The Net is Liberated as So-Called 'Net Neutrality' Control is Officially Dead Today
In 2015, President Obama lobbied the FCC to enact rules on the internet by regulating internet service providers. They wanted to be able to control the net more, through throttling bandwidth usage and blocking sites. The "pipes" of the internet would be nationalized, and prevent business innovation and investment into the internet's infrastructure. This would also make things worse for all users.
Source
The FCC didn't know what they were talking about for justifying their draconian measure of control over people's freedom online. After the implementation of 'net neutrality' in 2015, investments in the infrastructure declined. When the internet started and AOL became a big thing, they were able to become big because they discovered better ways to service customers. Throttling back connection speeds and download limits wasn't their solution. The infrastructure grew instead.
The market decided the outcome, not the Feds. Letting the government regulate business models rarely works out in fast changing technology fields. Broadband has become more available, with Americans who don't have access dropping by more than half between 2012 and 2014, down from 72.1 million to 34.5 million. After 'net neutrality' was passed, adoption became 3 times slower. 2012 had 81.2% of Americans with broadband access, 2014 had 89.4%, and 2016 had 92.3%.
But 'Net Neutrality' was supported by big companies like Netflix, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon. They argued that ISPs controlled the internet "pipes" and would discriminate against certain content with that control. Yet, the one's who want the control are the mega corps.
Free speech is a target. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Google welcome policies to police speech online. 2017 saw a flurry of activity to eliminate, demonize and punish "bad" personalities from their sites in order to provide a "safe harbor" for certain groups or people that objected to what the "baddies" talked about. In 2018, Youtube has been purging many channels for talking about issues they deem to be "bad".
So today marks a good day as we see 'net neutrality' die. The regulations have been repealed by the FCC. But activists for the flawed concept are still trying to get it reenacted. They had the Senate pass a bill to overturn the FCC decision to scrap the regulation of 'net neutrality'. They are trying to get it passed at the House level as well.
But these efforts are largely a waste of time, energy and money. If it passes the House of representatives, it then goes to the White House for Trump to OK it. This won't happen. Trump wants deregulation, and reenacting the regulations of the internet is not up his ally.
References:
- Activists Attempt Last-Minute Effort to Save Net Neutrality
- Net Neutrality Is Officially Dead. That's a Victory for Free Speech.
- Why Net Neutrality Was Mistaken From the Beginning (AOL Edition)
- Senate approves bill in bid to retain U.S. net neutrality
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The "glue" that makes the world still work, politically and socially, is the internet itself.
Not monopolies, not corporations, not countries
The fact that we have worldwide communication that is cross-jurisdictional and works this well... should not be tampered with.
I'm happy that net-neutrality was repealed by the FCC - they did it right. :)
I'm glad to see more people are coming around to this. I compare "net-neutrality" to the baby-bell Atlantic companies from the 40's and 50's. All were stalled out when gov't came into regulate, and just got in the way of innovation.
I've never heard anyone say anything bad about net neutrality until this post.
Yes edicted this is a first for me too!
It's painfully obvious people haven't got the faintest idea what Net Neutrality is and how the internet actually works.
I think the main street media has brainwashed people. I'm pretty sure the average person doesn't actually know what "net neutrality" is. And whenever the big tech companies are universally in support of something, it can mean only one thing: it's financially beneficial to their business.
The name is catchy, good Orwellianism ;) How can you not support neutral internet, of course it's good! WE don't want it to be controlled, but neutral! :P
So many people were so rooted on the "keep net neutrality" bandwagon that I felt like i was taking crazy pills. It's nice to see some sanity here! That issue seemed to me to have more blind following than a lot of other politicized issues among my social networks. I'm wondering if it's just my network or if others observed that too!
It's all blind following when it comes to any of these issues now unfortunately! At least we know better! ;)
I guess, it blows my mind that people would hear that we need regulation on the internet and not immediately question that... when I heard what net neutrality was the red flags in my brain immediately were raised! People need to question things a bit more!
Govt's always name things to sound virtuous and good. i.e. the "Patriot Act" I only picked up on these sorts of things after that!
You were not taking crazy pills, they were just astroturfing to look like they had tons of support.
It is pretty cheap to do on reddit/facebook/twitter, something like only tens of thousands of dollars to maintain for months of bots. The bots are sophisticated and talk to themselves and even upvote eachother.
There were so many people impersonating Vitalik and it got so bad he changed his twitter name to Vitalik "not giving away ETH" Buterin, and the bots copied his name lol!
They targeted Elon Musk and many bitcoin devs and stuff too.
Heres a quick example of them in action for Ethereum scams on Vitalik's twitter.
Yeah it's crazy. I used to browse Imgur and that whole community lost it's marbles over NN. Anybody that questioned the masses got downvoted and called ridiculous names (most of which lacked creativity) no matter how solid the argument. That message gets pushed by those with agendas and bots and then cascades throughout a surprising portion of the population that's active on social media. Well, either a surprising portion or at least most of the loudest virtue signalers :)
It was a huge shock to me today, my dad texted me ‘what is net neutrality and should I be concerned that it got eliminated?’ I had one of those proud moments where my dad actually asked me something important (he’s still a Fox News kinda guy, but I’ve been chipping away getting him off the MSM trash). I kindly explained what you said, and that I was disillusioned a few years ago and actually thought it was a great idea. Then I graduated my ultra liberal university and started to get back to my middle ground. Good explanation of it tho!
Hehe, glad I was able to provide info to answer some q's for people who don't know and were worried by MSM's msg of it being a "tragedy".
@krnel what do you think about concepts like MAIDsafe?
If the network is unconditionally anonymous, the implications for things both good and bad are enormous.
The project looks serious and much more advanced nearly incomparable to simple storage systems like STORj and Sia, although since it began 12 years ago, it's starting to look a lot like Duke Nukem Forever.
Seems good for ppl to keep from being spied on by govt agencies, but then again the negative is always there for tools too.
They seem to just want to control everything in this world. I'm not a fan of Politics but it seems that this things are very important to know specially after seeing Senators do their "chit-chat" on camera like they don't know what's gonna happen.
Obama placed Ajit Pai and Trump made him chair of the FCC, which goes to show the two parties work for the same people. "Net neutrality" actually protected the American people from corporate abuse, as it simply meant that ISPs couldn't give priority to corporate friends (ie. owned by the same parent company), slow down websites they disagree with (and/or are owned by a rival company) or squeeze the consumer. Now the American internet will be a free for all as ISPs (which are already some of the most disliked companies out there) do as they please.
In my opinion Net Neutrality is literally is restriction towards accessing the data from the Internet and in my opinion it's against the rights because it's upon people what they want to access on the Internet and good to know that now the plan of Net Neutrality is going to down because in my opinion it was nothing good for us.
Thanks for sharing this post with us and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
Yup, ppl think it was to stop the corps having control, sure, but it meant control over the freedom to innovate and bring connectivity to more people and even control the data which they claimed to be fighting for.
True.
Net neutrality is literally the opposite, it prevents your ISP from restricting your access as they please.
Every subject is different for every individual, so your opinion and thoughts are welcomed. Wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂