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by unethical_ban 1786 days ago
* Among those who understand internetworking, there has been debate about ISPs as utilities for a long time.

* ISPs present a cost and performance problem for most Americans, whereas social media giants present fundamental issues of society and speech. It's easier to see there is a problem, while also being harder to figure out.
1 comments
pb7 1786 days ago
Net neutrality doesn't exist so ISPs can decide to arbitrarily block access to social media giants, or any other site, altogether. That is the bigger problem. Anyone going after Google and Facebook but not ISPs has an agenda.
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unethical_ban 1786 days ago
That's a non-issue in reality, as they haven't done that yet. When was the last time hate sites, or social media sites, or any sites, were blacklisted en masse by any public ISP in the US recently?

Don't get me wrong: I support net neutrality and greater regulation of ISPs. I believe the attacks on municipal service is wrong. And I believe the danger of ISP censorship is real - in theory.

I also wonder what, if anything, should be done to combat the virus that is misinformation on the social media giants.

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dahfizz 1786 days ago
> ISPs can decide to arbitrarily block access to social media giants, or any other site, altogether. That is the bigger problem.

How is that the _bigger_ problem? This is entirely theoretical. ISPs have not done anything like that yet because it doesn't make any sense for them to.

Big tech, on the other hand, have shown that they are more than willing and able to destroy any platform they don't like. Big Tech has as much or more power over the internet than ISPs, and are much more likely to abuse it.

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pb7 1786 days ago
One controls access to the internet. The other controls a subset of platforms on the internet.

I know which one has more power.

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dahfizz 1786 days ago
some ISPs could control access to the internet, which is the key point. I have no reason to expect my ISP to start filtering my internet. And if they did, I have a handful of other ISPs that will happily take my money instead. Not to mention a half-dozen 4G/5G providers.

To be clear, I think net neutrality is a good thing. I just think its unreasonable to be more concerned about a theoretical maybe-problem than an actual problem that we are facing.

Theoretically, Russia or China could launch a nuclear attack that permanently destroys the internet as we know it. That is a much larger issue, by your standards, than net neutrality. If someone proposed a new net neutrality bill, do you think it would be reasonable for the response to be "Yeah, but Russia has nuclear bombs. That's the real problem."?

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