I violated Responsible Reading Of The Internet Rule #1 and accidentally looked at the comments. I am having a hard time reconciling the vehement anti-net-neutrality anti-government hair-on-fire screaming there with the reasoned discussion and general attitude here---I would have thought the majority of readers of Wired would be of similar mind to HN readers.
I think there is a large strain of the population who thinks, "If Obama is behind it, it must be part of a Muslim Socialist plot." They listen to radio and TV that feeds this narrow worldview.
For context, I'm neither for nor against Obama - I just think people who take a position of "It's an idea from the other political party so I don't like it" cause more harm than good. (See belief in vaccination, evolution, and global warming as other examples)
You may notice which party represents the "wrong side" of each of those issues. If they're clearly wrong on so many issues, what are the odds they're right on any given issue?
They're wrong on every issue if you assume that Obama is right no every issue. My sense is that Obama is right on some, wrong on some. On most of the issues that he's wrong on, the Republicans are right purely for allowing him to set the agenda.
> They're wrong on every issue if you assume that Obama is right no every issue.
I was speaking specifically about the issues mentioned in the parent post. Namely vaccination[1], evolution, and climate change. The Republican positions are objectively wrong on these issues. Projecting from there, it's not unreasonable to assume they're wrong on other issues that I know less about.
To be more explicit, I was disagreeing with this:
> I just think people who take a position of "It's an idea from the other political party so I don't like it" cause more harm than good.
If one party is consistently wrong on many, many obvious issues, I don't see much of an issue with dismissing their views on more nuanced issues. If you can't figure out something relatively simple like evolution, I don't have much faith in you figuring out national economics.
[1] See Christie and Rand Paul's recent statements
Republicans have been right on other issues, just ones that I didn't mention.
- Shortening unemployment insurance from 99 weeks did help nudge some folks back to work.
- Encouraging housing development is better than rent control.
Perhaps I just agree with the Democrats more on hard science, and the Republicans on the dismal science. The latter is (of course!) less amendable to hard and fast truths.
Basically hides the comments on every site unless you enable them. It's a little aggressive and sometimes if you notice something weird on a site you just need to disable it for that site.
But it honestly improves the entire internet experience exponentially.
Okay, I'm going to go against the grain here and ask why there's so many people avoiding the comments section, or even suggesting installing comment-hiding browser extensions.
Do you folks always avoid the comments section? Obviously not, because you're here :) and the idea that this is such a generalized "Internet Rule" is contradictory to being here. If you're disgusted by other people's abrasive comments (on Wired or wherever else you're avoiding the comments section), can you offer your own respectable perspectives and steer the conversation that way? Or have you completely given up? A reasonable (but unfortunate) situation. I dislike the hair-on-fire knee-jerk screaming too. I hope we can change that.
I wrote more about this[1] after thinking a while about Jeff Atwood's piece[2].
HN is a community. A wired article is a google result.
As such, those comments are liable to attract a wider variety of people, some of whom are crazy, some of whom are trolling, some of whom are trying to push some arbitrary agenda. Here, there are rules and a culture that (it seems to me) rewards interesting conversations.
Plus, most random commenters are anonymous, whereas most people on HN are pseudonymous. I consider what I write here much more strongly than what I write on reddit, or 4chan.
large news websites are targeted by marketing firms with shell accounts in an effort to slant a story. Hacker News is still very much under the radar, and doesn't warrant that level of manipulation (as much) yet.
Perhaps we should take a more subjective look at comments on Hacker News and ask ourselves if a genuine 'hacker' (by PG definition or otherwise) would applaud new regulations for the internet.
Most Wired readers, certainly. Most Wired readers are also smart enough to stay out of the maelstrom of politically-charged vitriol such comments sections become.
Like you said, Rule #1. I suppose the Wired readers savvy enough to have an interesting voice on this issue are also smart enough to not voice it there.
I'm against net neutrality. To me it looks like more regulation for not enough gain.
I don't see why we should stop the free market; if one internet provider is doing things you don't like, another one will open and the consumer can change to that one if they care. I also feel that companies should have a right to provide some websites at higher speeds. There will always be a trade off; perhaps you could get cheaper internet if you only care about the top few sites.
If they charge the same as internet providers that do have net neutrality, then they will quickly lose market share, and I believe that should be the market's choice, not the government.
Imagine if all those people who signed the petition for new regulations instead signed a petition promising not to use any provider that throttled some websites. That would make a strong market incentive not to throttle sites.
And if the consumers can't do that, why should the government step in to save us?
If you argue that it's very hard to open a new cable internet company (which is the argument I got last time I brought this up), my answer is that enough rich people would be interested enough to open a competitor if there was demand.
This would work great! Except that there aren't 20 providers to choose from, there's usually one, maybe two. And the two providers you generally expect to have do not care anything for consumer experience. They also lobby for other companies (or even townships) to not be able to set up their own fiber/cable connections.
The lack of regulation you want already exists, and it's starting to strangle free and open communication as we know it.
Also, not sure if this is clear, but net neutrality doesn't regulate prices. Companies can charge whatever they want for their service. The only thing that's regulated is how they treat data...all data must be treated the same. Other than that restriction, companies can do whatever they want. I don't really see how this could be viewed badly. Yes, people seem to really like the "regulation is bad" argument lately, but it doesn't really apply here, nor does it work as a blanket statement.
>And the two providers you generally expect to have do not care anything for consumer experience.
In a free market, this fact means that people don't care enough about their experience. If they cared enough, they would choose based on that, instead of on price.
>They also lobby for other companies (or even townships) to not be able to set up their own fiber/cable connections.
I would support strongly any attempt to make it easier for companies to open up new internet providers. Again, the reason there aren't so many options is because of regulations.
>The lack of regulation you want already exists, and it's starting to strangle free and open communication as we know it.
Give an example of a free market that doesn't have any net neutrality options, but has consumers that want it.
>Also, not sure if this is clear, but net neutrality doesn't regulate prices. Companies can charge whatever they want for their service. The only thing that's regulated is how they treat data...all data must be treated the same. Other than that restriction, companies can do whatever they want. I don't really see how this could be viewed badly. Yes, people seem to really like the "regulation is bad" argument lately, but it doesn't really apply here, nor does it work as a blanket statement.
I know what net neutrality is regulating, and I don't think that choice should be taken away from companies. I'm against government doing something that can be done by the consumer.
Why doesn't the regulation is bad argument work here?
As a consumer, I can see instances where I'd prefer to have cheaper service rather than pay more for net neutrality.
So the solution should be to take away the regulations that made it so, not add on more as a patch.
"Here, there's a problem because regulation has made the market not free enough."
"I know, let's fix it with more regulation!"
Also, freeness isn't binary, it can be more or less free. It's free enough that Google Fiber can exist. As long as it's possible to open something given enough money, there will be an upper limit on how much companies can screw their customers, which doesn't seem too high to me.
I support regulation in other places, I don't consider my position one sided that way. I have a high bar for the benefit that a regulation needs to pass before I agree with it, but I'm not against this only because it's regulation.
Some solutions would be to fix the laws allowing these lawsuits to go on like this, perhaps requiring the loser to pay the costs for frivolous suits like the ones described, or stop the FCC regulations that are the official cause of the lawsuit.
Why doesn't the government go after the monopolies under anti-trust laws?
Free market is great if there are problems to solve and they require creative solutions. When an optimal solution is found, competition based on that one aspect of the market doesn't make sense anymore.
In this case, I truly believe net neutrality is an optimal solution for consumers. The goal of society is not to make things easier on companies, the goal is to advance society as a whole. Freedom of speech and expression of ideas does this, but allowing companies to block this at their whim benefits nobody but the companies. Battling internet providers day in, day out is tiresome enough without having net neutrality on the chopping block constantly. I don't want to have to switch providers every time they start blocking content. How do I even know they are blocking or throttling content? Will they even tell me? The free market offers me no protections against this. A company could be lying to be and I'd never know.
With a regulatory body, at least there's some oversight, and by default a good amount of protection.
I think if enough people in society determine they want something, that becomes a public matter. Trying to shoehorn every problem into the free market is a lot messier, IMO.
Would you support the following proposal? I would:
The FCC allows companies to throttle whatever they want, but requires all the data to be provided publicly, and they make press releases every so often specifying which companies throttle and which don't. That would solve your not knowing problem.
In addition, in any location where a company is the sole provider, net neutrality applies, which would solve the problem of choices. You also rule out the obvious loophole of having multiple related companies operating under different brands to get around this.
How many of your problems could be solved by this? What problems would still remain?
(Oh, and is there any chance of getting people to support anything this complicated? No.)
> The FCC allows companies to throttle whatever they want, but requires all the data to be provided publicly, and they make press releases every so often specifying which companies throttle and which don't. That would solve your not knowing problem.
Ok, so we're back to regulating again? Do you want a free market or not? I don't understand how forcing companies to provide transparency data is not regulation. How is this any better in your eyes than forcing them to treat all data the same?
> In addition, in any location where a company is the sole provider, net neutrality applies, which would solve the problem of choices.
So regulation in some instances, but not in others. A known, well-established regulation is now much more complicated to a) understand and b) enforce.
> You also rule out the obvious loophole of having multiple related companies operating under different brands to get around this.
Much harder than it sounds, I believe.
Your solutions are band-aid fixes for the fact the the free market is not equipped to handle this problem. Not only that, but you are attempting to work around regulation by creating even more complicated regulations on top of the original.
When you have to jump through a tangled mess of hoops to get to a solution that has an obvious, simple answer then you are doing something wrong.
I just don't see what the big deal with regulation is. The only ones who get hurt by this are telecoms.
>Do you want a free market or not? I don't understand how forcing companies to provide transparency data is not regulation. How is this any better in your eyes than forcing them to treat all data the same?
I explained this in my other comment so I'll just paste it here:
>I did say I'm not opposed to all regulation. Free markets only work perfectly with perfect information, so I support almost any regulation that's about making information public. I've got no problem with forcing companies to put nutrition information on all their products, for example.
I'm not the one who's deciding on things solely based on whether they are regulation or not.
The reason this is better is because you're only forcing them to provide information, not change business practices.
>Not only that, but you are attempting to work around regulation by creating even more complicated regulations on top of the original.
I'm supporting making the info public, which is needed for markets to be truly free.
>When you have to jump through a tangled mess of hoops to get to a solution that has an obvious, simple answer then you are doing something wrong.
I went through some of the problems with the obvious answer above.
>The only ones who get hurt by this are telecoms.
I gave use-cases and reasons why a consumer might want it. Why are you ignoring those?
Allowing corporations to throttle traffic, while forcing them to be public about what they throttle, seems like an idea that would work in theory but at the same time quite taxing on the consumer. Click-through EULAs are all public, but how many people read them? It just seems like a business practice that ISPs will exploit and obfuscate, and most customers will sign on to them not knowing exactly how or why their data gets throttled.
If customers don't care enough, that's also a choice. Apparently enough people care about this to make all this media and petition noise; those people could care enough to look up the info. Probably the EFF or such would come out with a helpful infographic showing the Good ISPs vs the Bad ones.
I think that framing this around "consumers" is not the main point here. If you think that those that benefit are only in a buy-and-sell negotiation, a free market is very appealing.
What we are doing here in Brazil regarding the upcoming regulations on the Internet and data protection [0] is to frame it around human rights issues -- freedom of expression and press freedom are the main ones.
The existence and action of governments is only justifiable for me to keep people from hurting each other too much, and preventing abusive power relationships. I believe current net neutrality issues are one of those situations.
In addition, in any location where a company is the sole provider, net neutrality applies, which would solve the problem of choices.
You've floated this idea a few times here. How would you propose this rule apply in Manhattan, where the availability of a second ISP option can vary not only block by block, but building by building? I'm not sure if this is unique to New York City, but the choice to bring a supplier into a building is often the result of an exclusive contractual agreement with that provider (I waited about five years for FiOS to arrive as the second option in my building, finally supplanting the incumbent Time Warner 10/0.5 "broadband" option).
N.B.: My initial response was to your similar comment deeply threaded below.
Keep the law exactly as I proposed, and let provider deal with it. They might choose on their own to just offer NN in the whole area in places like that. The important thing is that it's voluntary.
Among others, a limited, but greater than one, number of providers in an area all trying to push their own, e.g., video service and so all blocking/throttling Netflix and other competing video services.
I find it difficult to imagine a scenario where Netflix is completely inaccessible or heavily throttled in an area and the public outcry can't stop it. The problems Netflix complained about were fixed by the free market without any NN rules.
This I think is the difference. If Comcast starts throttling Netflix in my area there would be a huge public outcry...but there is no other option. None. I Can't just "switch" providers (jesus even if I wanted just to cancel, Comcast gives me hell). And even if we all get on twitter/facebook/LastWeekTonight Comcast will not care - they have no incentive to care because, again, there's no other option.
So how do we create that if/then statement? If only one ISP in a location, then Net Neutrality? What happens if the location does get opened up to multiple providers? Do the new providers not have to follow the neutrality rules?
As an aside, as anyone been able to show what it would actually cost providers to adhere to a net neutrality standard?
I said above that that I do support net neutrality for any location with only one ISP.
You've floated this idea a few times here. How would you propose this rule apply in Manhattan, where the availability of a second ISP option can vary not only block by block, but building by building?
I did say I'm not opposed to all regulation. Free markets only work perfectly with perfect information, so I support almost any regulation that's about making information public. I've got no problem with forcing companies to put nutrition information on all their products, for example.
I'm not the one who's deciding on things solely based on whether they are regulation or not.
Also, you didn't answer my question about whether you would support my proposal over the net neutrality one.
I'm reading you as very anti-regulation, which could certainly be my own fault. Many conservatives simply talk "anti-regulation" without giving credit to beneficial regulations.
I'm not the one to which you raised your question. I think your suggestion is a fine one except that I wouldn't use it in place of protecting us from the monopolies we're experiencing, but in addition to net neutrality.
I'd argue that there are lots of anecdotal examples that suggest the US internet market is stagnant. Our speeds compare poorly to other countries as do our costs. The sudden increases in speed that ISPs roll out whenever Google Fiber moves into an area seem like strong evidence that the ISPs are delaying service upgrades as much as possible. There have already been examples of ISPs throttling certain protocols or endpoints that don't align with their business plan.
I would also point out that the FCC has not been granted any additional regulatory power. They could have made this move at any time and they can un-do it at any time as well. Congress can also take action to remove or re-define the FCC's power.
I don't see this as "the" be-all and end-all action, but it seems worth trying to see if we can get the average connection speeds across the country up and the minimum cost down.
The telecom space hasn't been a "free" market in decades... and likely never will again. The only thing that happens if you remove regulation is that eventually we'll have a telecom monopoly again, while prices go through the roof and industry profits soar.
Weird, I didn't know protecting free speech was considered communist now. It's almost like I need a personal "American Culture Consultant" to stay on top of all these shifting rules.
