to the internet infrastructure.
You misunderstood the specific situation with Netflix. They have a solution that is free to ISPs, and dramatically reduces transit on their networks. The networks instead wanted to extract a rent specific to Netflix.
I haven't come across accusations that pro-NN were systematically submitting fraudulently support comments to the FCC. Absent that, there's no "both sides" argument here.
The pro-NN were systematically publishing fraudlent, alarmist opinion pieces in the media. That the channel is different and more dignified (citizen feedback vs big-name publications) doesn't make it any better.
Anti-NN were doing the same, so on that account perhaps they're equally awful. But defrauding the democratic process of public commentary & input into the policy making decisions of a major governmental organization rises to quite a higher level.
"Investigators also found 9.3 million comments supporting net neutrality that used fictitious identities, most submitted by one California college student majoring in computer science."
Well, that's pretty awful, and I appreciate the counter point. However, I'd draw a distinction between the actions of a single person that don't equate to the large scale coordinated attacks of the same sort by Anti-NN groups.
My problem was I never saw a technical definition that a system admin could follow. I was very worried that basic spam blocking would break a badly written law.
For those who don't think that would be possible, then you haven't had the pleasure of watching a law with good intentions ban you from using Drop Box.
Companies opposing to NN paid for astroturfing campaign. While proponents based their marketing on fear-mongering ("The internet is dying" - NYT, "Death of the internet" - CNBC). Would be interesting to measure which was more efficient in terms of mobilizing voters, but worth keeping in mind that it's tangential to the discussion about NN's virtues, and deficiencies
It wasn't a matter of need - it was just trivially easy to do. New York says they traced 7.7 million faked pro-NN comments to a single college kid who doesn't seem to have done anything more complex than run a script.
Yeah... and I wouldn't be surprised if the proponents didn't pay for some astroturfing too.
Like seriously, who has time to write an opinion to the FCC? Not even most people on HN who might even have real, honest opinions about net neutrality. And probably 99.5% of society doesn't have a clue what net neutrality might even be. Is it possible that there's one honest opinion in the batch? I suppose so, but it's probably like Ajit Pai's mom.
Why the misnomer in the headline? Let’s call this what it is: fraud. These companies committed fraud. All involved should be prosecuted accordingly and the regulation rolled back and re-reviewed.
But nothing is going to happen. Nobody wants to go through it again and nobody wants to go to jail. People will complain for a bit and next week or month almost everyone will forget about it.
Furthermore, there are legislation coming e.g. from the EU (terreg) that makes hosting of projects with user generated content prohibitively expensive for small players, not to mention hobbyists.
The internet as we know has ended.
We could rate-limit Ajit Pai's internet to 25 down, 3 mbit up for the rest of his life (because that is enough for everyone, he said).
But, I'm guessing there will be no firm corrective "no". The parties involved will get away without any consequences. Maybe a slight slap on the wrist for one or two of the minor corporations involved.
Because you're saying up-front that you didn't even bother to click the link to see whether it was different, and you're suggesting that corporate malfeasance is only worthy of scrutiny if it's fresh.
a) There are HN guidelines that warn you not to complain about downvotes.
b) This is an article in the NYT that came out today, about findings by the NY AG released today. Yes, we all more or less "knew" that most of the comments were bogus all along, but having an official finding that says that is still extremely important, and is news in its own right.
We did some analysis back in 2017 and found some interesting stuff. Highlights: automated comment submission with broken templates so comments were coming from {STATE} and {CITY}, and over a million submissions from @pornhub.com email addresses.
You can't. Did you lose anything? Did one spoofed message have any bearing on the result?
Maybe if people came together it would be different, but whoever made the decision could say that they knew these messages were off and had no effect on the result.
I am not a lawyer, but I thought in cases like this you can sue a “John Doe” and then ask the court to compel logs and data from an entity (in this case, the FCC, to then identify the defendant.
for all the crying, none of the doomsday scenarios people were claiming would happen have happened at all. and the internet is the same as it’s ever been. tel me why i should care now
Not all opposition to Net Neutrality was faked. An argument is that Net Neutrality regulation can be gamed to harm independent ISPs via regulatory capture, where NN protects against throttling traffic by ISP's to harm independent content providers. The people who thought the cure of regulation was worse than the disease opposed Net Neutrality.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but would Net Neutrality effectively subsidize high bandwidth providers, such as Netflix & torrent providers, presumably creating latency across the network? It may no longer be an issue, as rate-limiting can be applied to the consumer.
The context of the Net Neutrality debate is different today than it was a few years, as content providers have more capitalization compared to ISPs, technology has improved, & new markets are in play. A big benefactor to NN nowdays seems to be distributing computing platforms such as IPFS, cryptos, Holochain, etc; which I find beneficial.
But then, as systems are designed, where does Net Neutrality stop? If there were a bill that includes NN, would it be written in a way where lawfare can be abused to require any load balancer or proxy service to provide NN? Which leads back to the primary legitimate (IMO) concern of regulation being abused by entrenched powers to stifle competition. Is regulation better or is less more? At this time, what harm is being perpetrated that NN would solve?
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but would Net Neutrality effectively subsidize high bandwidth providers, such as Netflix & torrent providers, presumably creating latency across the network?
Yeah, this is wrong. Netflix is already paying it's ISP, and both sides of a BitTorrent connection are paying theirs.
Someone like Comcast wanting to charge Netflix just because too many of Comcast's customers are requesting Netflix traffic is ridiculous. Comcast already got paid... by their customers.
And I would argue that that is good. It creates an incentive for Netflix to invest into encoding, compressing and developing new tech in general. It also provides openings for competing platforms with better technology.
Take that away, and we could have a race to 8K@120fps or whatever with the whole internet as losers.
> Someone like Comcast wanting to charge Netflix just because too many of Comcast's customers are requesting Netflix traffic is ridiculous. Comcast already got paid... by their customers.
I don't have a preference who gets paid what in this situation as both are multi-billion dollar companies. Netflix serves as a middleman in a big machine as does Comcast. I have to care about my direct interests instead of spending energy on a crusade on behalf of a big tech company with the liability of the cost & making sure that the legislation does have any unintended consequences. Knowing politicians & lobbyists, there are always unintended consequences to any piece of legislation.
From what I'm seeing, the argument for NN is moot, heavy-handed, & rife with unintended consequences; Unless you can provide information about how somebody like me is adversely affected by something that only NN legislation would solve, why should somebody like me support NN when there are many alternatives that would be better for me? With NN, Comcast, Verizon, etc. are only going to capture the regulators to crack down on their competition (e.g. independent ISPs).
Focusing on providing better competition for underserved markets, included distributed networks & community wifi, would probably be more effective at keeping the quality of ISP market high. Improving distributed tech & removing (or rendering obsolete) legislation that limit competition to 1-2 ISPs in a region would also truly be beneficial. I also care about distributed systems. Is there something that regulation would do that the free market would not?
I'm a wee bit tired of NN being an oxygen-sucking rallying cry wedge issue that does not solve the root issues that affect me personally, but instead could be another regulatory tool to crack down on independent providers & distributed platforms.
NN is another of a long list of schemes to crack down on independent providers to capture yet another set of markets by the govt, lawyers, technocrats, etc. I wouldn't put it past Comcast to act as the heel in this charade.
> I don't have a preference who gets paid what in this situation as both are multi-billion dollar companies.
They pass that on to the consumer. It's Comacst trying to indirectly charge their customr twice for not using Comcast's streaming platform.
You should care because it's your money.
As far as the rest of your comment is concerned,maybe you can point at what exactly would be the costs in complying with net neutrality? Complying simply takes inaction and isn't a burden on smaller ISPs.
> They pass that on to the consumer. It's Comacst trying to indirectly charge their customr twice for not using Comcast's streaming platform.
I can also opt out of Netflix but I have to use an ISP. I'd rather go for a larger ISP market & stimulate more competition, with solutions such as small ISPs, municipal ISPs, & distributed networks.
The costs of NN are in the regulation, the extra laws that will include pork & more funding for government agencies. Also the ISP market used by everybody shrinks while the large content companies get a subsidy for flooding the commons, incentivizing these large content companies to grow even larger.
With the development of distributing computing, distributed networks, & open source/free software, there are new solutions on the table today that were not available a few years ago. I'd rather go with a bottom up effort to make the state of the art & my life better than top down legislation that only creates more government, more expenses, & does not benefit me.
> I can also opt out of Netflix but I have to use an ISP. I'd rather go for a larger ISP market & more competition.
It's not mutually exclusive. And I'll throw out there that the days of the most competition in the ISP space, the days of dial up, had these same provisions on the books. Since it was based on phone lines, the last mile providers were all full Title II Common Carriers, with these same provisions.
And what specific laws and regulations were a burden? Net neutrality existed already as rules on the books before being removed by Pai's FCC. I always here vague "think of the burden", but no one can point to the actual burden except in vague, propagandistic terms deeper than name dropping "regulation".
> It's not mutually exclusive. And I'll throw out there that the days of the most competition in the ISP space, the days of dial up, had these same provisions on the books. Since it was based on phone lines, the last mile providers were all full Title II Common Carriers, with these same provisions.
Yet since regulation was introduced, the ISP market became consolidated. This is yet another example of an unintended consequence of regulation. Proving compliance has costs that the smaller ISPs are less able to afford than the large ISPs.
> but no one can point to the actual burden except in vague, propagandistic terms deeper than name dropping "regulation".
I encourage you to re-read my previous posts & pay attention to what I'm saying, instead of replying with formulaic propaganda. I point out many of the burdens, effects on the market, opportunity costs, effects on distributed computing, regulatory capture, regulatory pork, compliance costs, etc. I can go to the EFF website to read your arguments. The contexts have changed. The burden of proof is on you since you want more laws.
> Yet since regulation was introduced, the ISP market became consolidated.
Which regulation, when?
> > but no one can point to the actual burden except in vague, propagandistic terms deeper than name dropping "regulation".
> I encourage you to re-read my previous posts & pay attention to what I'm saying, instead of replying with formulaic propaganda.
Did you just reply with "no u" essentially?
> I point out many of the burdens, effects on the market, opportunity costs, effects on distributed computing, regulatory capture, regulatory pork, compliance costs, etc. I can go to the EFF website to read your arguments. The contexts have changed. The burden of proof is on you since you want more laws.
You're the one asserting that specific regulations are burdensome. I can't be expected to prove a negative; you should name the regulation that is burdensome.
The real irony of NN opposition is that the dial-up era, which one would otherwise characterize as exactly the kind of thriving market-based competition that conservatives love, only existed in the first place because the phone lines that these small providers used to operate their businesses were regulated as utilities.
In effect, we had net neutrality in all but name until the Internet started to move to other, more vertically-integrated forms of infrastructure like DSL and cable.
I would really love to see a Ted Cruz or Dan Crenshaw or some other disingenuous right-wing hack try to argue that, had it not already been illegal to do so, AT&T wouldn't have done the exact same things to AOL that Verizon and Comcast have gotten caught doing to Netflix.
(EDIT: At least, it would amuse me in theory. In practice, my blood would probably start boiling about 30 seconds in.)
There's that time he tried making some smug Twitter dunk about how anyone concerned about this is a "snowflake, believing online propaganda"[1], claiming that "the Internet grew up wonderfully free from govt regulation" as if he isn't old enough to have personally seen it grow up on publicly regulated phone lines.
There's also the time he suggested that setting basic standards for ISPs amounted to "Obamacare for the Internet"[2], a patently ridiculous statement clearly designed to pander to a base that thinks any government is too much government. (Crenshaw has made similar comments, claiming that "They want to do it by classifying the Internet under a law from 1934"[3] - referring to the Communications Act, literally the one that established the FCC and gave them the power to regulate the aforementioned phone lines. It was also superseded by the Telecommunications Act, passed in 1996, but who's counting?)
There's also that whole thing where he's spent the last several months pretending that he didn't spread lies about the 2020 election that led directly to a terrorist attack, but now I'm getting off topic.
Except not entirely, because there's also the time three days later that he called Donald Trump's Twitter ban "Big Tech's PURGE, censorship & abuse of power"[4] as if it weren't already well-documented that the only reason it didn't happen sooner - given his numerous violations of their ToS up to and including calls to violence - was his status as a head of state.[5][6] (I would link to examples of some of those violations, but... you know...) Which, specifically, also flies in the face of the same laissez-faire capitalism bit that he would throw around over topics like Net Neutrality - since, if he really believed that, a more logically consistent position would be that Twitter is a private company and is allowed to make its own policies.
In a broader sense, the GOP spent the entire Reagan administration maligning the Office of Technology Assessment, a Congressional office whose literal job was to educate lawmakers so that they have more knowledge about these topics than Ted Cruz displays in public, before eventually defunding it in the mid-90s - an act which directly contributed to a Congress which has issues like this, or like "Senator, we run ads,"[7] or like that time AOC apparently had to explain to colleagues what Twitch even is while they were attempting to legislate about it.[8]
Yes, the current link sends me to an article 'State Claims for Unemployment Benefits Drop Again: Live Updates' - not anything related to net neutrality.
Your link seems to point to the correct article, but it is paywalled.
Not producing clear consequences for this behavior will only embolden even more. If there is penalty for clearly corrupting a democratic process, more people will go from ‘doing nothing’ to ‘doing something subtle’ and the people who were previously being ‘subtle’ won’t bother.
To the assorted people arguing that the riots on 1/6/21 were not big/successful enough to warrant the term "coup" - you are likely mistaken in assuming that OP was referring specifically to the riot, as opposed to the larger effort to keep Trump in power after the election, which spanned months, was promoted by major news organizations, and enjoyed support from most of the GOP and something like 1/3 of the nation's voters.
Yes, the actual riot at the end fizzled; that's evidence that the attempt had already failed by that time, not that it never occurred. If you'd like to call it by a different name than "coup", that's fine; but OP's point (that if the people behind it didn't face repercussions, the people behind this astroturfing probably won't either) stands unaltered.
That was a protest that devolved into a riot, armed with phones for selfies and a viking LARPer as the centerpiece. Please see Myanmar for what a coup looks like;
edit; Myanmar is implicitly an example of both an attempted coup and successful coup. If they failed, it would still be an example of what a coup looks like. It's not protesters and rioters with iphones. It's soldiers with guns and vehicles. The capitol riot was terrible and should be denounced (as it has by almost everyone), but to describe it as an attempted coup is straight up gaslighting.
The election had already occurred. The protest=>riot was attempting to stall the certification of that election while possibly removing a few members of Congress.
In the US the election in November is the beginning of the election process. Winning the election in November is the first step to becoming president, but winning that election does not make one president. The process is this:
- An election occurs which allocates electoral college delegates for each state
- Those delegates meet and cast their votes for the candidate of their choosing.
- After they vote, each state creates a Certificate of Vote. This is the actual legal document that elects one as president. 6 copies are made: one sent to the VP, one sent to the SoS, two to a US archivist, and two to the chief judge from the closest district court.
- In early January, Congress meets to count the certificates. That is the actual election. Everything before then is just process.
So while the election had occurred, the process was not yet finalized. Until those votes are counted by Congress, then the person elected by the people in November is not elected president. The rioters were absolutely attempting to disrupt the most crucial part of the process -- the thing that legally elected Joe Biden president.
Myanmar is an example of a military coup, in a country where the military has significant political status already. Not all coups are military, by any means.
Many involved were acting with the hope & intent to stop the transfer of power from one administration to the next. An inability or failure to accomplish that goal doesn't make it any less of an attempt.
> There's a reason the post you responded to says "coup attempt" which, as we all know, was unsuccessful.
Not to mention that the Feds infiltrated the groups involved & the "coup attempt" was staged, as known BLM-affiliated agitators & government informants with criminal records were outed as the inciters & leadership of the groups involved.
Has there been any public investigation into who is Q-anon? Surely the alphabet agencies with all of the glorious panopticon tech would know who Q is. Surely, with all of these agencies experiences with cults over the last few decades had an inkling what was going on. If there was a grass-roots insurrection, where was the chatter & why was it not stopped? Could it be because these agencies were involved?
In the meantime, there are riots, attacking of government officials, murdering & raping of the people, & destruction of government & private property among many cities around the country, yet these are labeled "peaceful protests". And Antifa is "just an idea" or a "myth" and multi-racial white supremacist neo nazis are literally everywhere. Up is down and down is up in this bizzaro narrative...
Martin Luther King & Malcolm X would both be rolling on their tears in their graves to see how their movements & names have been compromised & turned into a clown show mockery by the very same FBI that persecuted them & race-pimps who profiteered off of their messages...
Whether or not it was an attempted coup depends only on what the intentions of the “rioters” were. So, what do you think their intentions were in storming the chambers of our legislative branch just as the results of an election were being certified? Was their intent not to disrupt the peaceful transition of power and overturn the results of an election to keep “their guy” in power?
Honestly I think the best argument for it not being a coup attempt is that these people had been deluded into thinking they were trying to thwart a coup attempt from the other side. Because, you know, Biden stole the election. Or whatever.
Not a great look either way. But the fact that it was inarguably an incompetent and generally shambolic effort, or that much better organized people have executed much more effective coup attempts elsewhere in space and time, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a coup attempt.
I assume you're being downvoted for low effort, because you're not wrong. That said, public perception is driven by media presentation, and the media dialed the hysteria knob to 11 in the aftermath of the Capitol Riot. It's honestly the most blatant propaganda that I've ever observed in American media.
How many people read those 'FIVE DEAD IN CAPITAL RIOTS' headlines, read the vague articles expressing dread at 'right wing violence', and went away thinking that the protesters had been committing murder? The truth, of course, was that only one person died a violent death during the riot, and it was at the hands of the capitol police. The other folks died of heart attacks and strokes! The fact that the (geriatric) body count was used to sew FUD about right-wing violence was and is absolutely astounding.
How many people still think that two capital police officers were killed by rioters? The media went out of their way to state (and later to merely imply) that Officer Hodges had been crushed to death by a crowd as they tried to enter the building, and that Officer Sickwick had sustained mortal injuries during the riot--neither of which was true. Hodges is alive and well, and Sickwick died of a stroke the next day. The media went on spinning the Sickwick lie as his body layed in state, and on and on for many months after the attack.
Unsurprisingly, the fact checkers did what they do as well, bending over backwards to support the 'armed' in 'armed insurrection' by counting up the pocket knives and pointing out that *one* of the rioters had a handgun[0]! In a nation containing >150 million firearms, and in an era when folks are regularly attending protests whilst armed to the teeth, it's pretty clear that these protesters went out of their way to leave their weapons at home.
The real kicker, IMO, is that if you were following the news in real time, you would have noticed that the rage surrounding the incident presented a stark contradiction to the current narrative. On social media, the lefties couldn't decide whether their rage should be directed at the protesters (who, having broken several prestigious windows, were naturally being hailed as 'TERRORISTS' in a twitter trend), or at the capital police, many of whom were captured on video while contradicting the 'coup' narrative--smiling, opening doors for protesters, and helping feeble old insurrectionists down the capital steps!
I certainly agree that it was a violent riot. I was arguing against the silly idea that it was an attempted coup d'etat. The gp (which called it a coup) was flagged, and the parent comment was heavily edited, so there is a lot of missing context here.
Your post has a few things wrong. People don't have to die for violence to happen. I believe you are correct that the coroner eventually declared Officer Sickwick's death was unrelated but that doesn't change the fact that he and other officers were attacked. You also seem to think that because some officers aided some protestors that proves all of the protestors weren't violent.
There are plenty of weapons out there that aren't firearms. You can be armed and not carrying a gun. While I'd agree that many of the injuries are consistent with a large crowd there are also documented cases of people in the crowd using weapons like tasers, pepper spray, and a flag pole. There are lots of pictures of zip tie cuffs being carried in the capital buildings. How often do you hear about people going to a peaceful protest expecting to capture prisoners? You need a license to carry a firearm in DC. It shouldn't be surprising that in a protest made up of people from outside DC you wouldn't have many people who have the right license. Flying with a gun is also a PITA so that's another reason some people who travelled to the protest may not have brought their guns with them.
Finally, there was at least one group that set up a cache of guns offsite so that they could ferry them in if needed [0].
I think we're largely in agreement. My intent wasn't to argue that the riot wasn't violent, it was to argue that it was a) not as bad as it was made out to be, and b) clearly not a coup attempt. The GP has been flagged and the parent comment heavily edited, so the original context is lost.
The chances of a group of unarmed people, and a LARPer with zip ties, overthrowing the most powerful government in history is 0.0%. Even if that was the intention of the group. Which it clearly wasn't.
That otherwise logical thinkers are getting caught up in such hysterics is unnerving.
It very much was their intention to scare lawmakers into letting their lame duck president get a second term. After the first non-peaceful transition of power in US history I really don’t see the point in humoring your stance that it was “just a protest.”
it was neither a coup nor a coup attempt. i have a hard time fathoming the combination of ignorance and privilege that would lead a serious, thinking person to make this claim. at least the politicians grandstanding on the verge of tears are playing an angle.
what do you think would have happened if the rioters captured every single congressperson? what if they were all killed? if you think the answer to either of those questions is "the rioters assume control of any part of the federal government" then im not sure we have anything to discuss. killing congress doesnt, like, make you the new congress.
if you are calling it a coup because they WANTED to control the government (noting how ineffectual their attempt was), then you are making the word coup meaningless. you might as well call any whitehouse trespasser a coup.
context matters. they were political rioters, not a replacement government.
> what do you think would have happened if the rioters captured every single congressperson?
Well, what indeed? Suppose that they killed the ones who were opposed to them politically. Suppose the vote went on, with a different result.
The person who won would surely not repudiate those results. The Supreme Court might consider it, but I honestly don't know what they'd say. The Constitution doesn't have any provision for it, and the majority of the Supreme Court might well decide that the "original intent" was that the vote was the vote.
These were, indeed, just political rioters rather than an organized coup. They didn't have any idea what they were doing, and even if it fell out the way I suggested it wouldn't really have been because they plotted it out that way.
Still... it doesn't seem impossible. And if they achieved their aims, by violence, it seems like splitting hairs not to call that a "coup".
> what do you think would have happened if the rioters captured every single congressperson? what if they were all killed? if you think the answer to either of those questions is "the rioters assume control of any part of the federal government" then im not sure we have anything to discuss. killing congress doesnt, like, make you the new congress.
The question isn't what we think, it's what the rioters thought. Considering their chants, preparations and convictions, it's not entirely unreasonable to say they were hoping to make it so the guy they want remains in charge, regardless of election results. Whether or not that is legally possible or how it works isn't relevant to their goals, which is the main thing that matters to determine if it was a coup attempt or not. They thought it was, and that's that.
PS: i'm not American, I don't have a horse in this race
> it was neither a coup nor a coup attempt.
> ...context matters. they were political rioters, not a replacement government.
That doesn't dismiss the severity of what happened. I agree that those events were precipitated by a large number of imbeciles and a smaller number of nuts with a half-baked plan.
But the scary thing is that they proved to themselves, the politicians who pander to them, and an unknown number of even worse people that flexing the threat of violence is on the table of possibility in the USA. It's one step forward on a slippery slope that sane people don't want to go down.
EVEN NOW, Rep. Liz Cheney faces being ousted by her own party for daring to speak truth about the Stable Genius. Coups, insurrections and revolutions don't "just happen", they're in the works for a LONG time. We might be seeing the early stages of one now.
Your position is very tenuous, based on a reasonable reading of the definitions of "coup" and "attempt"; but even if GP changed their wording to suit you (e.g. "We just easily stopped a political riot") it seems to me that their point (that the powerful people who planned it escaped punishment in that case, and therefore will in this case) would stand unaltered.
Also, when introducing a hot-button political topic (especially in a thread about a different hot-button political topic), it would be nice to do it in a friendly way, i.e. without orating upon the sheer quantity of ignorance it takes to disagree with you.
That is not how coups work. Legislators are seized in order to provide the coup with a veneer of legitimacy, at gunpoint if necessary (but it often isn't). Many coups involve no bloodshed at all, and are the product of bluff and intimidation.
> i have a hard time fathoming the combination of ignorance and privilege that would lead a serious, thinking person to make this claim.
I think of myself as a serious person and what went down surrounding the 2020 election absolutely looked like a coup to me. The sitting President and his associates tried to prevent people from voting; once votes were cast they tried to prevent them from being fully counted; once the votes were counted they tried to get the votes thrown out; once the votes were included, they tried, by force, to prevent the election from being certified.
The sitting President and his associates actively stoked a riot and prevented additional support from police and national guard from being provided to secure the Capitol.
Taken in totality, that was a fucking coup attempt. A politician attempted to take power by force.
Jan 6 was just one battlefield in a larger war. It was a last-ditch desperate attempt, where the actual "war" of Trump trying to invalidate the legitimate vote had already been lost.
That this entire war had a very slim chance of actually succeeding is an entirely different matter altogether.
In the past there was at least a broad general consensus that no matter how much we disagree or dislike each other's policies, we respect the democratic institutions. There were hickups, sure, but never on this scale. Over 100 members of the house voted against the certification of the election results.
Who knows what the future will bring; it may sizzle out, or it may grow in to something ugly. Either way, dismissing it as merely "politicians grandstanding" doesn't strike me as doing justice to the severity of this.
> what do you think would have happened if the rioters captured every single congressperson? what if they were all killed?
Then Congress would have been unable to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, at least until the states appointed replacements. Meanwhile Trump would have been shouting "I really won". That still doesn't add up to anything close to a successful coup, unless the newly-appointed Congress people change their votes based on fear for their lives.
What it would have been, though, is potentially the start of a civil war. It would depend on how determined (or deluded) Trump was, to carry on the claim that he won, and how many people in the population believed it.
>> coup attempt
> it was neither a coup nor a coup attempt. i have a hard time fathoming the combination of ignorance and privilege that would lead a serious, thinking person to make this claim.
I would take the opposite approach here. Trump replaced SecDef after the election. He was working on scuttling the post office and proper vote counting before the election. They tried to rig the election. When their efforts didn't give the results they wanted, they tried to overturn the results with violence. He incited the violence, helped direct it, refused to stop it, and cheered it on, as his own VP was asking for help.
I'm not sure what combination of ignorance and privilege would label this "trespassing" rather than an attempted "coup".
> you might as well call any whitehouse trespasser a coup.
> context matters. they were political rioters, not a replacement government.
The goal of the prior administration was to remain in power. The folks who stormed the capital weren't the replacement government, they were the brownshirts.
Well actually, the goals of the attempt was to prevent their guy Trump from being removed from office. So in that regard it was a coup attempt. They were attempting to illegally wrest control of 1/3 of the government with force.
It was never a coup attempt. Coup is a coordinated attack on all branches of government that makes it impossible for overthrown government to function. This cannot be achieved by angry mob breaching just one government building. Mob was never backed up by some organized force aimed to take over. Turkey 2016 was a coup attempt. This was just nonsense.
People who call it 'coup attempt' should isolate themselves form propaganda narratives they've been subjected to for the past years.
Ability to succeed doesn't really factor into what was attempted. That is in the mind & intentions of those who were involved & instigated it. Some people were very much acting with the intent to stop the transfer of power. If you believe that successfully stopping that transfer would be a coup, then the actions of 1/6 were a coup attempt.
You seem like a smart person, why make such obviously fallacious arguments? The HN guidelines ask that you respond to the strongest interpretation of what someone is saying, within reason.
Because the intent of the crowd was not to attack police, that was a byproduct. The intent was to disrupt the process whereby power is transferred from one leader to the other. The fallacy therefore is one of false equivalency.
No, I don't think that would be a coup attempt. I also don't see how that bears any resemblance to the events that actually took place on 1/6 when people built a scaffold & tried hunting down VP Pence to hang him on it.
If you seriously believe that heated protesters really planned to hang VP Pence, you should also believe that when BLM protesters chanted "kill a cop, save a life", they were really planning to murder all police officers in the vicinity.
They didn't bring any guns. How can you seriously believe they tried to take over the government by force in the most heavily armed country in the world, and not bring any guns?
Pretty easily. Guns are tools, the power of which gun people overestimate.
You had the mob of useful idiots (ie the red capped mob of idiots) expressing their support of the police by beating them, and the more serious people penetrating into the chambers and offices.
Sidearms aren’t as useful as they seem in mob situations. What are the police going to do? Line up Kent State style and just mow the crowd down?
You suppress mobs with physical force. Lots of cops, divide up the mob and gas/beat them to disperse. The administration made that impossible by refusing aid. The New Jersey State police responded before the federal authorities.
The goal wasn’t “taking over the government”. It was a coup, using the stopping of a formality from happening and providing the fig leaf needed for the other guy to hang on to power. Taking a few congressmen hostage, using them as shield, and marching them to the gallows would have stopped that.
The coup attempt was not in the form of the mob themselves taking control. It was the mob trying to disrupt the process of transferring power sufficiently enough to enable or inspire other mechanisms of action. There were, for example, calls for President Trump to declare martial law. It doesn't matter that their plan was vague, poorly coordinated, or unlikely to succeed. They intended to disrupt the transfer of power and executed their intentions violently, injuring over 100 police officers in the attempt. As any number of idiotic criminals in jail can attest to, incompetence in crime does not negate the criminal act.
It also doesn't take nearly as much effort by a mob to accomplish its goals when the people who would help stop it stand idly by: 1) Not enough security was provided in first place 2) Reinforcements took hours to mobilize 3) The President refused to take any action to defuse the situation.
The real patheticness here is the desire to call a riot with a more politically charged term "coup attempt", just because it pleases you to further vilify your political opponents.
I watched the whole thing live. It was messy at times, but it was clear as day that the mob didn't have neither a plan nor a command structure. Once they got into the chamber, they just chatted with guards! Or, in that shaman's case, just blessed everyone around.
Just because the security didn't use lethal weapons (except that one shot). And the reason they didn't use it is because there never was any real serious threat to anyone in power. So the fact that the mob got onto the building speaks only that the security preferred to let them in (fully understanding that everyone important is already evacuated) rather than killing them to prevent them from access.
Once in the building the mob quickly figured out that they don't know what to do next, as was expected.
> So the fact that the mob got onto the building speaks only that the security preferred to let them in (fully understanding that everyone important is already evacuated)
That’s...not true. The building was breached before members were evacuated. The breakthrough and shooting at the Speakers Lobby occurred, very shortly after that room was evacuated, and where the mob, if unchecked at the chokepoint through which they had just broken,
would provide an imminent and overwhelming threat to both security personnel and innocents in the process of evacuating.
Security lost control of the outer perimeter and did a collapsing bubble defense to maximize safety of the heavily outnumbered security personal and the ability to protect VIPs and other innocents who had not been evacuated.
Please stop spreading FUD. We were absolutely nowhere near a successful coup. None of the institutions of power supported any coup so no coup was going succeed. You need a bare minimum of control of the courts, the legistlature, or the military. None of these institutions came close to supporting any coup.
What we had was a scary riot and lots of fear mongering.
Edit: for whatever reasons there are large groups on both sides of the political spectrum that want to pretend that we were much closer to successful coup than reality supports.
The President of the United States supported it. There's evidence that the National Guard specifically wasn't deployed in order to increase the danger to the legislature.
It was a loosely coordinated effort. Either by sympathy or by design. The individuals involved are being found. The real perpetrators are completely let off the hook. It’s just a game of chess and a King’s Castle move didn’t work this time.
Let's say that the rioters had successfully taken congress hostage. A lot more people might have gotten hurt, but we still wouldn't have been close to a successful coup because there simply was no where near enough support for any coup in the military or court system for it to possibly succeed.
It was a signifant event and one that is well worth being strongly concerned about. That does not justify spreading hyperbolic FUD. In my view the seriousness of this event makes it more important that we bring our full rationality to bear when discissing it and try our best to avoid obfuscating the problems it revealed with the usual partisan games of BS and distortion.
If they could have killed and captured enough Democrats that the Republicans could have won the floor vote to not certify the election results, we would be in wildly uncharted territory.
You'd have a Congress and President both declaring that a free and fair election was a "Steal" and they would have the votes, the military, and the levers of power.
The people rioting weren't going to overthrow the country and take over, they were a useful tool for trump to overthrow the election and install himself as President for 4 more years.
The degree to which our institutions worked and did not work in preventing the overthrow of the government is absolutely relevant. If you misrepresent how close something came to success, you dramatically reduce your abilty to learn from the event.
I think people are focusing on the outcome rather than the crime. It's irrelevant whether they were successful, it goes into criminality when a criminal act is actually acted upon, not whether it was successful. It's not illegal to sell hammers, but when you pull out that hammer to hit someone over the head with it, it becomes a crime. Whether or not you actually connected with that other party's head doesn't make the attempt any less criminal.
How is that relevant to what I said? I have made no arguments or statements one way or the other about the criminality. I am trying to call out factually incorrect fear mongering about how close the US government ce to being overthrown.
It helps to be able to recognize authoritarian intent when one sees it. The dude still thinks he should be President right now, and the party is still working to overturn the results.
The intents or desires of our former President only have bearing on his complicity in any coup attempt. They say nothing about how close any such attempt came to success.
The word is "Attempt". It doesn't need to be anywhere near successful for it to have been an attempted coup. Rioters acting with the hope of disrupting the transfer of power. That's all that matters in correctly labelling the event.
"Barely stopped" is a modifier to "attempt" that implies the attempt was almost successful.
If you read my comment, rather than being reactionary, you see that I deliberate do not say it was not an attempted coup.
You can accurately say that this was the closest we have come to a successful coup in our lifetimes. You cannot truthfully say that the coup was close to success or that it was barely stopped.
Thank you for clarifying. I was responding in the context of the original comment that denied it was an attempted coup. Given that was the original context that started this, I think reading your comment in a similar light was not unreasonable since your distinction might have been implied, but not explicit. It was merely a miscommunication.
I too would agree that it was highly unlikely to be successful. Had it gone even a few large steps further in seriously injuring members of congress (also unlikely) I still think the worse-case outcome in terms of transfer of power would have been extra days of delay as appropriate cautions were taken to secure congress.
Perhaps you need to read slower? I see no comment denying that a coup was attempted in any of the parent comments.
The too comment didn't mention the topic at all. The reply to that comment that I replied to mentioned the "recent almost successful coup attempt" and I responded to that comment by pointing out that we came nowhere near a coup beinf successful.
So you, and a large number of other posters, are so locked into the mindset of partisan bickering that you cannot communicate effectively anymore. This is a serious problem that will significanly hurt our chances of preventing similar events.
Wow, you really are determined to make this a flame war. Well, I don't engage in them in general, and HN has a low tolerance for anything coming close, so I'm walking away given that you are not willing to engage in civil discourse free of insults.
I will point out one more fact though: VP Pence made it out of congress mere moments ahead of the mob, part of were hunting him with the goal of hanging him. That seems like a close enough call that the "barely" modifier is not completely unreasonable. If you want to reply to that aspect of the situation without resort to insults or other inflammatory rhetoric, I'm not unwilling to entertain your point of view.
You told me that you had misunderstood what I was saying due to the context. I was pointing out that you were still misunderstanding the context. I didn't insult anyone, but I did feel the the repeated misunderstandings had become so prevelant that I needed to describe the pattern that I was seeing. Edit: As I try to always be civil, I'd appreciate you pointing out where I failed to do so so I can learn.
If Pence had been caught and killed or taken hostage by the mob, that would have brought us no closer to a successful coup. There is simply no way that a single mob can overthrow the US government without significant backing from the institutions of power in this country. To pretend otherwise is to indulge in a fantasy that is completely unrooted in reality.
The above are the things I took as insulting &/or likely to provoke a more inflammatory conversation. I think there are better ways to ask someone to reconsider what you wrote, ways that are less likely to escalate a confrontational tone.
As for Pence, he wasn't a random target. The only reason he was a target was because he had a constitutionally required role to play in the transfer of power. This was a role that the President Trump and some of his supporters wanted him to use to prevent the transfer of power to Biden, but Pence himself had made clear he would not do that.
If killed or kidnapped & therefore unable to perform that role, the next steps to a constitutional crisis were very much on the table:
1) The constitution would require the President to select a new VP.
2) That person then has to be confirmed by a majority of both houses of congress.
3) Given President Trump's urging of VP Pence to use his position to block transfer of power, he would likely appoint someone who would do exactly that.
4) The House would never confirm such a person. Regardless of Senate approval (which would also be unlikely) the confirmation would be blocked, the VP role left empty.
5) The constitutionally mandated terms of the transfer of power could not be met. Biden could not become president.
What would happen from there? I have no idea. Maybe some peaceful resolution. Maybe, with the success of taking the VP out of the picture, many more of President Trump's supporters would feel emboldened to act in some way.
Since VP Pence got away from the situation shortly before the mob arrived.
> The above are the things I took as insulting &/or likely to provoke a more inflammatory conversation. I think there are better ways to ask someone to reconsider what you wrote, ways that are less likely to escalate a confrontational tone.
I'm open to suggestions but the level of continued misapprhension I was facing called for more strong language than the simple corrections I had already repeatedly tried in this thread.
Note the the constitution does not assign this duty to the VP directly, but via his role as the Senate President. Chuck Grassley held the position of Senate President Pro Tempore and the ceremonial duties would have fallen to him.
Now, he may have refused to perfom his constitutionally mandated duty which would have resulted in legal battle that would probably have ended up in the supreme court.
Now, there is maybe an extremely outside chance the supreme court would have invalidated the election and forced a new one. There was absolutely no chance that the Supreme Court would decide that the VP has the unilateral power to completely bypass the counting of the votes and skip ahead in the process to the allow state delegations to select the president.
There would have been chaos and probably a lot more riots and even acts of terrorism. None of that would have allowed the overthow of the US government.
NN is one of those things that I never really understood. I get that people want to "stick it" to their ISPs, but since the NN talk began my internet connection at home has gone from 8mb to 200mb without me having to pay another dime via Spectrum. They called me and just said, "Here, we're upgrading you. You need a new modem to get the speed so that's free too."
I could get 400mb or 1gb if I wanted but 200mb has been more than enough.
I assume there's just very different issues in other parts of the country, but where I live I haven't seen any need for NN so it makes me wonder if there will be some negative effect to my currently good experience?
NN isn't about the raw speed. It's about ensuring content from ISP's competitors is available at the same speed as your ISP's content.
If ISPs were just a dumb pipe, this wouldn't be a problem. But most of the major players are part of massive media conglomerates and have incentive to throttle/restrict certain content.
NN is not about broadband speeds, it is about ensuring that the Internet remains what it is -- a general purpose communication system over which new applications and services can be deployed without requiring permission or coordination with the network operators. It is basically just a regulatory statement of the end-to-end principle.
Huh? Spectrum raises our broadband price every six months, even during the pandemic. It was ~$40 a few years ago and $75 today. I want to quit but only the decrepit ATT is an option, whose site can't even handle billing reliably.
This announcement may be an intentional excuse to give Biden a new progressive thing to do domestically (it's not new information.) Maybe I'm just hopeful. The administration seems (to me) to be trying to convert/retain the left-of-Democrats audience who only reluctantly turned out for him. They're going to need it.
edit: I'd love a net neutrality bill or order, but I'd prefer net neutrality + prison time for those responsible for the fraud.
If I understand this article correctly, the information is not new, but the report is following an investigation which has been on-going since the initial FCC comments began.
However I don't see the report linked anywhere in the article, but I do see sporadic statements from the NY A.G. which were made 5/6/2021.
If these were criminal actions created by the previous FCC chair, e.g. using a citizen's name to submit a false comment, the actors at the FCC and at "Broadband for America" should to be held accountable.
This seems exactly like the kind of pain-free win that the Biden admin has been pulling lately for the base. I suspect coordination, but at this point it's just wishful thinking.
Especially at this particular time: good luck trying to incite an anti-NN right-wing response right now when the primary rhetoric among the right currently is about internet censorship.
The whataboutism is already strong in here. Net neutrality is the battleground, but the issue is pretty universal. Corporate actors are signing off on illegal activity to directly undermine the democratic process in a way that should frighten you, and even when they're caught for it they're not being punished.
Investigators with the NY AG's office "said that Broadband for America acted to give Mr. Pai “cover” to repeal the broadband regulations.". The companies fingered by the AG didn't even pay as much in penalties as they made under their contracts with the telecom companies.
The fact that some other corporate actors might be doing similar shit in the other direction is totally irrelevant; if they got caught, we should all want to bring the hammer down on them too.
It's actually very easy, regulators are directly subordinate to congress and leadership is appointed by the president and confirmed by congress. The fact that people were willing to spend millions of dollars engaging in widespread fraud solely for the purpose of manufacturing the appearance of broad popular support pretty strongly suggests that you're wrong. The campaign directly targeted congressional offices.
this was a collaboration between between corporations like Google and Netflix that want to hamper their competition and leftist who aimed to nationalize the internet. this was the vehicle by which they essentially wanted to seize telecom companies.
Without NN for a few years now, have any of the bad things promised happened?
It seems to me that there should be “social media neutrality” — the very real effects of corporate-sponsored censorship have caused more harm than a lack of NN.
In reality the whole debacle was astroturfed from both sides, one side just did it better. The pro “net neutrality” movement was funded by google and Netflix and promoted laughable propaganda such as:
Give me a break. There were no “good guys” in this debate, just corporations scrambling to control the popular narrative to suit their business interests.
The Net Neutrality argument wasn't that Google and Netflix would be slowed down, it's that everyone else would.
Of course Google and Netflix were going to pay for peering and priority. The question was if everyone else who wanted to get into the video business should have to do so. Comcast wanted to basically double-bill for traffic: they wanted their customers to pay, and then they wanted the services on the other end to also pay.
This is all a moot question nowadays, because the video market is dramatically different than it was a decade ago. "Free-to-air" content is basically all handled by YouTube and Twitch, both of which are services run by companies with the money to afford the storage costs. "Premium" content fragmented into a bunch of different exclusive providers that already have business relationships with cable companies. So there really isn't a competitive video market being stymied out of existence purely because Comcast wants them to pay in order to compete with cable. The barriers to entry in video got a lot higher than just getting double-billed on bandwidth.
(As an example of this: Floatplane, an early-access "premium" platform for people already on "free-to-air" video platforms, had far more problems getting onto iOS than paying for bandwidth. Apple was their existential threat more than Comcast.)
Net Neutrality has nothing to do with individuals and more to do with "entities"..entities like corporations and other very wealthy edge providers. corpos who are more worried about limiting their competition and using government to ensure they aren't impeded.
I have zero faith in P2P video distribution until copyright liability for watching those videos is shifted off of individuals.
Right now, using something like PeerTube is taking your life into your hands. Look at all of the copyright nonsense that hits otherwise legitimate YouTube channels, and now imagine that they get to sue everyone who watched the video, too.
Centralized services can rely on DMCA 512 for liability limitation; and individual viewers almost certainly do not have copyright liability for merely watching a video on a central service. At the very least, you'd have to subpoena the service to get an IP address, and then subpoena the ISP to get at DHCP logs, and then argue to a court that a user that the temporary copies involved with merely watching a video had infringed your copyright.
When you join a swarm that shares a file, you just broadcast that IP address directly to the person who's going to sue you. That's how these networks work. There's a cottage industry of firms that deliberately "leak" their content to BitTorrent and then sue whoever downloads it; that also applies with PeerTube, IPFS, etc. You don't get DMCA 512 liability limitation because it's your own copyright liability. Furthermore it's easier to argue that someone in a P2P swarm has infringed copyright as there's uploading - further copying - involved. So both practically and theoretically speaking it's far easier to get sued in a P2P system.
Also, P2P video is terrible for mobile use-cases. Mobile devices are leeches in a P2P system - they don't have access to unlimited power like a desktop does. So you either flatten the batteries of everyone on phones, or you detect the use of a battery and lose the benefit of the swarm.
Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. There are many possible configurations & usages for P2P. Data stored on a DHT is one important tech for having people own their own data.
Also, it's ok to have leaches on a P2P system if you can properly incentivize & pay the hosts. Ethereum, FileCoin, IPFS, Holochain a market for hosting data. Ethereum & Holochain will provide a market for hosting apps.
I like how “both sides” here are clearly the corporations and special interests. And since “both sides” here did the lobbying and propaganda we’re now at a place where there’s no value in the comments collected or the debate at all.
I could give a —- expletive — about what the corporations think. What about normal people?
It feels like we need a better audio mix for public policy discourse.
“Both sides” are solely composed of corporations and their benefactors debating the parameters of a business relationship that has a relatively large fiscal impact on their respective operations. This is not a public issue that concerns normal people at all. The fact that so many normal people think the decision on net neutrality will have a meaningful impact on their lives, the products they use, or even democracy shows how successful these corporations have been in astroturfing this issue. It’s another nothingburger fake political debate of the kind that pervades and rots actual public discourse.
Correct, this is merely a fight between corporations on who controls the flow of information. As we have seen edge providers are also information monopolies who can censor and limit who use their platforms based on subjective whims.
It is strange to see the correct reply in the gray.
Let's re-emphasize: the dire predictions of removal of net neutrality didn't come to bear. They didn't pass the sniff test either. The dire predictions were fake news - however they are now the official record in the media, and won't get corrected.
> Let's re-emphasize: the dire predictions of removal of net neutrality didn't come to bear.
Why would they start to use that power while the process is still ongoing, and there's (as can be seen in this very article) still active investigations of fraud in the underlying process?
That also brings up why do they want (and spend millions on) the removal of net neutrality if they didn't plan on violating net neutrality in the first place?
> That also brings up why do they want (and spend millions on) the removal of net neutrality if they didn't plan on violating net neutrality in the first place?
This is an undue presumption of bad faith.
There are many situations where Net neutrality legitimately harms global internet routing efficiency and user experience. For example, under net neutrality ISPs are not allowed to privilege high priority packets such as real time video streams. It’s much more nuanced than net neutrality good, isps greedy and evil. Think about it from the perspective of a network engineer working for an ISP.
> For example, under net neutrality ISPs are not allowed to privilege high priority packets such as real time video streams.
Net Neutrality does not block standard QOS techniques.
Additionally, ISP level QOS of IP packets based on content rather than src/dst is mainly vaporware anyway. You don't have the time to favor certain types of packets at the routers, the streams are going too fast.
> Net Neutrality does not block standard QOS techniques.
That’s not true. Nailing down what ISPs are allowed to do in terms of QoS is still very much an open question. It’s not legally clear, for instance, why Comcast would be allowed to prioritize real-time video streams yet not be allowed to deprioritize BitTorrent sharing. What you’re referring to is peering discrimination but the whole of net neutrality is a larger and more complex subject.
Give an example then of the specific rule that blocks standard QOS techniques then. I can't be expected to prove a negative.
Additionally, I'm not just talking about peering discrimination. The residential ISPs want the ability to restrict arbitrary sources and destinations at the last mile even if capacity exists on the rest of their network and their IX.
The caveat is that throttling is allowed if it is “reasonable network management” which is defined as actions being done with a “technical network management justification.”
And this is where legislation ends, under the ambiguity of reasonable and technical. Comcast tested this when a complaint was filed against them for throttling BitTorrent. I consider throttling BitTorrent “reasonable” and justifiable under purely “technical” reasons but clearly other people disagree. Enough people probably disagree that they had to deny any such throttling practices, meaning that in practice they would likely not be allowed to throttle based on technical reasons alone.
> So what you're saying is that there was a process for figuring out the inevitable ambiguities, and you just disagree with the ruling?
The fact that what constitutes “reasonable” and “technical” QoS is ambiguous and strongly dependent on popular opinion is a huge design smell for net neutrality legislation.
> As an aside, I also don't see the "reasonable", "technical" justification for throttling bittorrent anymore than throttling https.
If 20% of your customers are using 80% of your network capacity because of BitTorrent then yes, throttling them is both technical and reasonable.
Why are you using as an example a way to violate net neutrality that you approve of as an example of how companies might not have been planning to violate net neutrality?
Because the GGP is implying that ISPs opposed NN because they stand to anti-competitively financially benefit when there are other less diabolical reasons that are just as likely if not more likely.
Arguably they didn't in the most visible sense only because of the inherent level of noise made, and you still got some gems like the throttling of Firefighters in California. It's also a rhetorical technique to promise not to do an impractical thing to cover up the intention to partially implement an unpopular measure.
>No, we're not setting out to throttle Netflix. (We won't need to, because use will go up, and it's already in the contract we reserve the right to traffic shape anyway, and given we won't improve infrastructure, it's a given it will happen).
The stuff in parentheses is the unsaid part that would upset the normal people. The Network Engineers in the crowd heard it loud and clear though .
If Net Neutrality (and the incentive it creates through forbidding QoS to dynamically prioritize traffic), should have lead to investment in the infrastructure to increase network throughput to meet actual demand. Instead, POTS got torn down, broadband stagnated as ADSL lines were milked for every possible cent, Unlimited data plans disappeared and were replaced with caps...
We have more IP addresses than we should ever need, yet the biggest hurdle to robust connectivity is no one wants to spend money to actually get the wires strung/buried/overhauled. Why? because screw y'all. We're near if not de facto monopolies now, wires cost money, and they'd subtract from the exec bonus that gets cut.
That's specious reasoning: perhaps the dire predictions didn't come to pass precisely because of the amount of controversy that was generated. The telecoms didn't want to rock the boat; they knew that it was only a matter of another administration change for the policy to get reversed anyway.
All the disastrous things that proponents of NN said would surely happen without it haven't happened since it was repealed, and also never happened before it was implemented.
It really does beg the question why it was ever needed in the first place.
As I stated above, there was (a) a massive public outcry against repeal and (b) a strong possibility that it would be put back in place in ~4 years if a Democratic administration came in. These both surely must have been taken under consideration by ISPs. Just because certain practices became legal for them does not mean that it would have been good business to implement them.
No way for you to prove your assertions, either. There's a ton of presumption that goes on regarding this topic instead of examining NN from first principles and seeing what its consequences would actually be.
Nonetheless, the very charitable "perhaps the dire predictions didn't come to pass precisely because of the amount of controversy that was generated" would be neutrally described as "fake news must be published so that bad things don't happen". That's not a valid civilizational setup: it's both ripe for abuse, and also teaches people to dabble in double-think for sake of the greater good.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that maybe, dire things could have happened, and the only thing that prevented them from happening is the massive amount of attention that was given to the possibility of dire things happening. It is not "fake news" to talk about the practices that would have been allowed under these policies. The public outcry may have had a deterrent effect.
Google and Netflix did campaigns for NN. So did Facebook and other internet and media companies.
One of the most successful was the John Olivers Last Week Tonight piece. I saw some evidence later that the ‘evidence’ provided in that piece (claims from Netflix about throttling) were either fabricated or exaggerated, although I did not look into it too much.
That is definitely not the argument - everyone pays for peering regardless (one way or another). The argument was that Comcast, despite peering agreements, should not make Netflix traffic on their own network slower while prioritizing their own video services traffic on top of it unless Netflix or their customers paid them for the privilege of not being slow - regardless of actual bandwidth.
Net neutrality would say no - they are a defacto utility and need to treat the traffic objectively and fairly without prioritizing their own at the expense of others.
Reprioritizing say ALL video traffic? Perfectly fine. Peering arrangements at the network link layer that would benefit some players due to locality and not others? Perfectly fine as long as they don’t do it explicitly to penalize a competitor (and even then probably fine).
Targeting certain services or protocols because they are a threat to their own products? Or asking for upsell money to get useful speeds for certain protocols not due to network management/bandwidth and handled objectively, but for revenue extraction? Not fine.
Would you like USPS or UPS to be able to charge you extra (the package recipient) to ACTUALLY deliver Amazon’s packages at the rate Amazon paid those companies already to deliver them, since they know you’re buying expensive things a lot and obviously have money? The extra load on their trucks from these packages is awfully expensive after all. Surely once a week deliveries will be fine for now unless you want to kick in? Don’t worry, the spam mailers will still be free.
There's also the fact that Comcast isn't a tier 1 ISP. The only netflix traffic going across their network is traffic specifically requested by Comcast customers. It's not like Netflix (even indirectly through their ISP) is somehow using Comcast's network for non Comcast uses.
Most of the peering talk was leaving that part out, trying to pretend that Netflix was using Comcast's network to reach third parties like is the model being addressed by peering agreements between tier 1 ISPs.
Your questions are making the assumption that this would cost more and limit choice. This is not how markets work, this is exactly what government regulation and crony capitalism does.
Even in the case of your Spotify but not YT music example, what if there was a 5/month offer for 15mb internet with spotify streaming. Because spotify and your provider made a deal that subsidized the plan? At the end of the day, partnerships are not bad for the consumer. YT music could make a competing for deal for less money with more Google offerings. Also, this wouldn't eliminate an unlimited option across the board. When has competition made something more expensive? Its regulations like NN which pour amber over a system and make it impossible to be cheaper or better.
The fight is over whether ISPs should be able to leverage their position in the uncompetitive infrastructure space to extract rents from the very competitive internet application space.
Perhaps the reason it's so amazing is because that's not actually what net neutrality is about, and never has been, despite a massive propaganda campaign to trick you into believing it is.
Peering is for fellow ISPs. Netflix, as you may or may not be aware, is not, in fact, an ISP. They already pay for their internet access. Do they pay enough? That's between them and their provider. Does their provider need to pay more for peering with its fellow ISPs? That's between the provider and its fellow ISPs.
What we do not need is for me to need to pay for my internet access and a Netflix subscription, and then pay extra just to let Netflix's internet traffic actually reach me.
We're in this incredibly undesirable place where instead of debating something, we have this meta debate. "Net neutrality is valid because it's opponents astroturf."
It's pretty funny, because I have the same opinion, but in reverse. Net Neutrality disappeared off the radar, and now all of a sudden it's on HN every other week. Looks like astroturfing to me! "No, you're a towel!"
But you know what? Whether or not something is being AstroTurfed is entirely irrelevant, and debate is fruitless. We can have a debate on Net Neutrality without pointing fingers at who has genuine interest, and who is astro turfing.
There isn't any major political stance that doesn't use social media and PR groups to astroturf. Anyone pretending they aren't astroturfing are lying and you should be wary of them.
I mean, I'd be happy to have educated discussions about net neutrality, if I'd ever seen an argument against it that didn't boil down to "I think ISPs should be allowed to make things worse for everyone else—customers, streaming providers, game companies, everyone—just to increase their own already-obscene profits."
And yes, that includes "they should be allowed to do the above Because Freedom".
Why was FCC head Ajit Pai able to get away with citing fraudulent evidence? How can we stop such blatant corruption of the FCC's policy-making process in the future?