DON'T PANIC! America's net neutrality won't be ending today after all Today, Monday, April 23, 2018, marks 60 days since the repeal of America's net neutrality safeguards was published in the United States Federal Register, and so it is the END OF THE INTERNET FOREVER! Except it's not. Despite a wave of articles and social media postings – including from lawmakers – about the Ajit-Pai-led …
Well that explains lots ... Hey John! You know what? Here in the US, you ARE allowed to think for yourself, regardless of what your political party of choice tells you. Really! It's true! You don't have to mindlessly agree with the party, even if you are a registered member! Stunning news, eh?
Hopefully this great revelation doesn't come as too much of a shock to your system.
> "Hey John! You know what? Here in the US, you ARE allowed to think for yourself, regardless of what your political party of choice tells you."
Jake, you do watch the news don't you? Because if you do you know that the Democrat Party no longer tolerates dissension within its ranks. At least it sure appears that way. Certainly the left in general now has a 100% 'us vs them' mindset.
It's gotten so bad that the right is being forced to respond in kind just to avoid being steamrolled politically. THAT is why we ignore all the wild charged leveled at Trump 24/7. And the left made it happen. Proud of yourselves?
@Big John
Sorry, my bad. I didn't intend to imply that you shouldn't think for yourself - if that is what you inferred from my comment. I just assumed that less than 0.001% of those interviewed would also be people who would make a profit out of anti-competitive practices. But you are right of course, there must also be others who think it is a good idea to let carriers slow down the traffic of competitors content, and/or set up filtering so that you have to pay more for "premium" content even if they don't supply it themselves. The population who will be worst hit are those who live where there is no competition for supply.
Roughly 90% of Americans surveyed cannot name their US Representative and their two US Senators. A similar fraction of those who live in cities probably cannot name their city's mayor (or other chief executive) or their city council member, or their state representative or senator*, each of whom has more direct effect on them.
In that environment, in which a probably overwhelming majority have obtained their complete stock of information about this subject from entertainers like John Oliver and cartoon ads on TV, there is some reason to question their conclusion.
Elections are poor ways to decide major public policy**, and polls, no matter their design and conduct, are inferior to elections by orders of magnitude.
* Except Nebraska, where the only have Senators.
** Examples, in addition to network neutrality, include going to war, legalization of cannabis "for medical use" (a poor subject as well for legislatures), and both regulation of Facebook (and Twitter and other such) and "common sense gun control" in the US historical and constitutional context. All of these are too complicated and require too much general and domain specific knowledge to be decided directly by simple things like referenda or polls.
How did we ever survive before this so-called "net neutrality" went into effect? So you want the government you don't trust to regulate the Internet ... how insane is that? The government has come up with ways to rule over you by naming laws with exactly the opposite of what they are, such as the "affordable care act", or the "patriot act", or the "net neutrality act". All of them are exactly the opposite of their name.
Net neutrality has never not existed, so that's why we "survived". The specific provisions that came into effect in 2011 were preceded with a decade of experiences and legal challenges whenever ISPs tried to throttle or prioritize content, which they invariably lost. In the 90s, that the internet should be open was not even a debate, no one sought to gale the system.
Secondly,net neutrality has nothing to do with the government "regulating" the internet. All the government is saying is that no one should regulate the internet,
especially not ISPs that have a vested interest in screwing over the free market for more money. How any conservative who claims to be for free market capitalism can be against net neutrality and not realize that ISPs are a monopoly in most of the country, exhibits the absolute tone deafness of current politics.
The sooner some enterprising ISPs will find ways to really abuse their new freedom, giving perfect examples for net neutrality supporters to point to. Oh, you can bet the big ones like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon will be on their best behavior at first, since they know people will be watching them closely. It will be the second tier of more regional ISPs that will find new revenue streams irresistible and take things way too far as a result.
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