Business Net neutrality restored as FCC votes to regulate internet providers

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The FCC on Thursday restored “net neutrality” rules that prevent broadband internet providers such as Comcast and AT&T from favoring some sites and apps over others.

The move effectively reinstates a net neutrality order the commission first issued in 2015 during the Obama administration; under then-President Donald Trump, the FCC subsequently repealed those rules in 2017.

Net neutrality is the principle that providers of internet service should treat all traffic equally. The rules, for instance, ban practices that throttle or block certain sites or apps, or that offer higher speeds to customers willing to pay extra.

“In our post-pandemic world, we know that broadband is a necessity, not a luxury,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement ahead of the vote.

The telecommunications industry opposed the reintroduction of the rules, as it has before, declaring it an example of unnecessary government interference in business decisions.

The measure passed on a 3-2 vote split by party lines, with Democratic commissioners in favor and Republicans opposed.

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[Marvin]

I have no idea why its so bad for ISPs to discriminate among internet traffic for financial reasons but its perfectly okay for platforms which monopolize the channels of communications just as much if not more one level up to basically do the exact same thing for ideological reasons.

Because if the ISP guarantees are secured anyone can launch their own platforms and run them how they please. There's a massive difference between null censoring someone on his site and Comcast blocking KF for all of their customers. (for the record, I've never had that issue with Comcast and I've actually been successful in raising complaints with Comcast when their upstream ISPs have fucked around)

 

[grump]

Because if the ISP guarantees are secured anyone can launch their own platforms and run them how they please. There's a massive difference between null censoring someone on his site and Comcast blocking KF for all of their customers. (for the record, I've never had that issue with Comcast and I've actually been successful in raising complaints with Comcast when their upstream ISPs have fucked around)

Because creating the next Facebook or Google is so easy.

 

[Marvin]

Because creating the next Facebook or Google is so easy.

It's easier when big ISPs can't censor your site wholesale.

Ultimately, we can put regulations on sites like Facebook or put regulations on ISPs to route traffic neutrally, or potentially both.

I don't like the former. I don't trust bureaucrats to come up with rules to enforce anti-censorship rules on sites like Facebook and not have those rules twisted and weaponized against sites like KF.

That null (through his jannies) chooses what threads stay on the site and what threads get deleted would constitute curation under basically any definition. Being able to run a website with a specialized, narrow topic like lolcows inherently necessitates the right to curate without incurring liability.

Every "anti-censorship" MAGA proposal out there that they wanted to use to punish Facebook and Jack Dorsey era Twitter was massively risky for those reasons.

I'd rather null have the right to run his site how he pleases and just regulate the owners of the wires, and that just means that people with spicy opinions and spicy language like farmers have to run their own sites separately. It's the less risky opinion.

Like, whatever anti-censorship rules they would get would be elaborate enough that you'd basically need a full legal department to analyze how much curation you're allowed to do. Facebook can afford that. KF can't. And you know they absolutely would have their fingers in the pie as the rules are being drawn up and they'd absolutely make sure they retain the right to ban people saying the N word without incurring liability. Facebook is not going to let their squeaky clean, family friendly image get nuked because some MAGA people pushed new regulations. It ain't happening.

Plus, I'm not so pessimistic about things. I mean, yeah, some platforms are absolutely fucked, like reddit. But alt-tech is fairly viable. There's quite a few platforms that, yeah, aren't Facebook sized, but they've still got decent userbases. Substack has pretty decent anti-censorship policies. Also there's the hilarious shit Elon's been doing at Twitter. It's probably not viable business-wise, but the reeeeing still has me laughing. That's something, I guess.