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by NotYourLawyer 781 days ago
Finally, our long national nightmare is over.

Idk, did anybody notice any actual problems with net non-neutrality?

1 comments

not really. I have no idea what went on "under the hood", but it certainly wasn't anything I noticed.

I do think NN is better than nothing, but I'm not sure it's exactly the right model either. iirc, the main risk called out was different QoS for different traffic types, possibly with the ability to pay to get yours prioritized? the teenage libertarian version of me very much liked the idea of the internet being a "dumb pipe", but I don't see QoS as being intrinsically wrong now. there are some applications (video chat, mp games, etc) where it is very important that packets arrive mostly in order and with minimal latency. there are other applications (async data transfer) where it doesn't matter as much.

to me, the core issue is that I just don't trust companies like comcast, and I rarely have a viable alternative. NN seems like more of a bandaid than fixing the root cause.

For fixing the root cause, are you referring to something like public broadband etc to eliminate the profit incentives (of e.g. comcast/spectrum), or some other antitrust type of action to stimulate actual competition in private sector?
honestly any/all of those. I'd prefer something that stimulates private competition, but I'm not opposed to public options. I also don't begrudge an ISP profiting on an important service, provided they do a good job at it.

breaking up Comcast doesn't seem directly helpful though. the issue is often with sweetheart deals at the local level. in a city I used to live in, comcast was given exclusive access to existing city-owned cable in exchange for connecting the remaining (largely underprivileged) homes. this kind of short term win seems irresistible to local politicians, but imo it's pretty bad for the long term.