[WarmWash]

My takeaway is that the internet would be a dramatically cooler place today if people were just willing to pay for stuff.

The ad version of the web, where ~60% of people carry the ad burden for everyone, and defacto aligns the service providers with advertisers, is just a guaranteed bad outcome. The only real upside, which frankly people take for granted, is that the ad-web is classless web. Broke or rich you get the same (crappy) services.

I remember those mock web service package flyers from the net neutrality days. Where people made fake marketing material showing website packages you could access with different paid tiers, something reminiscent of the cable TV days.

Back then it was horrifying, but 20 years later, I think I would entertain a subscription to a wide array of web services if it meant they worked for me and not advertisers.

[Forgeties79]

My other main issue with the no-net neutrality world is that it also means websites would have to pay ISP’s or be artificially throttled. That’s a huge problem.

It’s one thing to say we need to pay. It’s another for ISP’s to get 3 pulls at the hose (paid for a connection, paid for what we can browse, paid for who provides the sites) when some of those elements don’t even require more (or at least much) effort or infrastructure on their part. I don’t like the idea of their picking winners and losers. We’ve got enough of that as it is.

[chadgpt3]

Net neutrality was always about your ISP. It never meant pay sites couldn't exist.

[Forgeties79]

Not pay sites. I’m talking about site owners having to pay ISP’s or risk being artificially throttled in favor of those who do pay them.

[chadgpt3]

I'd be careful with the phrasing. Site owners paying more to get a faster connection is how business works. It's not neutral if it's anything more than the technical capacity of the connection or if they're restricting it, like unreasonably refusing to peer.

Peering is complicated too. It means an ISP carries your site's traffic without you paying them. Is that reasonable? I'd say common sense is: yes, if the traffic is only between you and the ISP's users, since the ISP is then getting paid. But who carries the cost of setting it up? Common sense would say the site operator should pay but the ISP shouldn't inflate the cost.

[Forgeties79]

it’s not a faster connection issue. Bandwidth at your location is a different issue.

What I am talking about is websites that do not pay the toll being artificially slowed down. A pillar of neutrality is that “all packets are equal.” As long as we have stable connections and are using decent services, your blog should load as fast as any major news site. Without net neutrality, ISP’s can put their thumb on the scale and make it so your blog takes 5 second, 10 seconds, whatever they want. They can throttle load times despite both of us paying for high speeds and using quality services. Think: governors in golf carts, if you’re familiar with that. Under net neutrality this is not permitted.

[WarmWash]

I'm in no way arguing to get rid of net neutrality, it was mentioned purely to reference the common image circulating the internet back when it was a constant headline.