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by q12we34rt5 2744 days ago
>I almost had to laugh after the US just recently abolished Net Neutrality

Your laughter is misplaced. America didn't have net neutrality up until fairly recently and before it was enacted, the internet worked just fine. It'll work just fine now. And if it really matters that much to you that you feel some kind of emotional release from your own worries, just know that many states are already putting laws on the books to reinstate it.

Edit: I can't seem to respond to Superleroy so I'll put it here. Laughter is good but laughing at the imagined misfortune of others indicates moral failing. Regarding the state of internet in the US, that is easy to test out. I have Comcast. Name any website or any service and I'll see if I have any trouble accessing it. As it stands, I haven't noticed anything amiss. I run ssh, a web server, I have several Python script that run all day consuming web socket feeds. I naturally stream video etc. No problems and it is all very fast. I have access to 2 Gigabit service. I believe your assertion that my Internet isn't good is in error. You did mention that it makes you happy to laugh at other's misfortune though so if it makes you happy, imagine my internet being terrible. I won't be mad.

3 comments

Well last I heard ISPs were not providing top service to say the least. So unless "working just fine" means "it's really shitty but hey we have internet", I would say that no, the internet is not "working just fine" at least from that perspective. I don't know why you think removing net neutrality laws was a good idea but maybe you can elaborate.

Laughing truly makes me feel better and distracts me from my worries, I don't know why you have to be condescending about it. I did not say that I think filtering is a good idea, the contrary is true. I just think saying that the EU pass regressive internet laws, while the US is the beacon of freedom and choice is laughable.

I did not laugh at others misfortune or moral failing but at the following sentence "the US feels like the only place where users have the freedom to choose what their internet should be". I do not laugh at people having only a single choice of ISP or the abolishment of NN, but at the blindness with which that statement was made. If by "users" ISPs are meant then I agree, but let's be real, users often don't even have a real choice of ISPs, let alone what "internet should be", whatever that means.

With the rest of what you wrote, I don't even know what argument you are referencing. Was it that I said the internet is shitty? Nowhere did I say that you can't access a website so Im not exactly sure why you want to test access to websites or state that you can stream video. Is that all it takes for you to say that your internet is "working just fine"? Maybe I understand that statemend a little wider than you do, so let me elaborate: When I say "it's really shitty" I mean more than just accessing websites, I mean bad industry practices, non competing ISPs and no or limited choice of ISP, total surveillance, rampant data collection by big companies, etc. For me this is not a sign of a "fine" working internet. But if you limit it to "I can access websites" then I agree with you.

To your last point, I never asserted that your Internet is slow or that you can't access sites, so I don't know why you keep misstating my comments.

>America didn't have net neutrality up until fairly recently and before it was enacted, the internet worked just fine.

Yes, America did have Net Neutrality. Net neutrality was the norm for the entire history of the internet, and it was formalized in law in 2009 after Comcast started blocking torrent traffic in the late 00s and people asked the FCC to do something about it.

The net neutrality kerfuffle in 2014 was due to a court decision overturning the earlier law (based on the logic that "net neutrality" and "common carrier" are similar enough that it's unfair for them to be different categories".