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by mlindner 1800 days ago
> * Encourages the FTC to restore Net Neutrality rules undone by the prior administration.

This is the worst thing in the list. The politicians still don't seem to understand how the internet works and how different service types cost differently and have different effects on the network. A new Netflix-like service is a very different thing than a new social-network-like service.

1 comments

You don’t seem to understand. If I have 100 mbps down speed, my ISP should have no say in how I use it. If it is Netflix of Facebook, it doesn’t matter. It’s my 100 mbps. That is like saying that my electric provider should have a say on what I use my electricity for. That if I use a GE brand washer it costs less per kwh than a Samsung, or that electricity for a computer is more expensive per kwh than electricity for a refrigerator. No. They give me the electricity, I decide how to use it. They give me the internet bandwidth, I decide how to use it.
Net neutrality never was about you though, it's about the companies sending content to you.

Electricity has absolutely no comparison to network traffic. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of how networks work. A packet coming from the other side of the world costs, fundamentally, a very different amount from a packet coming from nearby.

You're the one who seems to not understand.

> A packet coming from the other side of the world costs, fundamentally, a very different amount from a packet coming from nearby.

But you were not talking about the distance a packet travels. You specifically said “A new Netflix-like service is a very different thing than a new social-network-like service” which, other things like location being equal, is not true. Getting 100 mbps of “Netflix like” traffic is not different than getting 100 mbps of “social network” traffic. The content doesn’t matter.

I was wrong about you not understanding. Clearly you do understand and are arguing in bad faith and attempting to misrepresent the issue. Since “packet distance” has never been part of the issue of ISPs trying to be able to discriminate based on content, either the company providing it (Netflix vs Hulu vs Prime Video) or based on the category of content (music vs social media vs messaging). None of those have anything to do with packet distances, which you clearly understood when you were originally were speaking about content categories. But you then tried to use a more technical and pedantic, but irrelevant, issue to obfuscate the actual argument.

I'm not going to bother to exlpain anymore. The FAANG companies have twisted this conversation so much into knots that the average person doesn't know that they're actually been turned into sock puppets for the FAANG companies to argue for legislation that is purely for the benefit of those FAANG companies so they are not required to pay the ISPs for data transit.
>I'm not going to bother to explain anymore

You never explained anything. You made assertions you couldn't support and just accuse everyone else of not understanding. Also, your argument is ridiculous on its face. Tech companies already pay for internet. Their datacenters don’t have free hookups. ISPs already get money from FAANG companies to get their data in and out of their data centers, and from me to get my data in and out of my house. If you need more bandwidth, you pay more money. Netflix spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on bandwidth. This is one of the weakest and most nonsensical arguments yet against net neutrality. I’d love to see some of your sources because that’s a rabbit hole of misinformation I’d love to go down.