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Net Neutrality: Help me understand plz.

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So, I've searched a lot around the web, trying to figure out what all the buzz with net neutrality is about. However all the articles I've found are clearly, heavily biased, so for the sake of the people like me, could some of you guys give clear, concise arguments from both sides? All arguments will be put down in this post over time, allowing for folks like me to get all the details with non of the bias.

Tl;dr present arguments for or against net neutrality in comments, will make mega thread based off those posts.

P.S I would appreciate it if you guys penned down your own arguments and counter arguments so I could add them to the post

MAIN PRO-NEUTRAL ARGUMENTS:

Argument: Net Neutrality prevents throttling by ISPs i.e keeps the net neutral, hence the name.
Counter-Argument: At the same time it makes it harder to for innovation to happen in the marketplace. We should instead let the market do as it will to evantually create lower prices and better efficiency for the consumer.
Argument: ISPs hold a massive monopoly on the market, net neutrality keeps them under control. Side note: this is a heavily disputed argument that is only valid in certain cases. Analyze your options and come to personal conclusions.

MAIN ANTI-NEUTRAL ARGUMENTS:

Argument: The average consumer didn't even notice the shift from Net Neutrality and back again. This clearly isn't affecting anyone.
Counter-Argument: That doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Evidence of ISP throttling has appeared all over the place, and it probably won't stop.
Argument: Net Neutrality (in the form of placing ISPs under Title II regulations) isn't necessary.
we already have antitrust laws in place to stop this kind of behavior.
 
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Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC is trying to repeal Net Neutrality. This means our internet providers can block and slow down websites they don’t like. This basically means the end of some websites that internet providers block, which goes against many people’s desire of an open, free internet.
EDIT: I say he’s still trying even though the vote has been had in favor of it being repealed, but I think there’s still one more vote.
 
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Okay so, this is really not the best place to ask, because this place is flooded with children who get all of their information from people who tell them what to think, rather than thinking for yourself.

Rather than be some other idiot shepherd and tell you to agree with me or tell you what I've been told by other idiots who think the internet is going to become censored, blocked, and so on, despite that still being illegal under antitrust laws, I can only give you videos on the topic, which are full of sources, and you should think for yourself.



If this video doesn't interest you -- ie, you don't watch the whole thing, or it seems too long and daunting, you don't need to care about net neutrality or what people say about it. Either you're invested in this enough to fully understand it, or you're not, but don't half-ass it and just believe whatever fear mongering people like @supergamer368 spew out.

I encourage you to check the video's sources. While he presents his side of the argument, his sources are clearly labeled and he presents the other side of the argument rather fairly, doesn't result to cheap insults, low blows, or other stupid shit like those gay internet "skeptics" do. The issue is not black and white -- Ajit Pai is not killing the internet, he's just removing *SOME REGULATIONS, NOT ALL OF THEM* so it's best to look at the information present for yourself and decide if it'd really affect you. If you don't watch like 500 hours of netflix a day, it more than likely won't affect you at all. There's a really stupid, shitty misinformation campaign going around that you should ignore, and instead seek proper information on. As I've said, this is a very complex issue, so just half-assing it by taking someone's word at face value like it's the be-all-end-all information on the issue is very dishonest and just muddies the debate.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC is trying to repeal Net Neutrality. This means our internet providers can block and slow down websites they don’t like. This basically means the end of some websites that internet providers block, which goes against many people’s desire of an open, free internet.
EDIT: I say he’s still trying even though the vote has been had in favor of it being repealed, but I think there’s still one more vote.
You are 100% fucking wrong.

He is not repealing net neutrality as a concept. You can't repeal a "concept." What he has repealed, however, are rules based on the idea of net neutrality that were incredibly overbearing, fucked over smaller companies, and let big companies like Netflix get away with putting out fake information, and soak up bandwidth from ISPs without having to pay for all the shit they use.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11302446/netflix-admits-throttling-video-att-verizon-customers
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-b...exploited-a-gaping-loophole-in-net-neutrality

Netflix, one of the biggest proponents of the "net neutrality" argument, has been caught throttling the fuck out of their customers and sending the botched studies and results to congress through lobbying.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...r-video-Twitter-staff-talking-censorship.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-has-gone-from-bastion-of-free-speech-to-global-censor-2017-6
Twitter, a website that's a big supporter of "net neutrality" wants to prevent the internet from being censored by ISPs, yet will censor literally *anyone they want online* for specifically posting content they dislike, or disagree with.

http://fortune.com/2017/05/22/facebook-censorship-transparency/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opin...censor-you-too-james-bovard-column/795271001/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-better-any-time-soon/?utm_term=.b7500d0747a2

Facebook, yet ANOTHER supporter of "net neutrality" has been notorious for censoring posts they dislike and any thoughts they dislike, and are basically a tool of the governments of various countries.

What does this all prove?
Simple.

According to Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Netflix, censorship and throttling from ISPs is bad, but if they do it, it's a-ok.

Do you not think it's fishy at all that the people trying to "stop" this from happening are the ones doing it in the first place?
 

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and soak up bandwidth from ISPs without having to pay for all the shit they use.
I saw nothing in the regs or debates that would lead me to believe they were crippling to people. Just a plain good idea (treat every packet the same, barring things like spam filtering and whatever censorship your government imposes). So the ISPs got caught with their proverbial pants down and had been dragging their heels on upgrades for too long. Too bad. Roll with the punches or become the next newspapers.
The rhetoric got a bit silly, and every side had complete cunts aplenty, and while I find that distasteful it is a means to get people interested in an obscure technical concept with serious ramifications. Such are the failings of soundbite politics.
 
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Ajit Pai, chairman of the FCC is trying to repeal Net Neutrality. This means our internet providers can block and slow down websites they don’t like. This basically means the end of some websites that internet providers block, which goes against many people’s desire of an open, free internet.
EDIT: I say he’s still trying even though the vote has been had in favor of it being repealed, but I think there’s still one more vote.
Gotta say, I'd figure by now people would have a better grasp of the repeal than the "ISPs now have infinite power" mantra.. It's wrong.. Oh so wrong..
 
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I saw nothing in the regs or debates that would lead me to believe they were crippling to people. Just a plain good idea (treat every packet the same, barring things like spam filtering and whatever censorship your government imposes). So the ISPs got caught with their proverbial pants down and had been dragging their heels on upgrades for too long. Too bad. Roll with the punches or become the next newspapers.
The rhetoric got a bit silly, and every side had complete cunts aplenty, and while I find that distasteful it is a means to get people interested in an obscure technical concept with serious ramifications. Such are the failings of soundbite politics.
I don't remember mentioning anything about the rules being crippling to end users. I also don't remember my entire post only boiling down to a single sentence fragment. Go back and read my post. It's not too long.
 

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I don't remember mentioning anything about the rules being crippling to end users. I also don't remember my entire post only boiling down to a single sentence fragment. Go back and read my post. It's not too long.
I did. I just wanted to discuss that one further.

I said nothing about end users, it was going off your comment about "that were incredibly overbearing, fucked over smaller companies," which I probably should have quoted too.
 
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And they do. When these heavyhanded regulations are not set up to look at things based on their context, we get situations like http://news.cnet.com/Telco-agrees-to-stop-blocking-VoIP-calls/2100-7352_3-5598633.html where a company that can't handle something like Vonage must block it to keep their service stable for the rest of their customers, to the dismay of all the vonage nerds, but get punished anyways as if they had malicious intent when they were just trying to make their service work

Throttling and blocking, when done with justification, are not inherently bad things, something people seem adamant about denying. I consider http://netneutrality.koumbit.org/en/node/5 a very, very fair reason to block a site. Specifically the part where the site was encouraging people to harass employees of Telus, and posted their information online. Telus was lawfully allowed to block and censor these sites for the safety of their employees.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/telus-wins-injunction-against-striking-workers-1.547764

How about when MetroPCS blocked every video service besides youtube, when it could barely manage text and video with it's incredibly tiny 22mhz. To put that into perspective, bigger companies like AT&T, Verizon, and so on use 700mhz. The reason Youtube was allowed was because they worked with Youtube to provide an ultra-compressed video format that would make it so you could actually watch stuff on their network. The quality sucked, and it probably buffered for a shitton of time, but it still made the content available where otherwise no content at all would be.

Throttling, blocking, and prioritization can have valid justifications in the modern era where technical limitations are still a thing. While there are obviously cases of malicious intent, I do not think all cases of them should be labelled as malicious right off the bat. There are numerous reasons to throttle, block, and prioritize content in situations, as I've listed above.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

there's plenty of threads on this already. No need for another one.
Why do you care? You never had an honest discussion in any of them.
 
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FAST6191

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And they do. When these heavyhanded regulations are not set up to look at things based on their context, we get situations like http://news.cnet.com/Telco-agrees-to-stop-blocking-VoIP-calls/2100-7352_3-5598633.html where a company that can't handle something like Vonage must block it to keep their service stable for the rest of their customers, to the dismay of all the vonage nerds, but get punished anyways as if they had malicious intent when they were just trying to make their service work

Throttling and blocking, when done with justification, are not inherently bad things, something people seem adamant about denying. I consider http://netneutrality.koumbit.org/en/node/5 a very, very fair reason to block a site. Specifically the part where the site was encouraging people to harass employees of Telus, and posted their information online. Telus was lawfully allowed to block and censor these sites for the safety of their employees.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/telus-wins-injunction-against-striking-workers-1.547764

How about when MetroPCS blocked every video service besides youtube, when it could barely manage text and video with it's incredibly tiny 22mhz. To put that into perspective, bigger companies like AT&T, Verizon, and so on use 700mhz. The reason Youtube was allowed was because they worked with Youtube to provide an ultra-compressed video format that would make it so you could actually watch stuff on their network. The quality sucked, and it probably buffered for a shitton of time, but it still made the content available where otherwise no content at all would be.

Throttling, blocking, and prioritization can have valid justifications in the modern era where technical limitations are still a thing. While there are obviously cases of malicious intent, I do not think all cases of them should be labelled as malicious right off the bat. There are numerous reasons to throttle, block, and prioritize content in situations, as I've listed above.

In that case we appear to have a difference of opinion on what seems like a fundamental element of this debate.

I opt for the rather more Darwinian approach and thus I don't care if someone's service is under provisioned, over sold or if they offered more than they can provide (give me unlimited and I may well take you at your word). The pipe gets to remain unfiltered, or at least not selectively filtered. I am not opposed to a regional/nodal or service wide slowdown. If they in turn get bad customer ratings then welcome to the rest of the world.

At the same time I would not object to some kind of quasi intranet, basically an expanded version of mobile phones some years back when they would offer unlimited myspace, data for everything else. Would object to said service being called internet though.
 
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In that case we appear to have a difference of opinion on what seems like a fundamental element of this debate.

I opt for the rather more Darwinian approach and thus I don't care if someone's service is under provisioned, over sold or if they offered more than they can provide (give me unlimited and I may well take you at your word). The pipe gets to remain unfiltered, or at least not selectively filtered. I am not opposed to a regional/nodal or service wide slowdown. If they in turn get bad customer ratings then welcome to the rest of the world.

At the same time I would not object to some kind of quasi intranet, basically an expanded version of mobile phones some years back when they would offer unlimited myspace, data for everything else. Would object to said service being called internet though.
So basically you're an idealist who doesn't debate in reality, only in hopes and ideals. Ironic that you keep saying "welcome to the rest of the world" while your ideas aren't in it. In an ideal world, the internet would be amazing and have no problems whatsoever, and the examples I listed would never require any sort of internal maintenance, but we do not, nor have we ever, nor will we ever live in such an ideal world. It's pointless to argue what *should* happen relative to ideals rather than what *must* happen based on standards.
 
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Actually I kind of like to watch things burn and crash, companies being one of my favourites as the analysis of such things are usually fascinating. Not really idealism there. Equally I contend I offered some practical solutions that retain neutrality just fine, even when those responsible for laying pipes have been not doing so well.

Going further, or to expand on an earlier thing, stop selling unlimited bandwidth if you have not got the means to provide it. Legislating around it is uncool. Hopefully you do not have too many people on a nice grandfathered plan.
 
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How about when MetroPCS blocked every video service besides youtube, when it could barely manage text and video with it's incredibly tiny 22mhz. To put that into perspective, bigger companies like AT&T, Verizon, and so on use 700mhz.
22 MHz is assigned to maritime mobile systems, not cellular telephones. Not sure where you heard that MetroPCS had to block video services because it used 22 MHz.

Also, MetroPCS uses the T-Mobile network.

US radio frequency allocation as of January 2016: https://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/january_2016_spectrum_wall_chart.pdf
 

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Pretty much this

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------


Yes but that thread was posted based on misinformation and a fear mongering campaign, it offers very little factual evidence that's actually worthwhile in the debate, if any at all.
I don't think the OP was intentionally trying to fear monger anyone. Rather provide a Thread were people can debate and learn, and bring up the best points they can find.

Misinformation is not avoidable. You're bringing up the best points you can find at the moment. And your not going to get the information right away as it takes time to research, and for information to come out and be discovered. Which is why debate is a thing, to bring up a point, research to see if that point is true, then further debate why it is or isn't true, and talk some more about it to get closer to the truth. That how a debate should work.

And can you really blame people for misinformation since corrupt people do lie. But if they never brought up the misinformation in the first place, then how would you correct them? They will not be corrected and will continue to believe any misinformation. So its good that they bring up what the read somewhere else. You can't stop corrupt people from lying, but you can find contraditction's and correct people.

Misinformation happens on both sides, so I think its best to act mature about this, instead of using this as an ego booster because you know something others don't and attack people. And if its more of a frustration thing because of the misinformation happening, well again thats unavoidable, and the best you can do is minimize it the best you can, with the best evidence you can come up with, and don't expect people to believe you right away as they are also skeptical.

Even people that claim they have the information, can be wrong without knowing or realizing.
 
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22 MHz is assigned to maritime mobile systems, not cellular telephones. Not sure where you heard that MetroPCS had to block video services because it used 22 MHz.

Also, MetroPCS uses the T-Mobile network.

US radio frequency allocation as of January 2016: https://www.ntia.doc.gov/files/ntia/publications/january_2016_spectrum_wall_chart.pdf
Wrong, MetroPCS was bought out by T-Mobile network and uses it *now* but around 2010 or so it was a budget service. https://www.law360.com/articles/442836/metropcs-ditches-challenge-to-fcc-net-neutrality-regs

https://www.mercatus.org/expert_commentary/if-youre-reliant-internet-you-loathe-net-neutrality
Mind the biased title and rest of the article, it provides a more factual account of the events and context for MetroPCS's "net neutrality" "violations." A good point about all of this is that the previous Title II regulations didn't give a shit about context. MetroPCS made a very clear attempt to get content to it's customers despite being a budget company. Read up on a topic before posting about it.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I don't think the OP was intentionally trying to fear monger anyone. Rather provide a Thread were people can debate and learn, and bring up the best points they can find.
Which they've failed to do fairly as they've only presented 3 "pro arguments" and haven't looked past all the hysteria and outrage to find anything beyond arguments that people were misrepresenting or screaming about. There's plenty of pro-repeal arguments, namely in that the Title II regulations are way too broad, and don't have any room for context in situations, where it really should.

And can you really blame people for misinformation since corrupt people do lie. But if they never brought up the misinformation in the first place, then how would you correct them? They will not be corrected and will continue to believe any misinformation. So its good that they bring up what the read somewhere else. You can't stop corrupt people from lying, but you can find contraditction's and correct people.

Misinformation happens on both sides, so I think its best to act mature about this, instead of using this as an ego booster because you know something others don't and attack people. And if its more of a frustration thing because of the misinformation happening, well again thats unavoidable, and the best you can do is minimize it the best you can, with the best evidence you can come up with, and don't expect people to believe you right away as they are also skeptical.

Even people that claim they have the information, can be wrong without knowing or realizing.
Regardless of it's inevitability, misinformation is misinformation. Fear mongering, intentional or not, is fear mongering. These are not changed regardless of the user's intention, but when people buy into the hysteria of uninformed individuals, despite it not being their intentions, those who are uninformed are fear mongering.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Actually I kind of like to watch things burn and crash, companies being one of my favourites as the analysis of such things are usually fascinating
Definitely the mindset of someone ready to have an in-depth debate about the philosophy of "net neutrality"
 
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Net Neutrality is important. It prevented ISPs from blocking content, now yes true, twitter had blocked shit before. However, ISPs can blanket cover. Twitter can only managed itself. ISP's, they can control what you see, if there is a post talking about shady business practices and it mentions them, they can block it. Many ISPS have been caught at blocking crap. Infact, it's the isps fault for the reason net neturality was added. they kept doing crap, throttling nextflix was one of them. Verizon was found blocking facetime. (some apple program.) So the fcc sued. and then eventually the ideas and concepts of net neutrality (which already existed) were raised to title 2. Which meant it was more controlled, preventing the ISPS treating data unfairly, and if they tried to pull bullshit they can and will be sued. Now that it is/will not be a title 2, isps can just simple put in tiny text that they can block and throttle any site they wish. And you wouldn't be able to take any legal action against them
 

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