I admit I am not a tech wonk and would prefer to keep things the status quo because it is something I current know.
How do people feel about this? Is this something that will be a major change? Will this create additional headwinds on peoples finances?
How would poor people get internet to apply to college or complete FAFSA?
Thoughts?
This is a disaster. Your ISP can now slow down or block the loading of any website it doesn’t like. Your ISP gets to choose what you see. Many people don’t have a choice of ISPs.
It is a major gift to Comcast as far as I am concerned.
It’s not about ISPs raising prices. It’s about your ISP controlling which websites you visit.
It’s not about which web sites you visit per se, it’s more about controlling the amount of bandwidth consumers are using. You can still visit your favorite sites, it just might be slower. This could skew your behavior to change your viewership to “faster” sites, and maybe your ISP owns those faster sites. More views/clicks equals more $$ for that ISP.
I think this is a pretty stupid decision.
Exactly. Here is why it is a gift: if I try to watch Netflix on my Comcast internet, Comcast can throttle down my internet speed to a crawl… I get frustrated… where do I go to watch TV? Comcast has its own TV service conveniently… and it is fast. What else is there besides Comcast? Fios is no better…
FTC says they will not deal with complaints unless there is deceit.
It is exactly about which websites you visit. If your ISP doesn’t want you to visit Google, and thinks you should go to Bing instead, your ISP can prevent you from visiting Google. If your ISP thinks you should not go to the New York Times and Washington Post websites, it can prevent you from going there and only allow the Fox News website for your news reading.
What will the ISPs do? They will of course demand bribes from content sites, so that their content will still be shown. A big company like Amazon will be able to afford the bribes, but a little retail site will not. (Amazon opposes net neutrality, however, since they don’t want to be forced to pay bribes.)
It’s as if the FCC was allowing phone companies to prevent you from calling certain businesses. For example, you try to call Small Local Bodega and can’t get through, but your phone company lets you call Walmart.
My friend, who has been following this issue long before it really started to gain traction, just posted this. Like Cardinal posted above, his fear is that this will really harm small businesses.
“In an appallingly corrupt vote along party lines, the FCC just voted to end Net Neutrality despite a record-breaking flood of tens of millions of comments from Americans opposing this action. Public comment, a normal part of the process, had been denied. The Internet was just handed to the telecommunication industry, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying members of congress, notably Marsha Blackburn, to end Internet freedom. Moving forward, over the next year or two, the Internet will likely change in myriad ways to give consumers a similar experience to that of cable television. This was a disgusting, corrupt, and unAmerican process that affects all Americans whether Republican or Democrat. An administration that pledged to “Drain the Swamp” just sold the greatest human innovation to an army of lobbyists with checkbooks.”
The vast majority of Americans disapprove of this. Once it actually starts to affect people, there will be hell to pay. Even the most politically apathetic people don’t want their internet messed with.
This will be a disaster with repercussions that will be nearly impossible to fix.
Sickening. It’s a giveaway worth many billions. Keys to the internet kingdom handed to political donors.
It almost seems like now the ISP’s can set up a gateway screen like AOL had in the old days. It was a page that automatically came up and you basically had to look at it. It was prime eyeball space. Above the crease in Newspaper speak. There was an internet bar to type in your destination, but the point is what appeared on the screen was most likely what you saw and would do. The beginning of click bait.
I am more concerned about cost. It is getting very expensive as there generally is only one ISP available in town.
Romani, the sheeple will just cancel their Sling and get Comcast TV…
The real problem is the last mile monopoly/duopoly. It is further exacerbated by state laws barring muni internet. There would be nothing wrong with eliminating net neutrality if the environment was competitive. Only a few areas have enough providers to drive costs down and service levels up to more reasonable levels.
I usually don’t like government intervention, but unfortunately it is sometimes necessary with the predatory and deceitful behavior of the large ISPs. They don’t even advertise the actual cost of their services, just some mythical number inflated by creative fees.
@BunsenBurner
I wish more than anything that I could sever ties with Comcast. Unfortunately, the only other internet provider in our area is too slow for me to work.
Ugh
Same here. We were avoiding getting their TV… if they kill our speed when we start watching stuff provided by their competition, we will watch our antenna channels and Redbox movies.
We have two providers in our area (cable and DSL). I really hope that if throttling/blocking occurs that one of these two will see the benefit to being “the one that doesn’t mess with your internet”.
But I am very concerned.
But @TooOld4School, there is not enough competition. And the barriers to enter the market are significant. If we don’t regulate effective monopolies, who will we regulate?
Even though I work in tech, I’m not familiar with the logic behind eliminating the regulation.
Was the justification just like that for removing the fiduciary rule? Because it’s a regulation and I said we would remove regulations, we’ll remove the useful regulations along with the useless?
Of course you’re familiar with the logic: paying off big campaign contributors. Perfectly logical. Same for removing the fiduciary rule: payoff for financial advisors that want to cheat you.
These regulations were in place for only about two years.