All wonderfully miserable possibilities.

when America votes republicans into the majority, we get republican policies. figures, doesn't it?

Elections have consequences. "My vote doesn't matter!" has consequences. "I don't like the candidates" has consequences. But don't be fooled. This isn't a Republican policy. This is a corporate one being pushed by them.

yeah it comes from the corps, but it's the republicans that support it and try pushing it through

Because they've duped people into thinking Net Neutrality is somehow preventing wider rollout of services. "Investment and growth has fallen by 5%, it's all Net Neutrality's fault." No. It's the farmers and people who live out in rural areas. They're to blame.

The low hanging fruit and easy installations of network, cable, and fiber have been rolled out in many places. A lot of those under served communities or places impacting that growth are in rural areas, or areas which just don't have enough customers to justify the cost. If I recall it's estimated $20-30K per mile to run fiber and then another $1-5K per installation/home hookup. If you're in rural area you're not valued by the companies. There's zero way they're going to make they money back off a farmer or in rural communities, thus giving them no real reason to push for expansion. It's not cost effective for them.

But they'll blame it on Net Neutrality holding them back because it sounds better. Sorry, Farmer John, we can't run a line to house because of regulations. When in truth, it's because Farmer John wouldn't be a long term asset to justify the costs.

This is why they had Ma Bell, because without that monopoly those farmers wouldn't have phones either. The only way to solve that problem is to do the same thing again. But if we did that now it would probably turn out way worse.

Dragoneer 2020 <3

He's too smart to fall for that pitfall...

Which exactly why he should run :3

Some people have skeletons in their closet. My skeletons are fucking one another.

Then they're the lovely skeletons in your closet. Don't let them out, they want to stay there

And this also in the end affects the world as a whole too.

I live in Utah, my vote actually doesn't matter, until we stop using this outdated as shit electoral system.... =/

Ranked/stacked voting is the way to go.

I live in the UK and we have the same issue. Aside from simple yes/no referendum-type questions, the overall outcome of elections is decided by a small proportion of voters. One of these days I should actually take all the stats from every electorate, crunch some numbers, and show how most votes are mathematically inconsequential. This isn't even a question of left or right, it's just about trying to find a voting system where the result is a good representation of the voters' views, rather than a quirk of geography, population density and various sociological factors.

even if you can't get a vote to the presidency, local and state elections are always more important!

This. 100%. People who think that their votes doesn't matter and don't vote as a result, are the problem. "The 3rd party candidate will never get in" - No, they won't. This time. Showing your support and that one extra vote WILL matter to them, however. As people see their support increase, it'll be an exponential effect and suddenly you have a new viable party.

Look at the UK; in the 2015 election, UKIP, a 3rd party, received 30% of the vote. They only got one representative into parliament, but this pushed the main parties to actually concede to a having referendum or continue to lose support; and look what's happened. I didn't agree with Brexit but the point is; VOTING FOR A THIRD PARTY INSTITUTED CHANGE THAT THE ELECTORATE WANTED.

If you aren't aware that corporations already own the US gov't and it's people lock stock and barrel, you are both ignorant and not noticing the bills you pay, or lack of options and rights you have on the most basic of products and services compared to any first world, and many third world, countries.

The US is in a delusionally terrible state that cannot be solved by any degree of acquiescence.

I'm more of a kind of voter who says "my vote doesn't matter", votes anyways, and then says "I told you so" when my candidate loses.

That's better than not voting!

Your vote doesn't matter because no vote matters. No matter who wins... you lose. But that's okay, if your candidate does win, I'm sure all of your problems will disappear immediately.

The funny thing is, many said that it's the Democrats doing this and not the Republicans, even if in this case Ajit Pai is Trump's goon so that's questionable. Politically speaking it would kinda makes sense; The Democrats are the corporate ones, the Republicans are more nationalist... killing Net Neutrality is all about kissing the asses of corrupt mega-corporations so yeah.

As for America voting Republicans, thank the Democrats for putting the worst candidate possible against Trump (Hillary Clinton): They literally shot themselves in the foot like fools, and got precisely what they deserved. I hope Michelle Obama will compete in the next elections... that is if the Democrats are still any better than the other side, I don't even know at this stage.

I like how Trump winning and all problems associated with him are somehow Hillary's fault

also, no. democrats are not the corporate ones.
and no. it IS republicans supporting this BS https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/.....vacy-fire-sale
here's a list of the congress men and women supporting the net neutrality repeal. it. is. the. republicans.

It's an idea circulating around, that democrats are corporatists while republicans are nationalists. Of course Trump did state his support for killing Net Neutrality, so I really shouldn't take this idea too far I guess.

This comment really confused me for a second, but then I saw on your profile that you are from Romania. For US politics the Republicans are generally consistently the big business/corporation friendly party, often working with corprate lobbyists on bills. So for US politics this would generally be pretty par for the course.

Interesting. The idea circulating around here is usually that it's the opposite: A lot of us think that Trump is opposing the globalists who have taken a hold of the world (namely our modern day Stalin, George Soros). Trump does however seem to be very ignorant of how the internet works, so I'm open to being wrong on this one.

if you're calling George Soros the 'modern day Stalin' then you have a lot, lot more to worry about being wrong with...
Someone from Romania, a country historically under the shadow of the Soviet Union, should know better.

That's possibly part of why we're a little more weary: It seems that many Romanians share my sensitivity toward everything we associate with censorship and oppression. Of course we aren't free from our own share of misinformation on such matters; Romania has always been and still is a VERY corrupt country, where politics is nearly impossible without bribery / nepotism / whatever... as such our media is also experienced at manipulating people and spreading fake news, more so than American media dare I say (sometimes I wonder whether we inspired the US to go bad).

As far as Trump goes, my mother and many people here seem to be on his side; They associate the democrats with some of our bad apples like Merkel, and are hoping that the republicans will get us and the US closer and on the path against the corrupt system. The idea circulating here seems to be that "Trump is a reformer, and the democrats and their gangs of corporations are doing everything possible to paint him as the bad guy and take him down".

Me personally... I'm on the fence; Everything is such a total clusterfuck that I don't know who is good or bad among the two... honestly I doubt there even IS anyone good at this stage. I've been weary of Trump from the beginning, hell I went into a deep depression the day he won the elections... however Hillary managed to scare me even worse eventually, so now I find it hard to expect hope from any side.

You seem a lot like the people who also voted Hitler in thinking he would be a great Prime Minister and nothing could go wrong. Even after they saw Hitler condemning Jews, ordering mass-executions, and invading Poland, they still supported him. That's you if you compare your own support of Trump to theirs. You have had proof, facts, and you still idolize him. They did too. Both rulers have done horrible things to their nations and others. Trump will accomplish all the evils of Hitler if he remains President his 4 years, and that's fact.
Trump put the leaders of the largest mega-corporations into every government position in the White-House and you say that Trump is against Corporations.
Trump is the leader of a Mega-corporation, and multiple smaller corporations, was born to be one of the wealthiest peoples in this country from inheritance, and says he worked for everything in his life, never receiving handouts, and has contributed more to this country than all of the Presidents of our countries history in 6 months of his Presidency, and Trump advocates re-instating segregation, mental asylums, and removing women's rights to vote along with the fact he says that Corporations are America's only hope and that our country needs to pour all its resources and money into our largest corporations, and you think Trump is a good guy and a reformer?
Trump mind you, openly idolizes Putin of Soviet Russia, Hassad of Syria, the King of Saudi Arabia, and of all things Military Dictators in Central America, and says they are their countries are the true example of what Free Nations are like and should be, and us Americans can learn a lot about how we can make our countries wonderful like theirs, and you still idolize Trump?
Trump mind you, is a guy that is the opposite of a reformer? What does he want to reform? Nothing. What does he want to do with laws? Remove them. What does he want to do with taxes? End all taxes for the upper-class and hike taxes heavily for everyone else because he says, "The only people who work in the USA are the wealthiest folk, so what we need to do is force the middle-class and poor to have more reasons to get jobs. Taxes are high they complain under Obama? I'll make them three times as high! Then they'll have to work!"
Trump also says that intimidation and war is the best method of solving all problems with other nations that aren't your allies. He says peace treaties aid you enemies and harm your nation. He claims nuclear war can bring world peace, yet that seems like an idea of his which is insane.
You live in Romania, and yet, you should know all these things, these statements he's made on National Television, his statements on his private Net feeds, and all these crazy ideas he glorifies, and yet, you support Trump because you think he is the least corrupt and least immoral person on the planet. Truth is, Trump is one of the most corrupt people in my entire country and most immoral person in my country, including all the folk in jail for horrific crimes. And that is undeniable fact. Put bluntly, you seem, somewhat nuts.
Your not evil, but your clearly gullible and naïve beyond a reasonable doubt, and you undeniable detached from reality living in a fantasy world.

Idolizing Trump? That is so, so far from how I feel toward him. Which is merely a suspicion that he might not be the worst of the bad guys in the great picture.

Yes, I've seen him behave like a fanatic during the campaign. However I noticed that his behavior has changed after he won, and some of the speeches I've seen from him were admittedly good (eg: the one where he called Kim Jong Un "Rocket Man", openly speaking against authoritarianism). My mother believes his extremist behavior was a campaign tactic to earn more votes, because otherwise he couldn't defeat Hillary... maybe, I don't know really.

You can however be sure that if I was American, I would have NOT voted for him. I wouldn't have voted for Hillary either of course, not after the findings of her being close to terrorists... frankly I simply wouldn't have voted at all! Believe me: I fell into a deep depression the day Trump won... after that however, who is really good or bad became a blurry thing, which it still is to this day.

As for most of what you listed, I'm willing to believe it. And if I do, you can be sure I'll be pissed as hell at Trump! So why don't I? Because many people say it's the media making up many of those things... and I have myself seen the news twisting every little thing Trump said to make it seem as gruesome and fanatical as possible, even when he was saying things anyone else would have. Again there is no easy way to know who to trust in the age of misinformation we've been seeing the past few years.

How can the media be making up things when it's Trump himself on TV and how can this stuff which is videos and recordings of Trump himself which have continued after the campaign and even got worse than the campaign be unbelievable?

You claim that this stuff isn't true, simply because if Trump himself is in the video, and Trump himself makes these appearances and recordings, that they are lies. That everything is fake news if it doesn't support what you wish.

I know that clearly, you seek to lie, deceive, and manipulate everyone you speak to at this point.

How could you refuse to believe what Trump is show to speak in these videos which are all a minimum of 4 minutes long?!?! How can you take Trump's own words as out-of-context when of all things, you were watching him speak for that long straight!!! This isn't watching him and listening him speak for 60 seconds, and hearing someone interrupt the video, this is a entire recordings of his madness.

You are, if anything, saying everything ever spoken of by Trump himself is lies. You would walk up to Trump, and call Trump himself, a liar, because Trump would tell you everything you heard him say is true. He is, after-all, proud of his beliefs, and his great ideas, and would literally, admit to all of it, claiming he said it all because it is true.

Your nuts, there is no question in it.

You even say Hillary Clinton is a terrorist sympathizer, which was a conspiracy theory made by Republicans when they claimed she sold 800 billion male white boys as sex slaves to Saudi Arabia. That's more humans that have existed through-out the past 1,000+ years! Why do you think sane people call and think its an insane conspiracy theory?

Also, remember when people claimed Hillary Clinton sold our country's entire supply of nuclear resources and weapons to Russia? Then how do we have more nuclear weapons and power plants than Russia? How do we still have every last nuclear power plant in our country working? How do we still have more nuclear missiles, atomic bombs, and more so than every other country on the planet (excluding Israel, the only country with more than us)? It's because she did not sell everything in our country to Russia. Its another insane conspiracy theory.

Mind you, the people who claim this stuff about Hillary Clinton are also claiming they believe in Lizardmen controlling the world and that tentacle aliens invaded and conquered Earth from Mars and Pluto 30 years ago!

Your insane to believe them, and all this stuff about Clinton, aliens, lizardmen, and such. It's nonsense! No offense, but its nonsense, I can't understand why you believe it. Maybe you could explain it... but you have not given an reasonable explanation yet.

You're acting like the conspiratist one now, accusing others of lying and deceiving for having a different opinion from you... not the nicest thing to be doing. The news about Trump that I doubt is news where I don't see him speak myself, but news articles comment on what he said without offering accurate original material; I've seen Trump say a lot of things that me and likely many people would agree with, just as I've seen him say things that I hated which solidified my bad views of him.

Please don't try to excuse Hillary; I may not be an actual Trump fan, whether you wish to believe that or not... but she was just as bad at worst. She was okay with going into nuclear war with Russia... if that's what you support you should think twice before accusing me. Hillary has also called an *extremist* Muslim who is close to her "my sister"... there were screen-caps from official websites showing her business relations to her clear as daylight. Let's now forget the email scandal, and that she deleted emails from her servers to hide from authorities... surely that's at least as believable as the whole thing about Trump being in love with Russia.

I don't believe in lizardmen controlling the world. But I sure wish that was the case: The planet would definitely be less of a shithole if they existed and did, compared to humans controlling it as they have up to this point.

Your calling me a conspiracy theorist? Yet you support Trump, Bannon, even Alex Jones? You support the crazy things said by them, and their attacks on people.

Hillary cannot be excused for her misdeeds, she is corrupt, but the things stated about the 800 Billion sex slaves is lies, and the selling all USA nuclear resources and weapons to Russia. Also, you seem to think that all Muslims are extremists and terrorists, by claiming a woman with no ties to any terrorist organization who simply by saying horrible things is a terrorist solely for being Muslim. Being Muslim doesn't make you a terrorist, in spite you believe otherwise. You are not a terrorist solely because of your religion.
And I can add to this! Trump kept classified information on a private email server as well. Btw, the Federal Court could not find any way for her email scandal to be a crime, as there is no law in the USA that forbids you from doing such. That's why Trump was found innocent and Federal Court judges openly mocked Trump for demanding she be imprisoned for treason for doing the same thing he did.

You are an insane conspiracy theorist at this point, and that you deem all Muslims are terrorists shows your also extremely biased and crazy. I'm done trying to talk with you. You lie, deceive, and live in a crazy fantasy world that being a criminal and terrorist is based on the idea that your the same race, religion, and political group or jailed and/or executed.
Figures a Romanian like you would support the idea of Nazi Germany and Soviet Union being reborn in this day and age and that you support people who idolize their ideals.

I'm sorry to say it, but now you're acting precisely the way I've seen some media outlets acting toward Trump that made me distrust them: Taking a statement and twisting it to look like something totally horrific and inaccurate. Really... thank you for showing my case in point so perfectly!

When have I ever said that I consider all Muslims extremists? I've actually criticized people with that view many times, clarifying that Muslim is a religion and NOT an indicator for how people choose to behave... terrorists only use this religion as an excuse for their fanaticism, and drag the religion in the mud with them at the end of the day.

The female I'm referring to was herself believed to have ties to extremists. The article stated that at least her mother and other relatives believe in causes supported by Isis as well as a few unsettling things, alongside a group she allegedly worked for. It was a while ago and I don't remember every detail, but they made it clear the accusation wasn't simply because she's Muslim.

You have clearly shown you have made further no effort to argue to make your case valid and accurate.
All you do is continue to condemn that everything I saw is a lie and everything ever said negative about Trump is a lie.
You even of all thing turn things around, twist and manipulate things to your favor, which I stated earlier, which you did again.
She was targeted solely for being a muslim from that article from Breitbart which is Alex Jones news network in which the claim all Muslims are terrorists was made.
You continue to dig deeper, and try to twist things in your favor.
That you continue to argue how wonderful and how Trump is never immoral, racist, sexist, or inappropriate shows you are a lunatic cultist.
Its no difference than when those folk appeared on TV saying MAGA hats are a religious symbol and Trump is God's direct servant and that news network Fox News supported it.
You support my countries insane twisted media and its constant praise and love of Trump for the most insane reasons.
God help you.

And you have shown that you can't even be bothered to read everything I'm saying, or to actually understand it if you do; Everything I say must be some sort of plot on my end, if it's not what you instantly wanted to hear. I suggest leaving this be, as it's clearly not going to get anywhere.

Something to remember about US politics: Very often the definition of left/right being used is skewed compared to the rest of the planet. For the main two parties in the US you have one that most of the world would consider center-right and one that is hard right.

This results in people reacting to what most places would consider mainstream, (if not somewhat right-wing), political ideas with screams of "communism!" Heck, I've seen people doing that with policies that the _Republican_ Party was pushing a couple decades ago.

But "America" didn't vote for him. Most of us voted for Clinton.

it's not even close to being just him. it's the congress that's mostly republican.

That's the electoral college in action. I'm not American but even I know he won because of that.

Yes, and America is not a true democracy, but a 'democratic republic'

This is A good read and summary of the possible outcomes. What do you think is the direct impact on FA? How many GB would an average user on FA use looking at all the art per month? How would FA survive the increase costs the ISPs demand to operate efficiently?

As I said: I legitimately don't know. Browsing FA alone won't impact you all that much if caps are in place. Nobody knows if sites will have some sort of access fees. I really don't think ISPs are going to enforce fees on people to get faster access unless you're in the top 100 sites. I think the backlash is too great. Data caps solve that problem for them across the board. It sets a baseline for people and keeps it simple on their side.

Be sure to go to battleforthenet.com and call Congress to let your voice be heard about this.

Good advice. =3

I do wondee how other world regions would react to this, if the FCC lifts Net Neutrality. After all in Europe the European parliament has declared a while ago that net neutrality is an essential part of the online life now, and that they would always stand behind net neutrality. There was even once a that brief suggestion to put the FCC under UN supervision instead of US supervision.

Really hope that all will go well in the end.

Make it happen, we NEED net neutrality

As an American, I would support this initiative. Enough is fucking enough!

Save the wha-oops, I mean Internets!

This is probably quite a stretch but I also worry about the repercussions this could have when it comes to influencing public opinion by subtly controlling the websites they can access more easily. A sort of 'internet bubble' effect but dictated by your ISP instead of by your own browsing habits.

A service provider may have a vested interest in promoting certain economic or political views. Perhaps they may speed up your access to websites and platforms that put those views in a favorable light, while limiting or throttling access to the sites that are critical of those views.

This (I think/hope unlikely) possibility is particularly troublesome when you consider that ISPs tend to have geographical monopolies in many parts of the United States, making it impossible for even the Utopian ideal that "competition will allow the customers to have freedom of choice" to offer internet users in certain regions reliable access to a variety of points of view. Just feeding the positive feedback loop.

That's always the fear, and there's good reason to fear that. Comcast has even tried to shut down anti-Comcast sites and throwing their weight around against them. However, with social media being what it is, those kinds of actions are really hard to hide nowadays and the consumer backlash is harsh.

But again, it doesn't matter to them given in many areas you have no competition. Comcast pissed you off? Good luck finding a competitor.

If this becomes a thing in the US other countries will follow soon I bet. I hope net neutrality will stand.

The hope is that Congress strikes it down. Even if the FCC passes it's still not entirely dead... yet. But it's a shitty situation, honestly. The anti-NN side has so much misinformation going on about how NN is staggering growth. Bullshit. Look at the Internet. It's single handedly nearly refined the world and how we live.

Amazon changed the global marketplace permanently. Companies like that rose to power and dominance because nobody was throttling them, holding them back, or pushing them out. It's the perfect example of free trade and markets growing sheerly from good ideas.

I wonder how many people they can brainwash into not seeing the obvious. Considering past events in history, the answer might be many... still the vast majority of the world is pro-NN, they can't kill Net Neutrality without slapping democracy right in the face at this point.

You're exactly right about being able to compete on a fair marketplace.

However, American politicians don't seem to believe in fair capitalism. America is supposed to be the *flag waver* for capitalism and always talk about the free market, from the perspective of this Brit. Simultaneously, republicans enact a change in legislation to help enact monopolies. It's blatant hypocrisy and madness and they need to be held to account. How dare they even have the audacity to even suggest such action. Fuck these people; they DON'T EVEN BELIEVE SUPPORT THEIR OWN PUBLICLY-ASSERTED IDEOLOGIES!

At least Europe wont follow, EU has protected net neutrality.

I read this and I want to ask if is good or bad. FA is going to dissappear by Net neutrality? because I don't understand it.

The short answer is: I don't know. Nobody knows. Hence why I laid out three potential scenarios of what could happen.

Thanks, I hope that nothing bad happens.

Another thing to mention:
All other ISPs around the world will also have their eyes on the outcome of this issue. If it passes in America, ISPs around the world will likely also push for the same thing, and they will receive backing from those in the US, creating a chain-reaction globally.

Very true. It's a domino effect.

I'm particularly worried, as here in Australia, most of the phone and data lines are owned by a single company: Telstra, and they would likely abuse the loss of neutrality to no end; imposing restrictions on everything, and be near-immune to any actions against them since they can basically hold everyone hostage.

The EU already passed strong Net Neutrality laws, and so has Canada. Even if the US is insane enough to disrespect its people and be more corrupt than the European Union, which would be quite a thing... it seems unlikely that the rest of the world will lower itself this far down. Except indeed for Britain and Australia... those two are like the troubled teenagers who cut themselves and overdose on drugs. Obviously the EU has its own shameful chapters... they are discussing censorship machines filtering every upload on the internet and all, even if practically this could only happen in China.

^This, it's fearmongering to say that net neutrality is in danger worldwide because of this.

But it is.

You're a naive fool if you really think your Net Neutrality is safe.

Many people though their democracies were safe, and with the advent of trump in charge of the US, many European countries are now following suit. Christ, look at what happened in England, what's happening in Germany now...

Frankly from where I stand, it's only a matter of time before you guys crumble and Russia sweeps up the pieces.

In Germany for example some politicans and companies already tried to attack net neutrality.

Stop fearmongering.

If Net Neutrality dies, the corporate mafia has been allowed to fully rule America and the government has turned against its own people. I don't think America is willing to outright to throw away its status as a democracy yet, by literally opposing millions of people for the sake of 3 corrupt corporations. The world is watching... if they do this the US will have changed its face forever.

How will we click on ads if the site is blocked? I really think if Net Neutrality goes away it will backfire.
At least FA is safe for now

KHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOMMMMMMCCASSSSSSSSTTTT!!!!

As with so many things lately, I feel very powerless sitting here in the UK and hoping that the collective majority of the US is able to pull their hand out of an increasingly large fire. Really, truly hope it works out.

Have some proper fish and chips for me. I've been dying to have some. Meanwhile, I'll help fight the good fight from my end.

I'll eat fish and chips on your behalf, you save America from its political upheaval. Sounds like a fair trade.

I'm terrified. FA and dA are my life! I don't want to lose access to these websites! :crying:

Don't be. As I said, I think it's unlikely it will impact sites like that. Is it possible? Yes, but unlikely. Data caps are where the money is at for ISPs, and they'll go after the money.

What scares me is that it's possible.

Let's just hope that this crisis does not turn bad for all of us. As a member of FA, I do respect people's content and I also believe that people have the free will to post anything that not feels good to them, But also to the community. Its my honest opinion really

Everyone's been talking about this but not really bothered explaining what will happen so thanks for that,

I think my favorite description has been "You know how EA handled Battlefront 2 loot crates? Now imagine your ISP operated the same way."

"Now, imagine EA is your ISP"

ISPs are taking notes from the airline industry: Tacking all sorts of little "fees" onto the bill make an enormous amount of money. Net Neutrality was making that more difficult to implement.

Ive been hearing about this thing about Net Neutrality lately, but you are the first one that managed to clear what it was and how will affect if its gone.
Damn, the greed of the corporatives is too damn big

The only thing I dont know, or maybe I didnt get it, if this changes apply, will affect the whole world or only to US?

A majority of the world's internet traffic flows through where I live: North Virginia. It's almost a central hub for internet traffic, and there are more data centers and major telcos here than you can shake a stick at. So if something impacts data here it will, in fact, trickle out to the rest of the world. How much? Eh, nobody knows. But if things slow down here it can impact you elsewhere. It may be milliseconds... but those add up.

And yes, if it changes here, it will likely affect you elsewhere. Companies will see that changes worked here and try to apply it elsewhere.

The real question is: Who are the puppetmasters? Who's pulling the strings? Those are the folks who need to be persuaded...

Ajit Pai, Director of the FCC. He's a former Verizon lawyer, and was appointed by the Trump administration to head the FCC. So he's pretty much just enforcing Verizon's corporate desires from his position with the government. So the puppet master pulling the strings isn't going to be persuaded because he's from the company that's set out to destroy everything.

"Only the best people."

No, what I wanna know is who's pulling Pai's strings? Who are his former bosses at Verizon? Who are THEIR bosses? Go up the line until you find the Big Cheese. He's the one who has to be persuaded... :)

Yeah, but Verizon is in this for the money, and unless you can convince them money isn't worth it... I don't see them changing their minds.

True, but you never know. Appealing to their better natures might help. In any event, those are the guys who really need persuading...

My question is... why is this happening? Why take away net neutrality? How does it even benefit the government? All I see are greedy corporation getting their hands on this thing. In my country, we used to have this internet cap thing but years after, we have unlimited internet. So, America is basically turning back time instead of going forward? Sounds like those idiotic parents that won't vaccine kids. It's the same mentality.

"My question is... why is this happening?"

Money.

The answer to all your questions is money.

Sounds like trump. Yep.

there's a word for that

"America"

i already have a data cap with my internet plan

but i;ve never come close to reaching it. The cap is 500 gigs/month, and from what i'm told, i don't even reach half that most of the time.


call me a defeatist, but i say net neutrality is already dead. I;ve gotten involved already, but i don't see why they'll listen to us when the big suits will get the big money. When it comes to corporate cash, the businesses always win. We're basically fighting a losing battle.

The GOP has tried over 70+ times to repeal Obamacare... and hasn't been able to. Hell, 8 years later and they still don't have a plan to replace it. Never say never.

even if they do repeal net neutrality, i GUARANTEE there will be a public uproar.

I'd wager that some people will threaten, or even attack the FCC over this. considering people make their livings off the internet, killing net neutrality is exactly the same as executing them. there WILL be backlash.

That's one thing that really peeves me off. First I have to say if it works for the people that read this. I'm happy for you few. But Obamacare completely ruined my life and soo many more as well. So I do not like it at all. But the things that get's me angry is that after 8 years of trying to get rid of it. They didn't even try to make something to replace it once they did succeed? Or that instead of trying to create an even greater health care. Even the democrat just sit there, whine, and scream racism and crap. To me it's like they rather watch people die then work together and make a better plan

See, I'm okay with that. I understand that the ACA wasn't for everyone, but the only reason it wasn't for everyone is because all the shitty changes that existed to it exist because of compromises in the original plan to appease the GOP. It was meant to evolve, to grow, to change, and improve. Instead, we just got "repeal and kill". There was NEVER another plan in place.

The problem I had with it is. when they passed it. Over 30 people lost their insurance at my store alone and that every store also got ride or people's health care as well. When I literally had no choice to apply for it. Was denied multiple times so I called them. They actually told me I didn't qualify because I am too poor. And then later was fined for not being able to afford health care. So I have much, MUCH hate for it.

I wish I could get 500GB. the highest I can get where I live is 120GB a month.

well, it's AT&T u-verse, and i have the highest plan they have (which is slower than other "max speed" plans at just 15 mbps). idk where the 500 gb cap came from, but that's what i was told when they set it up. Never had any throttling issues, and i play 8 hour rain videos on youtube in 720p to help me sleep.

tie that in with splatoon 2, Initial D, Forza, etc, and i'm shocked at how they let me be.

I actually can get unlimited internet over ADSL but it is so slow that it wouldn't be worth it. Mine is 4G wireless broadband at the highest data cap available.

The data cap possibility with the removal of net neutrality is less about having caps put into place but rather the 'cap' not being a simple 'you can use this much bandwidth.'

What has happened without net neutrality is that ISPs have had different services use the cap at different rates. Dragoneer used the example of streaming video services: The one that the ISP (partly) owns doesn't consume your cap while competing services do. For the record, this actually happened in Canada before the CRTC clamped down on things, Bell let you use CraveTV without using bandwidth while Rogers and Shaw did the same with Shomi.

And if for some people, the idea of Net Neutrality is still hard to understand. I like this analogy from a kid explaining it to another kid.

Imagine your town has an ice-cream store that gives you free milkshakes. But to get a milkshake, you have to buy a straw from a guy at the door of the store.
That's a bummer, but at least you can go inside and have free milkshakes.

One day you're drinking your free milkshake after buying a straw and it's getting really hard to drink. When you look down, you see the straw selling guy has your straw pinched almost closed.
You can still drink your milkshake, but it's really hard and slow.

So you tell the guy to stop pinching your straw so you can drink your free milkshake properly again.
"No," says the man, "not until the ice-cream store guy pays me more money for the milkshake."
"But I already paid you for the straw." You tell him.

"I don't care," he says, "I just want more money."

Another good example: imagine a private company bought all the roads in your area, and one day you decide to go Walmart and there's a toll booth leading into the parking lot. You want to shopping but can't unless you pay a fee OR you purchase a season pass to go to the story. However, that pass ONLY covers stores, not restaurants, so if you get hungry after shopping you'll need another pass.

A lot of people can relate to that as well.

The only problem with that that I see is that people will counter you with "But toll roads exist. Paid parking exists. You already pay for that." and you have to explain that it's actually different.

Then you just follow up with: Yes, but does anyone like toll roads? Does anyone want MORE toll roads? Do you want toll roads just to leave your house? Because that's essentially what it's like.

It's like MacDonald's getting into the toll road industry and building toll booths in front of every Burger King

sounds like my uncle. "i don't care, i just want x"

Does it mean Facebook could be blocked by default? I think that would cause a great deal of backlash.

We all know it, we're heading to hell in this country at one point.

By default? Not likely.

What pisses me off most about this is just HOW MANY TIMES its been put up to vote and Everytime We the Fucking People Say NO We want it the way it is... Yet here we are yet again... It's there a cap or something for how many times things can be brought up?
Also why are they doing this in a closed vote forcing us to petition and call in etc... is it because they know if it was up for public vote it'd get shot down faster than a plane labeled 'bomb delivery service' ?

yes which is why they're also pulling this s*** during this time of year. they know the repeal is unpopular so they do it during the holidays when everybody is distracted.

As if things weren't bad enough. -_-;

If net neutrality gets slayed, guess there is no more internet for me. I will not use it anymore.

Since I live in Sweden... I have really no clue how bad this will affect me. But reading all this really, really worries me.

I have Bahnhof as my ISP provider in Sweden with ServaNet on the side.

I will guarantee at least 50% of the people who voted from Dear Old Donald in 2016 did not really understand what this bill would do. But then, MOST Trumpkins really don't understand a damned thing, to be fair.

We're deporting the wrong people.

Wow, you're mean :/

No, I'm right.

No, you're not. Not to mention that statement is very judgmental and unnecessarily mean. It reminds me of Hilter, please don't act like Hitler.

Believe me, if anyone is acting like Hitler, it's the Orange Dildo currently in charge.

That still doesn't make that statement not mean.

You're right. I should be more forgiving to people who follow a sexually-depraved, sociopathic, kindergarten mentality.

My bad.

You are deeming people with mental disorders, when you don't know them.

Do you not see the flaw in that?

I can assure you with every fiber of my being, having known this man about 40 years, yes, he has a mental disorder.

Wait, are you near 50 years old?

I'm over 50, yes. =P

We’re going to get censored because people think we’re a bunch of degenerates. This policy is a terrible, anti-consumer, pro-corporation move and I expect lawsuits, especially from Netflix, who stands to lose the most. The claim this will make companies more transparent is bullshit - this is just going to increase the local monopoly that telecom companies have. This might be the one step too far that actually encourages riots and domestic terrorism. O_o

I have a question, Dragoneer: Have you considered making a version of FA running on top of the distributed web, such as Zeroner or the IPFS protocol? Those are still in early stages obviously, but it seems to be the idea of the future and where we will be running off to if the current web is destroyed. This would make NetNeutrality impossible to violate, as ISP's can't easily see which website traffic is coming from (similarly to Tor).

https://ipfs.io
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter.....ry_File_System

https://zeronet.io
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeroNet

Another example if how the Diaspora social media works: Instead of centralized hosting, users can run pods which may at some point be inter-connected to each other to act as a mesh network. For a media gallery (Furaffinity, Youtube, etc) this especially makes a lot of sense!

https://diasporafoundation.org
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)

They'll just block or heavily throttle any traffic they can't identify most likely.

That would bring more rage toward them than throttling specific websites already would, and there will more likely be competitors willing to not throttle unidentifiable websites. They also can't fully censor and block certain services, which is another danger apart from simply throttling speeds (a.k.a. what China and Britain are doing).

In many parts of the US there is only one company. So there wouldn't be a competitor. But yes there would be more backlash, and they'd not be able to block all encrypted traffic as banking requires it.

Considering I do art commissions on FA, as well as I work tech support for an ISP in the US, and both of those jobs are what keep me fed and housed, this is a big fucking deal for me. If they kill Net Neutrality, I wont be able to work either job without sacrificing some of my hard earned money FROM those two jobs just TO work... It's straight shit.

We've been tracking and doing what we can to try to stay ahead of it.

Aye, I've put in my two cents on one of the supported websites. I'm gonna try and get the WI senator's number to try and call for this too.

"but also affect sites like Twitter as well"

I doubt that. As long as Twitter remains Trump’s mouthpiece, I doubt they’ll be affected

If they go for a porn ban, yes. They can easily force Twitter to remove the content or be blocked.

I do not support Net Neutrality.

All these scenario's are pure speculation with nothing to back it up :/

We cannot predict people, yet you're assuming people are purely malefic and will do terrible things.

The first problem with the bill is bandwidth is expensive, companies take huge advantage of that. Consuming and taking up a massive amount of data consumption. Netflix alone probably goes through a thousand petabytes a day, but that's normal and perfectly fine. What isn't perfectly fine is illegitimate websites and pirates run rampant on this. Popups, click bait ads, imitation websites are all allowed equal bandwidth service, allowing their dirty practices to make them millions. Pirates that stream movies, anime and games thrive as well. Also, making the pirates millions of dollars.
But don't just take my word for it:
https://youtu.be/4TAg4gIhdfg
https://www.quantcast.com/buzzfeed......AL#trafficCard

Because of the expensive costs, starting a new internet company is basically impossible. There is a monopoly on internet service provides and will stay that was as long as the cost of running Netflix, Twitch, etc. on top of everything else is extremely high. This also means starting a heavy data usage company will be extremely tolling on the companies that host them.

Speaking of costs, it's another reason why data plans are expensive. Which is funny, scenario 1 is happening right now BECAUSE of the current costs. Our internet bills are much higher because our data consumption is much higher.

____________________________________________________

I'm not saying Net Neutrality is wrong, if anything, it's the right thing. It's possible companies will do terrible things with the law gone. However, just like all possibilities, the opposite could happen. The main problem is Net Neutrality is costly and most likely continue to get more expensive. If it was cheap, this wouldn't be a problem.

Just remember guys, we cannot predict people. We're not smart. If you think you are smart, you're wrong. We're all dumb.
Dragoneer you're an IT guy, with a website with massive crashes, outdated coding and terrible profile customization. If DA allowed furry porn, I don't think any furry would be here. If you were smart, you'd fix the those problems.

I work in advertising, it's my job to scout media trends, write and read contracts, selling licenses and help clients. Guess what I don't do? I got a yearly list of possible trends to follow of... 0. I work in advertising and yet I don't bother looking at trends, to advertise. If I was smart, I'd fix that. But no, I watch Youtube whenever my boss sleeps on his office sofa.

It's very simple and logical really; If ISP's are allowed to throttle web traffic for specific websites, they will use that ability to censor not just competitors but basically any site they don't like. This isn't about "Google versus Comcast" or "IBM versus Verizon": It's about you and my ability to use the internet freely without any ISP interference!

And yes, this can count as censorship: If you slow down a site to a speed of 56 kb/s (dial-up) to the point where each page takes 10 minutes to load, people will likely have to stop using it. Trust me on this, for I know what it is like: I have a 3G card that gives me a monthly bandwidth of 3GB per month, and once I exceed that the card slows down to 2G speeds... it can take roughly 20 minutes to load 10 submissions from Furaffinity after that happens.

You are assuming companies would do bad things, that their big and purely evil. But you don't know what they will do. Right now they say it will allow them to improve their services and provide cheaper plans to their customers, as consumers, we can hold that to them.

Also Net Neutrality is kinda the cause of your plan being so limited. If you want cheaper internet or more monthly bandwidth, then you're want Net Neutrality gone. Bandwidth is very expensive and being data is being consumed improperly, getting rid of the bill will allow companies to properly control the data flow.

Companies will do whatever makes them money, which includes "bad things" if they are allowed to do them. There are already examples from previous NN battles (like Comcast throttling Netflix to force them to pay a connection fee).

Bandwidth is not expensive after the infrastructure is in place, it's just got a large startup cost to lay that infrastructure. It has zero effect on the isp if you use 1MB or 10GB in a day, the cost to them is the same, and they just want an excuse to make more money.

(source: am network engineer)

I disagree with your first statement, companies do not always try to squeeze pennies out of their customers. I'm not saying your wrong on that statement, it has happened. But will happen is something you are wrong about, you cannot see the future and we can hold the ISP's to their word of providing cheaper and/or better internet.

Secondly, I don't believe the Throttling between Comcast and Netflix ever happened.
There are no comments from the either company on the situation, not a single mention of regarding possible lawsuites and no one knows what created the resolve. No one knows what fixed the situation and there are different stories of why it got started.
The only evidence of the throttle is monitoring network traffic.

I'm not saying it never happened, it's impossible. What I believe what happened was a network error created slowdown and upset people that can't watch their favorite shows, created rumors.

________________________________________________

And bandwidth is very cheap to have, you are right. But the amount we consume is astronomical. Back in 2015 my friend played 2 League of Legend games while on vacation borrowing a friends wireless internet and that took 115GB of data, he was forced to pay the extra charge. In 4 days, 10 hours I used 113GB on my phone alone.
That's just my phone, not even including my two computers.

To give a very conservative estimate based on my phones use.
300,000,000 people in America assuming are using ~28.4-30GB a day, we are looking at roughly 8475000 Perabytes a day.

You're a network engineer, but still you have to consider the numbers.

I cannot see the future, but I can make predictions based on past events. Why should we give them the opportunity to nickel-and-dime their customers when that is a highly likely possibility? It's not like they can just switch providers - only 42% of neighborhoods in the US only have more than one choice of broadband internet provider (I can provide source, it's from an FCC report this year). That's less than half. We're dealing with a geographical monopoly, and market forces alone won't make them play fair.

Second, the throttling I mentioned absolutely did happen. Of course there was a lot of finger pointing between the companies about what was happening, but traffic picked up again IMMEDIATELY when Netflix agreed to pay. Like someone flipped a switch.


Finally, let me make this as clear as possible - There is NO technical reason for a data cap at all - the ONLY reason is to make more money by charging for data usage. Who cares if someone uses 100GB during off hours? ISP electric bill costs are the same whether or not data is moving. Only time it affects customers is during high use periods, and a data cap doesn't help there either, because users will still use their connections during "prime time" and limit it otherwise. (and if the customers are regularly seeing services lower than the ISP offers, it should be the ISP's job to upgrade their infrastructure (or to not oversell their current infrastructure in the first place).

The limited ISP providers to neighborhoods isn't part of Net Neutrality. You can argue it was caused because of expensives.

I still cannot find any evidence of the throtting, by either the victim or aggressor. Not the mention the cause or solution is still unclear.
Someone flipped a switch? Or someone fixed an error :p

Don't scoff at 9,000,000+ Petabytes of daily data use and say its nothing.

It's expensive, but part of that (in municipal areas) is precisely because the incumbent ISP can slow things down/make things difficult for a new player to come in. The ISPs lobby to prevent cities from building their own infrastructure, and if they own utility poles, they can drag their feet on each pole to allow access to competition (this is what stopped Google Fiber from expanding, constant legal battles to get access). And if someone does come in to one of their service areas with competition, they can easily lower prices or boost services to the point where the new player won't get enough customers to pay back their massive loans to install the lines. Anyway, the fact that localized monopolies exist is a reason to have customer protections (like Net Neutrality) in place.

You can say a big number if you want, what still matters from an ISP perspective is connection speed, not total data use. It's not like a water utility where you're actually sending a product to the customers. Using more data doesn't cost the ISP anything.

Yikes! Companies lobbying together is very illegal. Can you report it? Do you have evidence of it?

I'm kind of impressed that you managed to use that much data over your phone. My phone plan only gives me 512MB of data per month.
My internet connection for my house gives me 120GB a month and I upload HD video to You Tube and I can manage to not hit the cap.

Telegram and skype uses a crap ton.

Drains battery as well :P

Well that explains a lot the only data intensive stuff I do on my phone is You Tube and I only go there when I have access to WiFi and even that doesn't uses much data as my phone screen is tiny si it doesn't matter if I watch videos in 144p.

Secondly, I don't believe the Throttling between Comcast and Netflix ever happened.
There are no comments from the either company on the situation, not a single mention of regarding possible lawsuites and no one knows what created the resolve. No one knows what fixed the situation and there are different stories of why it got started.
The only evidence of the throttle is monitoring network traffic.

Oh, it definitely happened. And yes, Netflix called Comcast and other companies out on it, even referring to a Wall Street Journal article about it (although the link to it seems to have been broken in one of WSJ's redesigns).

In that blog post, Netflix is also acting very passive-aggressive to Comcast specifically:

Netflix believes strong net neutrality is critical, but in the near term we will in cases pay the toll to the powerful ISPs to protect our consumer experience. When we do so, we don’t pay for priority access against competitors, just for interconnection. A few weeks ago, we agreed to pay Comcast and our members are now getting a good experience again. Comcast has been an industry leader in supporting weak net neutrality, and we hope they’ll support strong net neutrality as well.

Because companies like Verizon and Comcast have been shown to do bad things. Like taking tax credits and state money and promising to roll out state-wide broadband, implying early on that they meant fiber optic line... and then going "We're done! Your state has 4G. That's broadband. We're done here." This has happened in multiple states. Companies have even wiggled out of deals going "Oh, we don't have to make our services better because we're not a monopoly -- we have competition! Cable internet competes with 4G. We're all good here."

If you look into the history of these companies there are a LOT of shenanigans going on. Taking off their reigns and going "Do whatever you want!" is a really, REALLY bad idea.

And there are still plenty of examples of companies not doing terrible things when restrictive laws are removed.
Also your fiber optic line... example? Is confusing, can you clarify?

It's still assuming, you cannot see the future of what people will do.

You really think that given the choice between making significantly MORE money by limiting access, or losing out on money by 'properly' controlling data flow, ISPs will chose losing out?
Big corporations are out for one thing: Make as much money as possible, and more is always better. This is fact. No one knows exactly how drastic it will be, but why would you want to essentially give them permission to do it in the first place?

"Big corporations are out for one thing: Make as much money as possible, and more is always better."

I work in advertising, I work with a lot of companies, both big and small, that is not true.
You are judging people saying they will do terrible things, without even knowing the people behind them. :/

You are not wrong, nor right, until something happens. If you are right, then we'll have to force changes. If you are wrong, then everyone wins?

Fair enough. I guess we can agree to disagree.
I HOPE that I am wrong xD
But your ability to see the best in everyone is commendable.

People really need to stop believing they know everything and deem people bad without knowing them >.<

Imagine if a cop pulled you over, not because you were speeding, but because you speed before.

So... Why is this the same idea, yet it's okay? To be up in arms because... Rich people are involved? We need to step back and observe the pros and cons. Ask the questions might, would, could, should and will. Have a good understanding of who and what is involved and who and what will be involved. Be reactive instead of proactive.

I was paying $200 a month for Verizon FIOS. It was scheduled for an out of contract increase up to $250. A 25% price hike. I call them, try to negotiate my rates down. Talk to three different reps and they tell me I have the "best deal" they can offer. Yeah, sorry guys, I'm not paying $250/mo for this service. It's fast an all, but it's crazy-stupid levels of expensive.

I'm lucky in that North Virginia has competition. I switched to Comcast for $109 a month. A day after I sign up with them, Verizon comes back with "Oh, we can offer you GIGABIT internet for $80 a month, and with full cable TV!" Really? I magically went from having the "best deal" at $250 a month to being offering an internet plan with 5X the download speeds, more channels, free HBO, all for $80 a month? What happened to that "best deal"?

They flat out lied to me. Not once. Not twice. THREE TIMES. And the moment they realized I was serious about switching they offer me a sweetheart deal.

Companies will do everything they can to keep you paying higher rates.

Some companies you can reasonably trust to do you right. Restaurants, for example. They can't really fuck you over because there's a million restaurants out there. Mobile phone carries? ISPs? Yeah, when you have 1 or 2 choices in the area you're pretty much a captive audience.

It sounds like you were speaking to sale reps, people that get bonuses on sales. What they did was indeed sleezy, but that's equal to blaming the CEO of the poor service of a single restaurant waiter.

The price increase was because they wanted more money from you.
And not because of anything else? They wanted to make you upset and take more money from you. That was purely the only reason?

We're not detectives, but even I can see that's a poor motivation and reasoning.

_____________________________________________

Regardless, I work in advertising. I've talked with people in the 1%, people who can retire at 40, buy everything they ever wanted and still have millions to spare for the rest of their lives. I've made deals with millionares in their late 70's, people who can barely walk due to their old age. Yet, they still work.
They do it because they love their business. Period. They know the dead man with the most money, is still dead.

Although I personally haven't met anyone sleezy. But I don't deny there are people out there that will do whatever to make money.

Just don't assume one of those type of people exist.

You're very lucky, there's no competition out here at all. All 3 internet services available in my area are teamed up with each other and all in bed together making all 3 potential services the same exact thing and all ridiculously expensive for ridiculously slow and bad speeds/plans.

How do you know that?
Is that a guess?

Because all three services refer me to the same exact internet packages. "Oh, is this not what you want? Here try this" *redirected link to CenturyLink site* "Oh hey we don't offer DSL to your area, so go here" *redirect to satelite package site which bundles CentryLink stuff in with satellite package* "Oh this not what you're looking for? CenturyLink offers DSL"

They all reference each other and sell packages involving each other's plans and I asked an AT&T guy once why there's no AT&T out here and he told me they aren't allowed to expand out here because of some corporate block thing preventing them from expanding into some other ISP's territory.

Please don't take me the wrong way if I say that this is a very naive view. Referring to you expecting that companies are unlikely to do evil things when they can.

Companies are ran by people. And when it comes to the big and rich ones especially, they're usually not ran by the good people, as those are seen as a liability standing in the way of profit; They're ran by those who serve the interests of that company the most. It's a reality I really hate myself, that's part of why the world has gone to shit... sadly it's been proven time and time again: People who have a lot of power will almost always abuse that power.

Also Comcast is especially known for being horrible to its customers. The details are fuzzy as I heard most stories about them years ago, but many people spoke about having horrible experiences with their customer support and a few other things. They're among the last people I would personally trust.

Without googling it, can you name the CEO's for Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner?

What have these rich people done to change the world from good, to shit? Can you name an example where a rich person directly took something good from you, and ruined it for you?

________________________________________

Lastly, do not confuse customer service as representatives of CEO's.

I work ONLY to keep my good performance. There are days I work 15 hours and there are days I work 2, I only work to keep my clients happy. When work is slow, I either go home or play on the office computer. Heck, I sometimes close the blinds to paw to furry porn after a days work.

On the other hand, my boss, the head of our branch, sleeps at the office. Pulling all nighters. One time I had to drive him home after he worked 48 hours straight and very exhausted. At least once every several weeks he spends the night at the office getting stuff done, yet, doesn't pressure anyone to do more or work more like him.

I do not represent nor anything like my boss. That's true for every company.

I admit some of it may be my prejudice against corporations; Large companies are however known to do whatever it takes to make a profit, even if it's making life hard for millions of people. I'm not sure if many are aware of drilling companies who have invaded people's lands (at the limit of legality) to drill on their properties... in my country Chevron took a village by assault a few years ago, they got the police to beat people up and lock them in their homes to stop protesting the takeover. Probably many more examples exist out there.

Indeed I shouldn't compare the boss of a company with how customer service is acting. It's sometimes a little difficult to look at the details and separate each entity in a structure, so it's easier to associate it with the company in cause. It would definitely not be your fault if your boss does something bad, and vice versa.

The problem with hating large corporations, is that the hate is for all of them. There are plenty of good companies run by good people. They don't make the news because they don't do anything wrong.

It's no better than discrimination and a lot of stories that involve them have a case of guilty until proven innocent.
- "Hey Verizon! You throttled Netflix!"
- "Huh? No we didn't."
- "PROVE IT!"
It's very wrong and people think like that all the time.

Lets not forget they are human, they mess up, make bad choices. The thing is, when they mess up it makes the news. It makes the problem seem a lot bigger and more frequent when you hear it often.

Can companies be bad? Yes. Can all companies be bad? No. And we should remember that.

The thing that's made me more open to the idea that not all companies are pure evil is actually my own personal experience; For around 6 months, I worked for my own ISP... which unlike Verizon and Comcast is a small neighborhood firm, mostly ran by one person in a tiny one-room apartment! I'm actually friends with the patron, and still occasionally go out to help him install fiber-optic cables across utility poles and what not. I really wish America had neighborhood ISP's like that... I'm kinda blessed from this perspective.

There is a massive concern with your mindset.

Let me summarize what you said in a different structure.

"Rich people often create problems with their power. Rich people cannot be trusted and when they get power they will most likely be misused and they misuse it time and time again. You cannot trust rich people now and cannot trust rich people to do the right thing in the future. Rich people are the reason why the world is shit and we cannot allow them to continue what they are doing."

Hopefully I didn't under or over exaggerate.

Now, replace the word rich people, with Jews. You see why I am so against your opinion? It very closely resembles one of mankind's greatest tragedies, all because people blamed others for the problems without digging into information. Lets not become what we hate, to fight things we hate.

Okay... I admittedly like the way you put things into a different light there. My deliberate intention wasn't to say "rich people are the cause of everything bad in the world", though subconsciously I may hold a chunk of that idea to this day.

Realistically speaking, the ratio of good vs. bad people among the rich is probably not far from that among the poor. What makes the rich scarier is that they have more influence... namely the ability to bribe politicians with lots of money, legally or not. It's known that in order to get their way, some companies finance the campaigns of many politicians, under the implicit agreement of "as long as you're there you vote for laws that help us make a profit". I think the attempt to kill Net Neutrality has such a component in it as well.

But yeah; Misunderstandings lead to wars and tragedies... it's a sad cycle to watch, especially when knowing that I can't avoid being part of it as well; There comes a point where people have had it with the stress and the feeling of being hated and threatened by others, and can no longer put effort into understanding those that blame them... yet fighting them means doing the same wrongs they're doing, so you're just maintaining the circle. There never seems to be an end from which you can start to undo the thread and break the loop... it sure would be nice if that actually happened someday.

Look at this way.

If the bill goes through, and everything's good. We win.
If the bill does through, and everything got worse! The bill gets reinstated.

It's not like we have to create a new bill. We got one. Put it back, maybe make some small adjustments? And it's not like cooperations can silence us, thanks to the new government support to Twitter.

___________________________

I work in advertising, I also somehow am unemployed for 3 years now and been supporting myself on my own. Confused? Put the puzzle pieces together.

I help companies promote their stores, I help companies promote their products, I help politicians promote themselves.

___________________________

Make this very, very, very clear. Politicians don't want money, they don't need it, they want favors.

I might (emphasis on "might", this subject is a big thing for me) be able to accept certain compromise versions on Net Neutrality.

What myself and most of us fear here is ISP's demanding websites to pay them, otherwise they will either lower their traffic to the point where they're unusable or outright censor them. Just imagine a site like Furaffinity in this situation... Dragoneer won't have loads of money to pay both Verizon and Comcast and AT&T and who knows how many others! Again I know you rely on good will for them not to do this, but here I'm really not very trusting.

If they'll only create Net Neutrality exceptions for a few well established types of services... I still wouldn't like it, but perhaps I could live with it. For instance in the case of Netflix, which does act as a commercial television service over the internet, something like "we give them and everyone 10 MB/s, but if they want more they have to pay us extra" would be understandable. However the new rules have to be much more specific in this sense, and they need to guarantee that users experiences on such sites won't be fundamentally affected if they don't pay!

Where I live the major Telco used to find ways around every government regulation. When they were required to allow competing ISPs to access to their exchange they started replacing them with lots of small local cabinets that made it too expensive for the other ISPs to put their equipment in.
In the end the government forced them to either divest their infrastructure division or the retail/mobile phone division to level the playing field between them and other ISP/Phone providers.

How is it an assumption when they have already shown that that is _exactly_ what they will do?

When net neutrality was removed for a few years in the US, ISPs _were_ doing things like throttling services that competed with them¹. Before the CRTC ruled against them, Canadian ISPs were having their own streaming services not count against customers' data limits.



1: Note that the cost argument was completely debunked. Given that Comcast said no when the peering service offered to do the capacity increases for _FREE_, (the bottleneck was ~$50,000 in network cards and a dozen or so patch cables).

Pirate websites aren't legal, and aren't protected under Net Neutrality. Those should be taken down. Piracy sites should be eliminated. And Net Neutrality does nothing to protect them.

It doesn't protect them, but is also doesn't disable them either. Companies will be able to flat out block the data flow, instead of trying to get servers shutdown to get rid of the service.

I think Net Neutrality protects everything that is a website from having its traffic discriminated against. Piracy sites in general... that's a different can of worms; I don't oppose them because I'm more liberal on those matters, however this is an art site and since most artists are sensitive to the idea of "art theft" I understand I might be seen as the bad apple here.

That and the natural law of the precedent still applies; Take down or block pirate sites, you can easily think about taking down and blocking a lot of other sites too. It should not be forgotten that we're still a rather frowned upon community by society, who has recently rediscovered its 20th century prudish nature and revived the anti-sex wars; I'm sure a lot of people would demand sites like Furaffinity and Inkbunny banned as well for "supporting bestiality" or "spreading degeneracy", were we to have a culture of ISP blocking. All in all, it's best to just support an open web at the end of the day, and not make lists of sites that should be taken down.

I worked briefly at the Federal Archives at Broomfield.

The US government has plenty of cases of government workers having sex with people, and animals. That also includes office orgy parties that were, as I quote from my old boss, "Sad to see shutdown."

While government facilities does not represent the government as a whole, know that 5 states you can go onto your farm and have sex with a horse. In 25 states, if you are caught having sex with a horse, it's a misdemeanor. It's illegal for you to fuck a horse in 20 states, but legal to sell videos of you fucking a horse :P

FurAffinity is not going away anytime soon, as you can sell Zoophilia in all 50 states and that has no signs of changing. Porn is big. Government knows it.

Porn has always been something that stirs a detestable amount of controversy among humans. Even today we see things we thought belonged to the previous century... such as the UK government wanting age checks online, actually expecting them to work and not be a huge privacy or freedom disaster. Generally speaking, sex and sexuality are the first things a regime with authoritarian tendencies goes after... likely because not doing so symbolizes freedom, and it's also a way to control and enslave people better; Trump hasn't made it clear whether he sees himself as the leader of such a regime, and other countries haven't either.

I didn't know that admittedly, IIRC bestiality is the next big controversy after pedophilia. My view on people having sex with animals is a can of worms I'd rather not open right now... I should only say that in my opinion, doing so is not automatically rape and thus shouldn't be automatically condemned as such, but I'm no expert so yeah. Since I like to be liberal about things as long as no visible harm is done though, I will take this knowledge on a more positive note.

But yeah; Past experiences I've had have led me being very untrusting of some people, especially powerful ones. This is part of why the idea of Net Neutrality not being there scares me: If say Verizon decides that furries are all weird so they should make Dragoneer pay them 100$ a month otherwise every customer will only get 56 Kb/s, most of the users on this site will be in huge trouble. Sure, normally they won't unless there's an obvious reason to do so... but is it worth the risk, in not just this but so many other cases?

Actually we can predict. We all know ISPs are money greedy shitholes that will do anything and everything they can to earn more money. There was once a case where netflix was being throttled by an ISP, don't you remember? Isn't that why net neutrality became a massive huge thing because people could no longer watch Netflix for a duration of time? Netflix doesn't pay bribes to ISPs, thats why Scenario 1 is very likely to happen, Hulu will become dominant and Netflix will be throttled to death. Literally.

You are judging people on who they are and what they will do.

Without googling, off the top of your head do you know who runs the ISPs?

All those scenarios are grounded in historical evidence that the telecommunications industry is willing to setup fast lanes and throttle service. So they can either charge the customer more money, or outright block service they disagree with.

2005: Madison River Communications blocked VOIP services. The FCC put a stop to it.
2005: Comcast was denying access to p2p services without notifying customers.
2007-2009: AT&T had Skype and other VOIPs blocked because they didn't like there was competition for their cellphones.
2011: MetroPCS tried to block all streaming except YouTube. They actually sued the FCC over this.
2011-2013: AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon were blocking access to Google Wallet because it competed with their own wallet apps.
2012: Verizon was demanding Google block tethering apps on Android because it let owners avoid their $20 tethering fee. This was despite guaranteeing they wouldn't do that as part of a winning bid on an airwaves auction.
2012: AT&T tried to block access to FaceTime unless customers paid.

Net Neutrality doesn't cost money. It's an enforcement that your carrier has to treat all data the same. If the carrier simply treats all data fairly, there is nothing to do, nor any extra overhead cost.

There is a lot of flaws in your examples. Madison River was the only legitimate example.

2005: Comcast was denying access to p2p services without notifying customers.
I cannot find evidence of this ever happening, there is a similar instance in 2007 where "Comcast occasionally delays P2P traffic, including packet uploads, during heavy congestion, according to a spokeswoman. This does not prevent them from reaching their destination, she said." However I cannot find your claim.

2007: AT&T had Skype and other VOIPs blocked because they didn't like there was competition for their cellphones.
This is true, the iPhone just came out. And being a product of AT&T and Apple, they can choose what app services their cell phone gives or not gives. This has nothing to do with limiting internet, just apps.

2011: MetroPCS tried to block all streaming except YouTube. They actually sued the FCC over this.
This is also true, MetroPCS, which specializes in pay-as-you-go plans came with a plan that ONLY allowed unlimited Youtube as the streaming service for $40 with up to 1GB of internet. It grants Youtube unlimited use but other internet use is limited up to 1GB. However, it's not an act of malice, just one website is allowed significantly more use than others with a cheap phone plan.

2011-2013: AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon were blocking access to Google Wallet because it competed with their own wallet apps.
That's just blocking apps, nothing to do with Net Neutrality. Which, they can do as it's their phone services.

2012: Verizon was demanding Google block tethering apps on Android because it let owners avoid their $20 tethering fee. This was despite guaranteeing they wouldn't do that as part of a winning bid on an airwaves auction.
Again... An app blocking. Not Net Neutrality.

2012: AT&T tried to block access to FaceTime unless customers paid.
Again, APP BLOCKING.

So... One instance from 12 years ago with a company that's gone. At least, I think they are gone? They were bought by Century Link.

You mentioned blocking of apps four times. ISPs are blocking or throttling the TCP/IP packets that travel over their networks, more recently done via deep packet inspection. Trying to rephrase it as app blocking is not correct. The app is executed on the phone. The ISP carries the packets of data. The ISPs are blocking/throttling both the app at the packets.

I had the Comcast year wrong. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy.....ng-settlement/ - "Comcast acknowledged that it had engaged in traffic management techniques in order to keep its network speedy"

I'm not going to continue this argument anymore if you think this is just app blocking. If Comcast blocked port 21, would you think they're just "app blocking"?

How is it NOT app blocking? I'm not rephrasing it, that is exactly what it is. Companies not wanting certain apps on their phones, plan and simple. Phone companies can (and should) control what content is allowed on their phones. I'm not saying all the control is justified, it's definitely mean, but they have the rights. Pizza Hut doesn't have to sell Domino's pizza, so why should phone companies allow their cheaper, probably better, competitors on their device?

Believe it or not, you can see why they do it today. We still use FA where there are better, more stable, more profile customization options, furry porn sites. If you can't beat them, be more popular.

______________________________

"Comcast acknowledged that it had engaged in traffic management techniques in order to keep its network speedy"
And you said.
"Net Neutrality doesn't cost money. It's an enforcement that your carrier has to treat all data the same."

Maybe you could be wrong? I'm not an expert, but neither are you.

______________________________

Not to mention the fight for it is very unjust. Under the assumption people will do bad things.

Imagine a cop pulling you over, not because you were speeding, but you could have been speeding.

See the problem with assuming people are bad and always will be bad? I'm not saying Comcast is not bad, nor am I saying they won't do bad stuff. But the entire argument for Net Neutrality is borderline discrimination, and that's wrong. Unless, you think discrimination is right.

Your Pizza Hut and Dominos analogy is broken. Of course Pizza Hut isn't going to sell Dominos pizza, PH owns the building they are in, but they do not own the land right next door. The pizza shops purchase land from a realtor and can make a building. The realtor can not discriminate where Pizza Hut or Dominos setup shop. Land Neutrality. Net Neutrality isn't going to force Pizza Hut to sell Dominos. It's to force the land owner/realtor to offer land at the same price to both, and not erect a toll booth to access it.

---

The cop can't assume the driver did something bad. There are mandated speed limits that the police can enforce using devices that measure your speed. And if an officer wrongly pulls someone over (say, cop assumes you were speeding), we have a legal process to resolve that. The FCC is there to enforce that all TCP/IP bits travel at the same speed.

We can assume that ISPs will somehow abuse the absence of NN by charging piecemeal for what services run over their network. Airplane internet access does this (Southwest charges $2 for iMessage, but $6 for unrestricted internet). Cable TV does this, you buy packages of which channels you want. Internet will very likely go the same way using history as a guide.

You're not understanding the analogies I presented. I must have not been very clear.

Pizza Hut and Dominos was suppose to represent Apps, however, being used on unwanted devices. Google Wallet App wasn't allowed, because it's a competitor, which they do have the right and the reason why it's right was the Pizza Hut and Domino's analogy.
And real quick, "the realtor can not discriminate where Pizza Hut or Dominos setup shop." Off topic but that's actually not true, your towns chamber of commerce can decide which shops they allow, which means they can discriminate against franchises. That might not be the same for every town, but it's the rules for my town.
And another thing, not all Domino's branches are cooperate owned, most are locally owned. People get the training and then buy a store with the support of the Dominos franchise. I believe FedEx also operates the same way, not sure about Pizza Hut.

The cop assuming was a analogy on how people assume people will do bad things, and react. We are the "cops" and assuming the ISPs will do the bad thing.

And I believe Southwest charges $35 for unlimited internet use on planes, not $6. Which they totally can, after all, Movie Theaters operate the exact same way, charge 2 sodas and popcorn for $20, which is less than $3 at the grocery store. They do that because of how limited the resources are, it sucks, but saying free or cheap internet on airplanes is the... right thing? While your at it I'd love free popcorn at movie theaters.

If this goes good, we win. If it goes bad and companies abuse the system, the bill gets reinstated.

2005: Comcast was denying access to p2p services without notifying customers.
I cannot find evidence of this ever happening, there is a similar instance in 2007 where "Comcast occasionally delays P2P traffic, including packet uploads, during heavy congestion, according to a spokeswoman. This does not prevent them from reaching their destination, she said." However I cannot find your claim.

Here's the Electronic Freedom Foundation's 2007 report about it.

Wow, you're mean :/

I'm sorry, I don't want to be mean. What did I do to make you upset?

By being in advertising your sole job is to sell a product/service. This means you have to know the psychology of a person, their wants, desires, the attractions that will get a person to desire product A over product B. You are trained to do this in any way possible, even if you have to lie, cheat or otherwise outright deny the truth when it is put in front of you. By you denying everything that people keep telling you and even presenting official works/examples on, you are basically declaring yourself an agent of the the thing they fear the most. You are acting like the person sweet talking a person about how everything will be better while at the same time stabbing a knife into that person. Effectively YOU ARE BEING A YES MAN to that of the ISPs here, saying things will be fine with your cushy job even unemployed as you say when you have folks whose lives DEPEND on this who might have to quit what they love doing, in effect you are also like the person saying "SO SO isn't a "REAL JOB, MAN UP AND GET ONE"

That is how you are being mean to me in my opinion.

I am denying a lot of evidence because so many evidence presented is bad. Someone confused app useably as network carriers throttling access. Even famous cases of throttling get only journals or blog posts, not news or reports. As a person who works in advertising I know how journalists work, the difference between a reporter, investigator and journalist is huge and not the same professions. Getting linked a journalist blog post is like linking a picture of a ghost, then expect me to believe it. Even stupider is journalists link their references to OTHER journal posts like its a legit reference, not including "journal" posts that fake their evidence, quote others without reference and provide bad references. Reporters at least have the effort to directly go to the source of the news and investigators, well, its an investigator.
I am not saying journalists are bad people, but I think the journalism practice has gotten extremely dirty as of late. All the links given to me has not shown me otherwise.

Still waiting on a source that states network infrastructure is cheap... I've been told that a lot. I also watched a TV show that told me big foot is real a lot.

You are right, I am being a yes man. There is one major good thing about getting rid of the bill as it moves coorperations and government farther apart. As a person who helps their local politians get into office, I can tell you thats a good thing. Politicians get entire companies involved and they have the tools to do it willingly and unwillingly.
Voting is not choosing a proper leader, its a popularity contest. Spamming your face as much as possible until its the only thing in peoples minds. You think that spamming is affordable for a single person? And I can't help but giggle when people say it would remove the freedom of the internet and hurt small businesses, like its something we have.

Hey there! I've a lot to write to cover things, so I hope you'll read it all to hopefully become more informed about what is going on, what has been going on, and what Net Neutrality actually is, versus this "costs us a lot" that ISPs seem to complain about without any real backup.

Because of the expensive costs, starting a new internet company is basically impossible. There is a monopoly on internet service provides and will stay that was as long as the cost of running Netflix, Twitch, etc. on top of everything else is extremely high. This also means starting a heavy data usage company will be extremely tolling on the companies that host them.

Surprisingly, it's actually not terribly difficult to get network infrastructure in place from a major backbone. This is repeatedly shown by the numerous municipal ISPs that are popping up for cities, pooling together to provide less expensive internet for everyone. The same municipal ISPs that the companies you are purporting to say "aren't evil" repeatedly lobby against. The big ISPs know that the cost of operation is not as high as what is being billed. Why else would AT&T charge more for fiber in cities without Google Fiber? https://consumerist.com/2015/03/30/.....your-town-yet/ (older news, but still relevant to the topic). ISPs have been shown to not compete unless they must, and clearly it's still affordable for AT&T, who already had infrastructure in place prior to Google arriving, or they would not be able to charge as low as they have.

Also, net neutrality isn't costly. Not in the slightest. ISPs want you to think that "bandwidth" is expensive. Spoiler: it's not. Equipment installations have fixed fees, and running them is minimal in terms of power and maintenance costs. Replacement fees are minimal compared to the overwhelmingly large profits involved here. Additionally, ISP's themselves have stated that it has had no impact on profits: https://arstechnica.com/information.....ps-themselves/ This information is required by law as publicly-traded companies to share to the FTC along with stockholders. So we now have proof from ISPs themselves that they say one thing to their customers and the general public (Net Neutrality is bad) and something else entirely to their stockholders and the FTC (Net Neutrality doesn't impact us at all). And while they make make statements again about cost, additional details show otherwise in the expenditures tracked: https://consumerist.com/2017/02/28/.....e-numbers-say/

The problem with the arguments made most frequently is they re based on a lack of information, and frequently, as well, a lack of knowledge of the underlying structure of the internet. Backbone carriers themselves, such as Level3, support Net Neutrality, as seen here, as well as Cogent, another backbone carrier: http://news.level3.com/news-archive?item=65052 and http://www.cogentco.com/en/componen.....ent/article/82
Cogent and Level3 are the carriers that power Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Charter, etc. They are the company that has the network snaking nationwide in order to ensure those ISPs can talk to eachother.

Also, data plans were already expensive before this occurred, starting at a miniscule 2GB of data with, say, Verizon, who is Ajit Pai's former employer before he joined the FCC. Additionally, Net Neutrality has no impact on service plans under cell phone providers. It took a company like T-Mobile coming out with unlimited plans they could afford to give their customers to force the other carriers to return to unlimited plans. Time and time again, most service providers have proven they do not care about providing what customers want, just about creating enormous profit. Which makes sense. Companies are created to create profit, shareholders expect profit. That is normal. That said, T-Mobile does have their unlimited as 'Neer said above with some limits: after 23-25 GB, they will throttle your overall internet speed if you are on a tower that is congested. If you go to a lower-traffic tower, it goes away. Additionally, they have a practice called "zero rating", which is what 'Neer mentioned above with ISPs offering their own services for no impact. If you watch Youtube, Netflix, Hulu, Twitch, or one of many other video providers, or listen to one of numerous music streaming services, T-Mobile will not count it against your data cap. Unlike Verizon Wireless, who tried this similarly with FreeBee (a service that cost media providers money to be zero-rated), T-Mobile's BingeOn and Music Unlimited do -not- cost content providers anything. They simply work with T-Mobile to set up the necessary software on their end to limit the stream size (720p for video), and it no longer affects data caps. https://www.investors.com/how-veriz.....rvices-differ/

The underlying argument for Title II and Net Neutrality is this: The internet has become so important to most daily life, in terms of communication, information finding, and even payment processing, that it should be counted as a utility. The use of plain-old-telephone-service, which is still Title-II protected, has gone by the wayside in favor of the internet for convenience. As a result, it is sensible for the protections to move on.

I am not in support of Net Neutrality as a shill of some kind. I am not in support of it because the Democrats are; I'm somewhat disenfranchised with them at the moment. I am in support of network packet neutrality because of what it guarantees: All packets on a network are treated equally, because ultimately, the 1s and 0s from Facebook are no different from the 1s and 0s from Netflix, which are no different from the 1s and 0s from Hulu. And that's what net neutrality is about: treating 1s and 0s as 1s and 0s no matter the source, because they all move the same speed through a network. My company's website should not be able to be de-prioritized because one of our competitors paid Comcast more than my company could afford.

By the way, your comment about the opposite could happen. Prior to the FCC's ruling under Tom Wheeler a few years ago, Verizon FIOS started trying to throttle Netflix traffic, causing streams to start buffering and slowing down, or degrading in quality. This was originally highlighted by an individual who connected to his business's secure network, traffic which cannot be clearly identified by Verizon, and attempting to stream the same movie from Netflix. The throttling problem was gone while on a remote business connection, because Verizon could not identify the traffic was coming from Netflix at that point, and his business's ISP did not throttle Netflix. Any customers of Verizon FIOS were able to replicate the result if they had a similar connection to use. Originally, Verizon denied this, which created a very interesting situation in which Level3, one of the backbone providers, remember, highlighted that Verizon had created an artificial problem (if they even had an excuse to throttle to begin with) by simply not connecting available cables. These cables cost very, very little. http://www.zdnet.com/article/level-.....-internet-war/ Here we have a carrier acting in bad faith because they were not required to.

I understand the desire to hope for the best in people, and I understand the desire to keep people from jumping to conclusions. But I do not believe you are well-enough informed as to the reality of the situations playing out. As an IT professional myself, working for a small company, network neutrality, or Internet Freedom as may be a better term, is extremely important. A level playing field has always been the backbone of our society, and as 'Neer said, the lack of net neutrality rules allows for loot-box-like things to occur. "Imagine if EA was your ISP" is not an entirely inaccurate comparison.

And before you ask: Randall Stephenson is the CEO of AT&T. I know this due to numerous articles I've read over the years involving him and the strange, often contradictory statements. If you are not fond of the sources I have linked, check -their- sources. As with Wikipedia, many times articles are merely a composite of many other formal documents and if you are unsure of the validity, you can always check their sources.

There's a reason why IT professionals are consistently in support of net neutrality. You've stated you are not a professional in that field, and I would therefore not expect you to have the background knowledge of networking and Internet functionality that IT professionals have. While ISP's claim Net Neutrality is harmful, the reality is it simply is not true. If you have any questions about the content above, I would be happy to answer them to the best of my ability.

You do have several good arguments! However, I do have to point things out.

While smaller ISPs or new ISP's can and do thrive in large cities, the problem is they are kinda stuck there. Moving network underground wiring or satellite service to other parts of the nation could be very costly. I'm no expert on internet consumer company growth, but the lack of moving internet services outside of cities can mean it's harder. It can also mean getting services to low population areas can cost a bit of money to do.

I have to disagree, everyone saying it's not costly... With no numbers? The reason why I'm not agreeing is because there is nothing to agree with that statement other than accept it's true. We have investment expansion costs, 6.7 billion from Comcast in particular, which is a crap ton of money, according to the information, 6.7 billion is equal to 60% of the companies entire yearly earning.

I also looked into ISP's themselves have stated that it has had no impact on profits, and I cannot find a legitament statement claiming that. I found "Net neutrality turnback won't impact interconnection agreements with AT&T, Charter, others" but that's it.

And that's exactly why I have a problem believing the entire, "Comcast Throttled Netflix" debacle. Not a single comment from either company, I've also read different reasons for the throttle and different conclusions. All of the information does link the data drop, but that's about the only evidence.
It's kinda weird this serious event has no comments from either company and a very unclear resolution.

In my opinion, there was a serious network error from Comcast and rumors started to spread when people got frustrated when they can no longer watch their favorite shows.

You are entirely right about one thing and I cannot agree more. The problem with the cost and upkeep of network infrastructure is no one is sharing any information. Which is weird, not only the major companies but also the smaller ones are not giving information. Like... Why? I can understand the big guys but even the small companies? Where are their numbers saying your argument, cheap or expensive, is invalid?

Both Level 3 and Cogent both support it. Staying internet freedom is good, which it is. But nothing regarding finances, makes sense, as I don't think Level 3's Assistant Chief Legal Officer deals with company finance and Cogent has... No quote? Don't know who, I don't even know how to navigate to that page from their website other than url.

In the blog post you linked regarding the throttling from Verizon to Netflix is very biased and not legitament, it's a blog post, not a report. Mark Taylor, VP of Content and Media, claims the accusations against what happened is untrue, with quotes against him being not only uncredited but also unclaimed. The proof that Verizon is lying, according to Taylor, can be found in its diagram. And I don't know how or why the diaphragm is so... strange? Apparently, internet services label their paying clients as "Carrier Hotel in Los Angeles"? That just seems very, very weird.

I'm not judging him wrong nor right in the situation, people are innocent until proven guilty. But I get the feeling because rich people are involved, they are guilty until proven innocent.
It feels very discriminating.

And yes, data plans have been expensive, as we expand farther the more investments that needs to go into it.

____________________________________________________


The whole thing can be resolved if some company comes out, says, here is the costs of maintaining and upgrading network infrastructures! But no one has and there is just so much media and blog flooding it's difficult to hunt down the information if it does exist. Everyone is panicking, freaking out, crying that the world is going to end. Oh lord, click here to save us!

All backed up by IT professionals, who don't do marketing or have anything to do with finances.

We cannot assume people do bad things and will do bad things. It's wrong.

If a cop pulls you over, not because you were speeding, but you could have been speeding because you done it before.

It's wrong, it's discrimination. People are innocent until proven guilty.
Yet, we have people claiming they companies are lobbying together, no evidence, it's just something illegal that bad people do.
If I were to go through the comments and replace rich people and big companies with black people and black communities, this would have an entirely different tone.

____________________________________________________

We're not experts, we don't have the decades of marketing and cooperate management to understand what's going on for this debate. Plus the experts are not talking or have been talking but have been buried. We do not know the right answer, but I say give it a try. If it works, we win. If it doesn't, we change it back.

well I think its super too late to do this
They shoulda thought of this when the Net started to get popular
Will never get passed
noooopppeesss

I'm gunna remain optimistic on this as well.
OF COURSE. That's still no excuse to do nothing (Y'all should be contacting senators .... seriously. It only took me a minute.)
But the backlash would be HUGE, and I don't think it would be just limited to the US.

While I'm pessimistic, I've been writing and calling congress numerous times. I've been contacting my senators and writing letters, but I sometimes feel like what I do is pointless.

Yet to do nothing seems to be an even worse option.

Having had to deal with a data cap for 2 months made me realise exactly how much data I traffic on a monthly basis. And I'm sure my usage is low compared to some people's. But I guess Trump will go for getting rid of net neutrality probably because it'll either make him rich in some way or his rich backers even richer.

If it ends up passing, I hope the backlash would give those greedy corporate dicks a good ol' pitchfork to the ass! >:V The internet is suppose to be a free place for everyone to be, say, and do what they want. Taking away that freedom from people would definitely ring the bell of suicide on their part cause I sure as hell know how our country would react. And it ain't gonna be pretty for them.

Pass on messages to your American friends to support and protect Net Neutrality.

Just so you know for Scenario 3, FA is already on the popular business blacklist. Any place that uses a public porn site block list, has FA blocked.

I'm not an american, but according to this website it isn't just about ditching net neutrality it is also about making states themselves scrap plans for their own net neutrality laws.

SP

That's a new addition. States decided that if the FCC wasn't going to play nice they would force corporations to do the same, so the FCC pulled another plan to fuck over states from making their own decision. This from the political part that advocates states' rights.

Republicans are only and every for "states' rights", when it's used to support things they like. The same as "small government", which is basically a code word for "Leave me and the people I care about alone, but feel free to oppress those other people I don't like. In fact, I insist on it!"

State's Rights also being a big excuse of the Civil War starting instead of slavery. The South seceded from the Union because they had the RIGHT to do so because they felt the Government in charge (Ie the North) was impeding on their right to own slaves. (technically they did, till Congress amended that part of the Constitution)

I don't know where I be without FA, other than the fact that it has been my home for 8-9 years.

If Net Neutrality dies, everyone's privacy will be violated worldwide, internet sites, including FA, DA, all of the other fur fandom-related sites would get bashed at, and everything we worked hard on will be gone for good. Even after all these years, people like Trump and Pai learned nothing.

"The love of money is the root of all evil."
- 1 Timothy 6:10

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
- Lord Acton

Trump and Pai knows the consequences for ending Net Neutrality, and they plan to have it destroyed by influencing the Congress anyway. Therefore, they have no intention in suffering those consequences. There would be a wide-spread panic if that happens, protests will be everywhere, and even if the citizens of the US attempt to persuade the government to bring Net Neutrality back, Pai would refuse, and he and Trump would make certain the Congress wouldn't back out on it.

um that has already been done though, even before this became an issue Trump sign into law via Executive Order that which allows ISPs to publically sell your viewing history to anyone they deem fit.

Then, Trump clearly violated about millions of people's privacy.

If Net Neutrality ever gets abolished, the past will come into play again as there will be millions or even billions of people all putting an effort to bring Net Neutrality back. The power of the people on the internet is stronger than many companies. Lose the way to make money, the companies might rethink their decision. In the end, if it passes, there will be a multitude of unsatisfied citizens of the US and people around the world up their arses. Which is why I am finding it rather stupid that companies are trying to push for it again, it is gonna fail in one way or another. There is no victory for the companies if there are more people out there that can overpower them. All in all, the whole push to abolish Net Neutrality is greedy of the companies. For their choice to make us pay more for what we already got will affect them more than us.

We already have a laughable cap of 150GB set by our ISP, and we exceed it almost all the time! Even more often nowadays with more and more games being 40+GB, and even if you buy it on disc it'll likely need a patch that's just as large as the game itself!

Games with 4K assets like Fallout are topping 100GB+, too.

Well, I don't have a PS4 Pro or a good PC, let alone a 4K screen, but I doubt that matters much if patches like that are automatically applied.

Like you said, it doesn't matter.

Having said that, even non-4K games are starting to get up there. 60GB+ is not unusual for modern games that don't target 4K.

That's a lot of data! I'm not surprised though. Just frustrated ISPs are being a bunch of greedy fucks who want to charge more for the same slow lines we still have instead of building faster ones. 6Mbps was fast in 2004, this is 2017, going on 2018! Where's my goddamn gigabit line?

Locked behind the greed of the ISPs who give out excuses for why they can't give you that though it is quite within thier capacity to do so.

Yeah, I mean, they want to treat it like TV, but think how that is setup for a moment. To transmit all those channels must require a fuckton of bandwidth, and it's there no matter if you're watching it or not. And you don't get penalized if you say, watch 51 hours in a month. There's no limit to how much you can watch, (good thing because it's fucking expensive as it is!) The point is, if the network is there for TV, then it's there for the internet as well!

Verizion Communications, Inc.: "Unlimited Data for the Whole Family? Yeah, we're gonna get rid of that, instead, Why not just share like 50GB with the entire family?"

Everyone else, including Verizion's own customers: "Bitch, please!"

Deutsche Telekom, AG; T-Mobile International; T-Mobile US, Inc.: "Fuck that shit, every line in the entire family plan gets their own data for themselves (unless you're on the unlimited plan), not everybody uses the same amount of data at the same rate. Also, let's have our customers stream music from select services, without it counting against their data allowance starting in 2015[#StreamOn]. Maybe even add in select video streaming services the following year and not have that count against them [#BingeOn]; hell, let's pay for their Netflix service starting in 2017![#NetflixOnUs]"

Verizion Communications, Inc.: "You only need 5GB of data for your mobile phone service, because nobody goes over that much on their phones."

Everyone else, including Verizion's own customers: "Why the fuck haven't y'all learned your lesson?!"

Verizion Communications, Inc.: "Fine, we'll bring back the Unlimited Data plan"

AT&T Mobility: [Control|Command] [C], [Command|Control] [V]

Deutsche Telekom, AG; T-Mobile International; T-Mobile US, Inc. & SoftBank Group; Sprint Corp.: "Now y'all know why we didn't get rid of our unlimited data plans" [Air-Horn_MLG_7-1_Master-Audio.dtshd]

I'm not talking mobile. In fact, I'm one of the rare few who doesn't need a lot of mobile data. (That, and my phone is so shitty, it can't even use more than a few hundred MBs...

Still good points though, the vast majority of us will use more than 5, 10, and even 20 GB mobile and 200 GB home a month.

That was a pretty detailed post.. though it's really irritating that we're still dealing with this issue!

And these neutrality attacks will happen for the rest of our lives. I was just certain we'd have this under control.

Trump made shutting down access to porn one of his campaign promises
Got a source on this? I've never heard of this before, and I'd expect that if it was more widely known, about half the entire internet would've basically exploded, and FA traffic would've probably hit DDoS levels from 90% of its users making journals/comments about the topic simultaneously. The only time I've noticed porn being part of a political debate is with the UK, and that party lost power because of it. They really should've known better.

Is that why Trump is such a dick? Because he hates porn?

https://nypost.com/2016/08/01/trump.....internet-porn/ and https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr.....b0e2e15eb701fc and http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/t.....rticle/2598269

Oh, not quite a campaign promise he based his platform on then, but a pledge. One that both party candidates supported, so it could be argued this would become an issue regardless of who won. And it doesn't sound like all access to porn will be shut down.

About 90% of this pledge is talking about enforcing existing laws, especially centered around child porn, and children's access to porn. Good idea all around. Then there's this part:
4) Give serious consideration to appointing a Presidential Commission to examine the harmful public health impact of Internet pornography on youth, families and the American culture
If they left it at "youth" then there would be no issue here, but going further does leave it a little more vague. I can see the concern there, but there's no laws or anything regarding this even being put on the table yet. And even if/when this point is brought up, all that will be done is considering hiring a guy to start considering stuff. If it ever gets that far, in most cases, whoever looks at that correlation will have to eventually admit that porn is more beneficial than harmful to society.

This shall not come to pass! It can't. We've won before and i think we have it in us to do it again

I hope no one ever takes away Net Neutrality, and f*ck the people and corporations that keep trying to do so.

Several of my idiot friends on Facebook don't understand what Net Neutrality truly is and they're in support of removing it. It really sickens me that they could think that, especially when it will affect them negatively.

Comcast does have a cap, at least in my area, ive already exceeded one once installing games from Steam. and yup. overage fee

If you live an areas where Comcast has any real competition that cap is magically gone.

have fios in the area, were suppose to get google before that was abandoned

OKC gets Cox Communications & AT&T [both the old analog landline phone & A-DSL service, as well as U-verse IPTV, U-verse V-DSL, U-verse VoIP, along with DirecTV and AT&T Mobility]. However, with both companies, they will put a data cap if you go for the dry-loop method (internet service, alone), as opposed to bundling it with either phone or TV service which will give you an unlimited data cap. Because, they still don't have the technology to determine and filter out which bits of that data is for your IPTV or VoIP service(s) or which of that data is none of those. We're forced to waste our money on U-verse IPTV service when we only need U-verse V-DSL alone. We only have U-basic as our TV package, plus the $10/month HD technology fee; we can get that same basic crap for free using a 35-mile range DTV antenna, and we get some more channels out of that.
Also, Cox is cheaper for the dry-loop method compared to AT&T, even on regular pricing. However, it's when you bundle where AT&T is cheaper than Cox. Also, AT&T's internet service has gotten slightly better over the past three years, but it's speed test results are just all over the place [Ping ranging from 29-59ms, with speeds being half or lower than what you're paying for, even during low-traffic], it's not consistent like Cox [ping ranging from 8-15ms, with speeds staying up near to what you're paying for].

Well that's a load of bolly! Trumps gone way too far now! If he does this then everything's going to take a bad hit. FA, Second Life, Gaming communities, Furry sites, everything. It's time to hoist the colors high and fight back!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EyM2jcBTW0 Time to send out the fleets and fight once more! This shall not come to pass! We won before and we can win again! It's time to hoist the colors fellow furs and unite! Yo Ho Haul Together hoist the colors high! heave ho Furrys and Dragons never shall we die! Yo Ho , haul together hoist the colors high! The seas be ours and by the powers. Where we will we'll roam!

Why is the WORLD WIDE WEB being affected by the choices of the american people and not, you know, the WORLD?

This is actually about the US part of the Internet in general, with the World Wide Web being one service on the Internet.

Since the US has the largest population of native English speakers in the world, it's going to come up a lot on websites that are in English.

this really won't bode well for anyone then.

thanks for explaining it to me :)

In theory, no... but nobody quite knows what they're going to do. We know what they've said they wanted to do and what they've actually done in the past, but anything is possible.

It's useful to note that Verizon has owned part of the US Internet backbone since they bought UUNet 20ish years ago.

How relevant that is to modern day, I'm not sure.

Edit: Verizon also purchased part/all of XO Communications more recently.

Like the last few times this crap has come around, I only have one thing to say 'this is bullshit.' ISP's have psudomonopolies because of their non-competition pacts. I live in Utah, and I have two choices for an ISP in my portion of the state: CentruryLink or Comcast. There used to be a third, Quest. But CenturyLink absorbed them, and they're completely gone.

What's my other option for an ISP other then those? Dial-up providers. That's it. I could go on and on all day, but this guy says it a lot better, and a lot funnier:

https://youtu.be/92vuuZt7wak

The last several attempts to destroy the internet by Republicans failed, but only because of an overwhelming outcry from the public.
This outcry reached Congress and beyond. Sometimes Congress listened.
Other times the Federal Courts denied the insane acts of giving full control of the internet to either the government or mega-corporations.
But no matter what, we need to make our voices heard, and contact more than Congress, because when Congress fails, our only hope is the law.
And lets face it, law and order is only good if the people who are in charge of it and enforce it care. They often only care when most people let them know they do.

the funny thing is time warner and AT&T we're attacked by trump so now this means they'll retaliate against him

Mostly due to CNN, his sworn enemy. Heh.

And he wants them to sell either Time Warner subsidiary, Turner Broadcasting System or TBS's Cable News Network ala carte, immediately. If one of those do happen, one of its potential buyers is CBS Corporation.

Reference is google

I can tell you one simple truth: if Net Neutrality falls, there will be rioting, and I will join it.

It sucks, but at least we haven't gotten to the era of sesame credit like they have over in china, where they essentially rate you on what kind of individual you are. Want to view or import something from another country? Guess what? Your score goes down. Want to be friends with that cool hip guy? Better hope has a good score, or you go down with him. Want to literally do anything that isn't working or supporting your government? Your score goes down! What happens if your score goes down too low? Good luck finding a job, a place to live, etc. etc. It's fucking scary man.

Sad thing that nobody massively protested against it. People just accepted this...

So is it time to give up, curl up in a ball and start crying? Because I'm absolutely terrified shitless right now. What the hell are we supposed to do!!?

The chair for the Trump Administration's FCC is a former lawyer for Verizon Communications, so clearly he's playing favorites.


Also, these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vuuZt7wak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI5y-_sqJT0

---

On an unrelated note:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH6d4Adm9U

Y'know what? Since the inception of the Internet and WWW (maybe a tiny bit later for the former) we have been researching and trying our best to make the Internet better, bigger, and faster. We have all these amazing places we can visit from our own home that are nowhere near! Such a gargantuan wealth of knowledge to be had! A medium for those who love gaming (and I believe most of us do love gaming)! And now here we are, trying to slow and lock it down. WTF happened to our desire for bigger and better? I know my English teacher always said "Follow the money.", but are (certain) people that ludicrously blunt to realize what they are doing? If it weren't for the Internet, I (and many of you, as well) might not be doing the things and hobbies we have! I would be sorely disappointed if (or when) my ability to surf the web (going back in time a bit with that phrase, can't remember the last time I used it, maybe 5th grade 7-8 years ago) is barred by silly money-grabbing trolls!

Anyway, just needed to get that off my chest. It's been weighing me down for a wee bit of time. It's one of those rant-fueled opinion type of things, so take it or leave it how you want. I'm sure there is something I am missing or don't know/understand that couls make me rethink some things.

Yup. The net neutrality thing gets pushed for every year no matter who is in office, though. All the major ISPs want it because they can charge a ton for it. I can remember when you had a limit to how many letters you could use for your text messages (so can you most likely).

But I've always hated it. In fact they've let people get too used to having "unlimited" access to try to take it away now. If they wanted this they should have done it in the beginning. (Had they this wouldn't be an issue now.) But they were more interested in charging people $60+ for internet. Now costs for crap have gone up, but if they change their prices they lose customers. (Like Netflix going from $11 something to $13 something now.)

Although, you are right. Most companies have their fingers in all types of pies and it benefits them to keep certain services "safe" or risk losing more customers. (Pretty much a "don't shit where you live" type of thing.) But charging tiers would kill most services straight away. Especially after people have to pick and choose what to watch... It's a lot like the "sponge worthy" episode of Seinfeld. XD All we can do as protest is speak with our wallets. It's the only language corporate bigwigs understand.

This sort of assumes they'll bother listening. All of us can call in, but as far as I can tell the head of the FCC is not elected nor is he obliged to listen to the White House or, really, anyone else.

They're not going to listen to us which is why we need to stand up. Make them back down.

How, exactly? They don't need to fear us in any way. They can just price things however because they are beholden to no one.

People getting upset, fighting back, marching... whatever it takes. As it stands right now, killing Net Neutrality would garner all parties involved a LOT of money. A hell of a lot of money. So they're completely uninterested in hearing people out, or what they have to say. This is the sole reason the FCC has outright stated they don't care about the 22 million comments they received regarding NN on their site.

They're completely unafraid of text comments because it can't hurt them. Opinions online don't matter because they know the majority of users out there have no choice in ISPs. If they push it through they know the majority have nowhere to turn. If Comcast fucks you over and your only alternative is DSL which provides half a megabit of downloads they know you're not leaving.

Which is why we have to stand up. Again, fight back, protest, march if need be. The Internet is a cornerstone of society now. Commerce relies on it. Social networks. Communities. Careers. Industries. Media. They all rely on it. It's not just about downloading or access to sites but corporations wanting to control what you can (or more importantly, CAN'T) access.

We need to be prepared to have our voices heard if it comes to it. So practice writing witty signs now. =)

^----this!

This whole debacle is just Sopa, but worse...

I do apologize for my ignorance on the history of Net neutrality. But haven't they tried to get rid of it before the election also?

They've been trying several times.

That's what I thought!

dragoneer, thank you at least you usnderstand the situation.

Will this affect instant messengers? Even on phones?

Nobody legitimately knows.

The voting plans were for today 14 December! Any news ? Trump passed the FCC law that ends Net Neutrality? What did the USA Congress decide?

Time is running out with Net Neutrality. If it gets repealed, will Furaffinity get blocked, or does its hosting become extremely expensive which could force it to be closed ?