They probably have, but it's been taken down. Sites are doing that.

That can only mean that FA is in the FCC's pocket. Why, otherwise, would journals on this subject be taken down?

I dunno I find that hard to believe considering FA is exactly the kind of site that would suffer if net neutrality would end. I’d blame it more on apathy and “not being into politics” or something like that.

Yeah.... as many rumors as I hear, this doesn't really seem like something the top brass at FA would want. Still, you'd think more people would be at least CONCERNED.

I think a lot of people are. My twitter feed has tons of posts about it.

I know for a hard fact that Tumblr - now owned by Verizon - has been automatically unsubscribing the "net_neutrality" tag without the account owner's knowledge or consent.

I'm actually glad they're doing that, because it draws attention to just how scummy and evil they are. Thinking nobody would notice was hubris on their part, and I hope their arrogance comes back around to bite them in the ass.

Supposedly they've been doing the same for negative posts about Hillary Clinton. Seems suspicious that on a site that was very pro-Bernie or even outright communist a lot of the time that every single post in the tag was supportive of Clinton and against Bernie and socialism.

My personal guess is combat fatigue. How often the FCC tried to destroy the net neutrality? This fight is always to repeat and I think that people just are unmotivated because it seem that they cannot ever truly won. The FCC doesn't want the net to be neutral, so every time, they simply retreat temporary before proposing the end of it again.

Exactly.

Also, there is SO MUCH to be outraged about, that it's hard to even keep track of it all:

* Russian interference in the election, possible collusion with Trump.

* The Senate Republicans trying to give a huge handout to the one percenters under the guise of "Repealing and replacing Obamacare," Using "Budget Reconciliation" rules to freeze Democrats out of the process.

* Trumps openly racist policies.

* The Senate trying to destroy Obamacare under the guise of "Tax Reform," using "Budget Reconciliation" rules to freeze Democrats out of the process.

* Betsy DeVos, a woman who has never had any contact with the public education system, or even any experience as an educator, "fixing" the public school system by making it possible for private charter schools (most of which have been proven to be frauds) to steal budget money from public schools.

* Pajiit, a Verizon drone, gets placed in charge of the FCC.

* Senator Al Franken is forced to resign due to unsubstantiated accusations of sexual harassment, while the twice-disbarred Judge Roy Moore is allowed to run for congress, despite credible evidence of having a history of not only sexual harassment but child molestation as well.

* Racists, emboldened by Trumps blowing of dog whistles as bullhorns, march in several towns, spreading hate and fear. Some of their members infiltrate peaceful counter-protests to start fights, creating the illusion that the dissenters to racism are a violent cult themselves.

And Puerto Rico, "Freedom to discriminate" laws, bathroom bills, and thousands of other things I can't even think of right now.

With all that happening, there is literally not enough outrage in a sane human mind to encompass it all. I completely understand the DC Baseball shooter: he tried to understand and keep up with all the madness, and it drove him insane, leading him to think that lethal force against Republican politicians was the only option left.

Violence is seldom the answer.

It is not the answer now.

If Trump tries to suspend any of the regular Federal elections, it may be time then, we'll need to see what Congress and the Courts do first, if they will stop or allow this overreach of power.

We must best this again!!!!

Well it's all over every other website, if that helps.

I guess... Still, it's pretty disheartening to see so little of it here.

I mean, it's pretty certain that the FCC will win this round. So we're certainly about to see some "interesting times" whatever happens. :(

I know you're worried about FA being in bed with the FCC somehow, but I really doubt that. FA being a predominantly porn site , they would stand to lose a lot from this. I think it's more that FA deals with so much drama on a daily basis that they actively want to discourage and avoid any kind of politics. But you can rest easy knowing that everywhere somebody can make a fuss about it, they are making a fuss about it.

Yeah, that was kind of a hasty statement on my part, but it was what first jumped to mind when it was suggested that they were "taking down posts." Which I'm not certain is true for FA.

Well, even PORNHUB is joining in on the protest. I mean, if you take away all the PORN.... Well that's half the reason for the internet right there.

Well I admire your spirit! It's nice to see you get your energy and passion back >:P

Furaffinity doesn't need to stand with them because they aren't actively threatened and a lot of this sight is made up of a user base outside the US who are for now unaffected, mostly Russians.

I've been seeing a ton of journals from people I'm watching, but I think it likely doesn't help that we go through this every year.
It is a fight that neither side are willing to give up on, and other areas in the world just don't really have a reason to worry about
it quite as much as those of us in the US do. ;w;

I guess people are still preoccupied thinking themselves really clever for constantly mocking the microtransaction system in Battlefront II. When a post by DICE on Reddit becomes the most downvoted in its history, I think that's how you know where the internet's priorities lie, sadly.

Unfortunate...

...

God, I hope Fallout: Cascadia is good.

That protest is badly done, the problem is that Battle For The Net has forgot targeting, net neutrality is in danger only in the USA so the protest should be targeted only to american users, it's fully possible to detect them by their IP addresses. Now everyone will see those widgets which turns the protest into fearmongering.

True enough. We're all a bit...... WEARY of fearmongering right now.

But the fact is, the US tends to give other nations IDEAS. If the US succeeds with this and successfully gets away with charging people more for less service, companies around the world will make those cash register faces like in the cartoons and follow suit.

I've been thinking about this.. since I'm in the UK theres really not much that I can do to help out with this, but surely if it passes and sites start getting throttled down, people outside the US could sue for what ammounts to partial or full denial of service to potentially paid services?
We may not be in the US, but if we're paying for a service that is hosted in the US this is still going to effect us, even though we have NO say about it...

Signed almost every petition, called my senators, etc. I think FA wants to minimize drama. All we can do is wait.

I'm rather confident that somehow it will fall through, and/or, if it DOES pass, something will happen to change it back.

Especially if my hunch on stuff is correct. Remember, it will also take them time to implement these changes.

I've seen 8-12 journals on this here
Also, the FCC is trying to eviscerate the Lifeline program, which offers broadband to low income communities (communities which the providers wouldn't care about without incentives)

I have seen plenty. Trust me. And I worry too. I feel we need to go down to the FCC's headquarters and riot the fuck out of the place if they kill Net Neitrality.

At this point though they're not listening to our protests. 7 million letters were sent and Ajit Pai claims they were just 7 million fakes sent by 1 hacker. He doesn't care that we want Net Neutrality, his buddies at Verizon want it gone because it cramps their business, and as far as Pai is concerned, he doesn't work for the American people, he works for telecommunications companies.

People blame Obama for putting him in the FCC, but I blame Drumpf for promoting the fucker to chairman.

This is a vote they're taking and not ours. The most anyone can do is show up to the FCC offices and raise absolute hell, because they're ignoring the online form letters at this point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wu7VCA3NDc

"If you spit in the sky, it just lands in your face." - Fiddler on the Roof

I let my Congresscritter know, I commented on the FCC website, but they're all Republicans and "know better" than we do.

Yeah, right. I'd like to see them try to survive for a year on the programs they force on us.

I made two post about it but as a result I get ignored by my so called friends/followers cause I'm not popular to get the topic to be taken seriously. (Pretty much why I don't make much post or interact with people here and DA) And on DA I get the same treatment and being told by others the it dead no matter what I do so I and everyone else should give up.

My journal folder got absolutely spammed by people talking about net neutrality a little week ago :P
And if FA did take notes down, I think it's because of that "spam", they have rules against that, and I think they don't care about what the message is, if 500+ journals with the same name pops up, it will be seen as spam :P

I just wish you all luck with that, as a european there is VERY little I can actually do.
(I have seen the european sign paper, but I really doubt they would even look at it, America have shown to not really care what we think)

I've seen tons of journals about it so far

I've seen only two journals and I'm worried, being a Floridian with no way to make friends. For now, I've emailed three FCC head staff and been reblogging about Net Neutrality, but posts about it on my dash are decreasing. If nothing else, I don't wanna lose contact with the few people who are just barely still in my life.

I know, I've been following this as much as I can.
I'm sweating bullets leading up to the 14th.
I dread to know what will happen if they repeal this.

Even once the FCC vote passes, there's still hope as NN advocates are preparing to take them to court. The FCC is not allowed to make arbitrary decisions just for the hell of it, they need a compelling reason, and right now they haven't gotten any.

It might be because pretty much everyone, no matter their political affiliation, is pro Net Neutrality already- just look at the posts in this thread. Try posting about any other political topic without people getting into a big argument. The only people who are anti-NN are the people being paid by telecom companies to oppose it, and people who don't already know about it by this point are just going to skip over any posts about it in their apathy. I agree that FA should definitely participate in the internet blackout to increase awareness, as that would actually get their attention, but I doubt journals will do much. Notice nobody on your journal showed up saying "what's this Net Neutrality thing all about?".

I think the other thing is just exhaustion and frustration. I left comments, I called my representatives, I signed petitions. I have very little faith that any of that will do anything. Our government is transparently corrupt and doesn't represent us. As many of the emails I've gotten have stated, Ajit Pai "isn't even trying to hide his corruption". He's in the pocket of the companies he's supposed to be regulating, and we live in a country where this transparent bribery is not only somehow still legal, but pretty much the only way people get into positions of power anymore. The country is broken on every level beyond all hope of repair, and it's not going to end well for anybody.

I agree, the corruption will end in a violent takeover from the people who are fed up with the government failing on so many levels and just being bad in general.

And it's already started. Google and Amazon are blocking access to each other on certain things pushing their own products over the other. This is the main reason Title II was created in the first place and how it lead to the invention of the Strowger switch. The story goes it started with an undertaker complaining the wife of another undertaker, who was an operator at the local phone exchange, was sending calls to her husband even when people asked for a different funeral service.

Personally, I hold out very little hope for this country as long as Republicans remain in power virtually unchecked. As the disparity in wealth increases between poor and rich, we are rapidly heading toward a French-revolution moment where there will be rebellion beyond anything that's been seen to date.

i singed every petition, i can ;-;

Loot boxes were more important at the time, sadly.

That and general burnout.

Ive called my senator, signed petitions, done everything i can think of short of throwing a brick at that douchebag who put forth the idea. They are putting a price tag on our freedom of expression amd i am NOT ok with it. Ill keep calling and signing until the decisions made.

I've seen a lot of posts around FurAffnity I guess I could say something as well you're right. Thank you for reminding me that its not just about calling my congressman and contacting the FCC

To be honest, I don't really see the point anymore.

The people who matter in this have already stated that they literally do not care about ANY of the calls or letters or protests unless they are written in extreme legalese, and even then they are ignoring it if it has anything to do with non-money matters. And even if you DO put it in legalese and make it all about money, they will ignore it because it is coming from an average joe.

Sites that are talking about it are seeing posts removed or censored, youtube videos are getting taken down, Tumblr posts and Twitter tweets and Facebook posts are being buried, deleted, or somehow magically not showing up in people's feeds for no reason. The people with all the power are making sure that nothing helpful happens.

Making the Internet a paywall will make big companies lots of money. That is all that anyone in power cares about. Nobody is listening anymore. All your letters and phone calls are falling on deaf, laughing ears. Nobody cares. You are losing it one way or another and at this point, unless a ton of big business people suddenly decide they don't like money anymore, all you can do is scream into the void. And personally, my voice is tired of screaming. I don't see the point in fighting something when nobody is listening. All you are serving to do is making yourself feel better so that when the shit hits the fan you can say "well -I- didn't vote for it."

Pretty much all of my buddies know about it, and we all have done what can be done.

I think most people are in the same boat on that.

Here is one https://www.furaffinity.net/journal...../#cid:53898970

I actually made a journal myself, and got my RL bestie to make 5 calls, so that's something.

The cable/telecom companies have been working for years on this with the democrats AND republicans alike.

So BOTH sides are to blame, especially these cable/telecom companies.

Check this out, it is a spreadsheet of donations to republicans AND democrats from the big telecom companies with the listed money amount AND the name of the person you should vote OUT! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet.....5a21d1fb#gid=0

https://www.opensecrets.org/ The link is on the top front page of opensecrets.org if the document link doesn't load or is blocked.

And AGAIN I will remind people, "NET NEUTRALITY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MONOPOLIES!"

Monopolies are dealt with under anti-trust laws!

Net Neutrality makes sure that EVERYONE that uses the internet gets EQUAL TREATMENT AND ACCESS!

i know i have been spamming Fb and imgur, twitter, tumbler and what not with posts, comments, and did a few of those signitures.

I'm British. I have no power to influence how America runs itself. We had a whole war and everything to make sure of that. :P

I've seen plenty of posts about it, though, both here and elsewhere.

Net neutrality has literally only been around since 2015. It has so far really weirded me out to see so many people acting like it has been around since the Internet existed. ISPs have remained virtually unchanged due to it, save they have to treat a massive Netflix stream on a bandwidth with the same speed as a Wikipedia page. Netflix stream, due to size, gets priority. You can crash computer access to a router/modem by simply streaming video. There is sadly no way to magically enlarge bandwidth every time. The Internet is like a water pipe, as electrical engineers and computer scientists like to say, and you can only send so much info through it at any given time.
Anyways, as to why Comcast MAY NOT start charging uou up the ass for internet connection... Anyone remember America Online? Yeah, me neither (I'm only 22), but if my reading serves me correct, you were charged hourly for connection up until the late 1990s, where a monthly flat rate was charged. Why? Because it made customers happier and the company had the ability to do it.

A more memorable example would be cell plans with texting. There was a time when unlimited teting was pricey (which was ridiculous, given the system of how texts where sent cost nothing to phone networks), or you could only settle for cheaper 300 texts a month, and unlimited data was almost nonexistant. Once customers began complaining about the fact that companies were making a killing off of texting plans and their limits, they lowered prices or bundled it for free with your minutes plan to satisfy them.

Now, Comcast is certainly a concern with rural or lower populated areas where no competitor exists. However competitors do exist, like Google Fiber (which is fucking amazing), Century Link, and other local setups. Comcast, as awful as they may be, has little interest in losing customers in those populated areas to growing competition, and it's unlikely they will bundle sites with the reactions they are seeing right now. This is purely theoretical. I can't predict the future.

Also, I'm confused as to why people think FA or any site is in cahoots with this. Or the posts/videos are being taken down. I could only find that PewDiePie had taken down his own video criticizing it becauae he read more into it and figured out it wasnt a black and white issue. They literally have no interest in Net Neutrality. Video streaming services like Netflix does, however, because it means higher quality streaming could be significantly slowed down, and they make up about 1/3 of Internet usage. (Netflix and chill, amirite?)

Hmm..... interesting.

Well I still don't really agree, since I think that if you give the 1% and/or lawmakers an inch, they'll take a mile. You know the kind of people I mean. A lot of people believe they are testing the grounds to see "what can we get away with? How much can we bleed them before we have to stop?"

But thank you for stating the other side's case in a clear, civil, and informative manner. No sarcasm. I wish more people gave information or stated contrary opinions like this, instead of relying on sensationalism and ad-hominem attacks. Everyone would be a whole lot calmer about... everything.

Sure thing! I don't really happen to take a side on this, because I can still see Comcast abusing this, but I think it's important to recognize there's a lot more to this than what we are hearing. In the end, we'll live and deal, and given the worst happens, it will eventually be fixed.

The reason Net Neutrality eas introduce in 2015 was because companies were starting to grow larger, and by direct relation, greedier. Something needed to be put in place to slow them down, as they were already starting to test the same ideas that most people are sure will become common practice once the law is repealed. There is no problem with things being treated equally; one person shouldn't get preference over another based on how much data they want. The problem will come when ISPs begin throttling *everyone* beyond what is needed, just so they can charge more for their data.

I remember America Online (I'm 47). They didn't charge you by the hour that I can remember; you had a monthly fee, then you got charged for going over a certain amount of data a month. Back then internet was much newer and less pervasive in general use though, so people weren't usually using it even half as much, and it wasn't a necessity for pretty much anyone not in college or running some IT intensive businesses.

The idea that any ISP has challengers is kinda ridiculous. Mainly because of the cost of actually becoming a competitor. In order to compete with an existing ISP, new companies have to either run ther own cable or fiber lines to those areas (Goggle Fiber has ceased to expand because of the prohibitive costs this involves) or get permission from an existing ISP to share their infrastructure. As you might guess, this pretty much never happens, or is equally costly to the new company... and since they're not trying to LOSE money, they simply don't expand into that area. A good example is a friend of mine who lived in New York. He lived near a parkway, and had Comcast, I believe. Directly across the parkway there were other, better providers; I think it was Fios. But they were unable to get that service because Comcast was blockading them from extending that service the few blocks they would have needed to in order for my friend to access it. If a competitor can be kept from extending service a few blocks in a densely populated area, people in rural areas might as well be locked in a cage as far as ever getting other options.

FA has an interest in Net Neutrality. Have you not been paying attention to one of the main issues of it being repealed? If NN goes, then ISPs can decide for you if you need to be looking at certain sites. They can then block those sites for no other reason than because they feel like it. Oh, they'll claim 'this site is unsafe' or 'this site isn't good for underaged viewing', but the end result will be you go to log into FA and find it's no longer accessible. Then, your ISP will send you a notice saying 'we're now offering an 'adult viewing' package that will unblock many of the 'unsafe foe children' websites! Only $29.99 a month!' ...again because wirthout net neutrality, they'll be able to charge you for things you were getting for free before it was repealed. Any site not directly connected to the ISP or their shareholders stands a chance of being arbitrarily blocked, just to set things up for you paying to have them unblocked.

Further, it's expected that ISPs will block 'competetive' sites, aka 'sites that belong to other ISPs'. So if you have COmcast, for example, you will probably not be able to use Google to search for things (unless Google is associated to Comcast in some way; I'm not sure). If you CAN still access it, it'll be throttled to some extent, to make it seem less useful than their own search engine... again because they can do that now, so why not?

All in all, Net Neutrality is gonna be a huge problem once it goes. Even if it all gets returned to how it was, it will take literal years of bullshit going on before it gets there.

Your argument relies on the claim of your first paragraph. As a software and hardware engineer who has worked with this sort of stuff, I can tell you that at the least it is not cheap nor a given right to have highspeed access to the internet.
Like I said before, you could absolutely cause major network issues via video streaming, file sharing, or other heavy activity that would indiscriminately cut paying users off. It would be treating the Internet like a utility, which it's not IMO due to the more complex requirements behind it.

Like I said, I don't really take sides on this. Both have valid arguments. I have been appalled at the explosive reactions by some to it. Rather than worry about toxic and dangerous US foreign policy, many worry more about how fast we can stream or access certain services 80% of the world doesn't have. The only reason have offered the opposing viewpoint is because people seem dead set to not hear it at times. I'm not a fan of echo chambers, and I like civil discourse, which you have provided. :)

Oh, I understand. This is something that needs to be understood anc conversed about. One of the major issues is that the leader of the FCC is refusing to play ball. He's refused to address concerns of people asking for information on the topic. He refuses to address the identity theft that has millions of comments sent into his online access... names of people who either never sent a message, or who died long ago. And he claims there was a DDoSS attack on his servers... but there's no sign there ever was one and he refuses to explain what appears to be a balatant lie either.

And now it's kinda too late. I wonder if we'll ever be able to get these things back under control, or if this is how things will stay?

'Do the FCC won't let me be
or let me be me, so let me see...'

Eminem.

Who knew they were gonna expand it to everyone.

Lobbying doesn't work, protesting doesn't work, writing to your senators/representatives doesn't work...I guess the only solution is to have the ability to bribe a whole bunch of lawmakers and shit like that, BECAUSE THAT IS CLEARLY WHAT HAPPENED.