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Democracy? Haha, no. Oligarchy and dictatorship. Land of freedom.

The real battle has just begun, regardless of how hopeless it seems get ready

Hope y'all like lawsuits.

You will have to protest IRL now. I would help but I am not in the USA.

Oh yeah, I'm not in USA too. I just find it funny that so called democracy not cares what people think.

will you fuck off

I bet if I replaced all the fire extinguishers in your house with empty ones, you wouldn't even notice! That just proves how useless fire extinguishers are, huh?

To the tune of the OK KO theme song
Okay, memers, we'll fight 'till the end, you are my best friend, let's be fighters!
Okay, memers, let's save the net!

B-but guys, it'll encourage self-regulation through competition!

Nevermind the fact that there's pretty much no physical overlap between ISPs and therefore zero actual competition….

What's happening? Disney buys Fox, net neutrality gets repealed and Mexico senate passes regulations to transform the country into a military state.

so all my fire extinguishers 2 years ago were empty too? Huh. I wonder how I got a long with empty fire extinguishers for 20 years now. I wonder how…

You do realize this is STILL a triumph of corporatism even if Net neutrality was really a bad thing right? I mean this was full on lobying bullshit and as I said before Ajit Pai is a clear sellout. I think this is bad news for global democracy not just the internet.

Nah.

So why do you think people have fire extinguishers since they are so useless?

Reminder that it still has to go through congress.

And Congress is threating to VETO and Sue the FCC. People are really doom and gloom nowadays without knowing how politics work.

it's a triumph to certain corporations…just like net neutrality if implemented would have been a triumph to certain corporations – namely Google, Netflix, Facebook. They are the main losers in this, not consumers like you and I.

Additionally, please explain how exactly is global democracy is threatened? Was it threatened in 2015 before net neutrality laws went into affect?

Ajit Pai is basically the prototype for a new era of corporate control! That piece of shit was manufactured and bet other stupid companies will create new Ajit Pais PERHAPS ALL OVER THE WORLD! And I can barely contain my rage with one already. What you think this is the end?

(Sorry for my hostility is not you, I AM REALLY PISSED right now I REALLYV hate Ajit Pai and the cyberpunk shit I think that ugly fucker just unleashed, that stupid recent mocking video just sent it over the top hopefully you understand why I hate him right?).

You don't seem to realize that this is nothing new. Just using US history alone, the Secretary of Defense in the 50's was one Charles Erwin Wilson, former President of General Motors. Guess what vehicle company was prominent during the Korean War that era?

However, the blatancy of it is appalling, and I hope Ajit Pai gets the boot come next year.

Because in this particular analogy it's not been evident to me that we need a fire extinguisher in the first place. This is what I am alluding to: net neutrality as regulated by the FCC has been in law for 2 years. We are screaming at the top of our lungs that repealing that now is going to bring about a hell scape for the internet, a hypothetical apocalypse of the net. We have something to compare this, and that is what I am doing.

This is why no one will care in a month because it's going to return to 2015 era with a few new policies and tools for the FTC not the FCC to regulate the internet.

So? You think this type of sleazy bollocks is okay? How is this democracy? And even then corporatism IS getting worse! I am sorry but I really don't think you people realize the gravity of the situation.

Honestly it's hard to read comments like this as anything other then complete hysterics. Perhaps it comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how Government works, but every time a story like this comes up, people act as if the United States is a dictatorship where 1 branch of government has the ability to override every single other branch of government and has 0 oversight on them, when that simply is not the case.

The multiple branches of government exist so that one branch of government cannot for a dictatorial hold on the others, and so far it's been a rousing success this year. Donald Trump being in office has failed to fullfill almost every single one of his campaign promises because either the Judicial Branch, or the Legislative Branch, have managed to put a stop to it. State and Local judges and senates have managed to completely challenge the Federal government and held their own, and the FCC now has to face a Congress who has been bombarded with demands that they not repeal Net Neutrality, In which it looks likely that they will not be able to avoid the decision being veto'd.

You're not going to be able to stop corruption in the United States, but you can midigate it by making it excessively difficult to do, which is what the United States multiple branches of government, both state and federal, being able to veto each others bills, and override each others decisions. The only other way which stops the corporate influence you wish to stop is adopting the methods Singapore does, which would turn the US into a truly draconian state.

You want no corporate corruption? Give Government Employees and Officials tens of millions in salaries, give the government the ability to arrest, convict, and corporeally punish, any crime no matter how small it is (Littering in Singapore gets you Caned), and then give them the ability to control your internet and block your access to any content they deem immorale. That's pretty much the only way this goes, either we give the government the same level of authority as the Media Development Authority of Singapore, where porn is outlawed and visitng porn sites can get you arrested, or we run the risk of giving corporations a small taste of freedom in running the internet and stop them from trying to take more pieces of it then they should, ala the current debate over Net Neutrality.

Hysteria is right word for it. It hasn't escaped my notice how it is largely social networks that are most ardent about it. And the sinister side of this is how much an affect social media corporations have an effect on people. So much so that the very evils imagined that ISPs would do now has actually been done and will continue to be done by the very same companies.

Maybe we should start talking about regulating social network companies as utilities ?

Hysteria is to an extent the right reaction, corporations are showing how much power they have over our governments and this is something we should be fucking angry and fearful about!

> it’s not been evident to me that we need a fire extinguisher in the first place.

literally the entire point of a fire extinguisher is to prepare for the event for when is DOES become evident that its needed. "this house hasn't burned down since I have lived here, and having a fire extinguisher for a few years didn't change anything!".

how are you not getting this?

Serious question, how much do you know and understand about how corporations, US laws, and the relationship between those two even work? Because it seems, you have a totally irrational view of this whole situation.

For example, you claim corporations are showing how much power etc etc, then what about the power of Google, Facebook, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and a whole slew of content and service providing sites that were adamantly for net neutrality?

>how are you not getting this?

How the hell are you not getting the fact that it was a stupid analogy to make and you are still being deliberately obtuse as to the fact that we are talking about a 2 year old law? That we are hysterical over the state of the internet as it was 2 years ago.

"For example, you claim corporations are showing how much power etc etc, then what about the power of Google, Facebook, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and a whole slew of content and service providing sites that were adamantly for net neutrality?"

Yeah I know I know some companies do want net neutrality and whatever so what? That doesn't at all change the fact that we already established almost certainly that Ajit Pai is a sellout and he got what he wanted…I don't know what else you need, if not take a look at this fishy shit:

http://fortune.com/2017/12/09/fcc-head-ajit-pai-verizons-puppet-net-neutrality/?utm_campaign=time&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&xid=time_socialflow_twitter

And please don't tell me I am just misinterpreting what they were saying, that would be really naive.

Hysterics are never the answer. Someone whose angry and scared makes very stupid choices and that's exactly the kind of mentality that leads to an escalation and worsening of the problems.

Calm and rational thought leads to debates about the merits of net neutrality, the limits that should be placed on corporate influence, and good laws.

Fear and Anger fueled discussion leads to insular thinking, mob mentality, and someone getting a gun and shooting a receptionists to "liberate the internet".

how is it a stupid analogy? You have a fire extinguisher for the same reason you should want NN, to protect from a bad thing happening. Its a safeguard.

>Yeah I know I know some companies do want net neutrality and whatever so what?

So it shows that you have a very blanket view of corporations as a whole, that you wouldn't have even considered the fact that individual corporations do not act all in unison or agree with one another. Has it yet occurred to you that this entire thing is one subset of corporations vs another subset of corporations, and not some sort of "corporations vs the people" issue?

This is why I bring into question your understanding of these things.

>That doesn’t at all change the fact that we already established almost certainly that Ajit Pai is a sellout and he got what he wanted

I don't care who Ajit Pai sells out to. Every bloody government official is most likely acting on behalf of some interest or another.

What I do care about is the impact and the consequences of either the directions, whether it is regulated by the FCC as a Utility, or by the FTC, as just another corporation. I argue that given the options it's better in the long run for net-neutrality (as it is) to be done away with. And outside of total hysteria bordering mania over this issue, no one has yet given me a satisfactory answer as to how exactly is it worth all the potential negative baggage that comes with net neutrality to avoid going back to the state of the internet 2 years ago.

Because there is virtually no consequences of having a fire extinguisher in your home except that it may take up what, a foot or two of space? There is consequence for regulating an entire industry as a damn Utility. It's a bad analogy because it also presumes that there is no negative consequence with net neutrality – and that's just not at all true.

This is the kind of ignorant bias I am challenging here – the pretension that this issue is somehow black or white. That there are no negative consequences to one side, and ONLY negative consequences to the other.

I am challenging people to weigh the issues here. To be honest about what is happening. And to bloody think instead of reacting.

Do you have a source?
I'm not trying to sound challenging or anything, I'm legitimately curious to see an official statement from a rep of Congress about that, to at least lift my spirits a bit.

Honestly my take on it is that since the wires transmitting this stuff aren't changing, ISPs want to get more money out of the same wires. The money has to come from somewhere, so either the users are getting charged more, websites are getting charged more, less profitable parts of their service are being dropped, or they've got some plan to get more customers. Oh and they can market their own external products like netflix alternatives.

My big worry about this is that ISPs will end up reducing the internet into something that's faster and cheaper, but unfair to small websites. Essentially, most users will never go to spacebonk.com or superhouse.net so why charge them for access/speed? Just set up dedicated linking to the websites users care about, like google, twitter, facebook, etc. The smaller websites can't foot the fund so they don't get access to the cheaper plans.

This will also hurt some websites that can't foot the money but are actually substantial in size. There's a reason reddit is so against net neutrality, they aren't profitable. That's also why knowyourmeme is advertising against it, if ya'll didn't realize.

I also don't believe the whole 2 years ago thing about net neutrality, it's oversimplifying its status. The internet was much smaller in the days before net neutrality became a goal of the FCC, and while it wasn't quite codified into law it was present as a principle for quite a while. The implication with even mentioning such a principle is that it could become law if they overstep. This recent decision states that the FCC gives up all power and takes away all state power to enforce this principle now, it's a huge reversal of tone for them.

> There is consequence for regulating an entire industry as a damn Utility.

Such as?

Ok I got a little too angry and perhaps histeric I apologize, but this is the first day of who knows what for the world?! You can understand my fear right? Aijit Pai is still there and who knows what else he might be planning. I just got this huge nagging feeling this is not the way democracy should work, that this is the start of something really bad and I really don't know if I should just ignore it.

Is not just the lobbying (which yeah unfortunately its standard) it is just how fucking unethical this whole thing was, I think that is something everyone here can agree in, and there is a goddamn limit. Still I guess we should stay somewhat patient, it hasn't been passed yet and we really don't want to appear as terrorists or something.

The inability for users to post Content not approved by the government, ala Singapore. imagine a world where bad-mouthing Donald Trump got you years in prison for obscene content. Even now we see the current structure of the internet gearing itself to censor on behalf of the government with how fast social media companies are to remove content, demonitize content, and ban users on a whim. That, plus government authority, seems like a recipe for a bad time.

I myself advocate a mixed model. Governments regulations on the hardware and business practices while having the services have to compete fairly for traffic and funding without government backing to give then additional financial lifelines. That way when a company on the internet fucks up they actually have consequences worth fearing. And corporations keep from forming a business block that's too big to fail.

This isn't just a feeling, this literally flies in the face of how Democracy works. Pro-NN is the majority opinion of the US, hundreds of thousands people contacted the FCC to make that known, and the FCC completely threw that out of the window. This isn't even mentioning how 1,000,000+ anti-NN comments were fake and how that was completely disregarded. Thankfully, it seems there's a decent chance that Congress could kill this decision, so lets keep off the Doom and Gloom unless that also fails. Plus, a lot of states are suing the FCC.

Such as utilities don’t compete. Utilities are regulated as monopolies, even if they are not. So any benefits consumers and businesses have realized from competition among broadband-access providers will begin to disappear.

Don't believe me? compare the digital divide between the US and EU

More U.S. homes have access to broadband than they do indoor plumbing. And except for the very newest high-speed services, U.S. broadband prices are actually lower than they are in price-regulated Europe.

Utilities also do not innovate. Regulated utilities have no financial incentive to innovate. As fossil fuels become unsustainable, for example, disruption is now essential in sleepy power utilities. However reglated power utilities cannot even legally invest in alternative energy and that the utilities often view alternative energy as existential threat to themselves. I quote the New Yorker "In 2013, an industry trade group called the Edison Electric Institute warned that utilities face what company executives were quick to call “a death spiral.”"

Utilities do are not beholden to the public because the public are not their customer. relationship between regulated industries and their regulators, their true customer, invariably leads to competitive inertia, corruption and deteriorating facilities. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives America’s overall infrastructure (both public and private utility) an overall grade of D-minus, requiring an estimated $3.6 trillion just to repair.

The FTC was a hell of a lot better regulatory force than the FCC when it comes to internet regulation.

Even in 2015 economists were begging to not use reclassification highlighting the cost benefit analysis of the situation and warning how bad the FCC rational for making it a utility was.

So here are just some of the negative consequences. Is this worth it? Is it worth having the internet be classified as a utility?

imagine a world where bad-mouthing Donald Trump got you years in prison for obscene content
Apparently the First Amendment is not a thing anymore

@Chewbunny
Such as utilities don’t compete. Utilities are regulated as monopolies, even if they are not. So any benefits consumers and businesses have realized from competition among broadband-access providers will begin to disappear.

What competition? There is no competition between ISPs in the US because most people only have access to one ISP in their location.

>The inability for users to post Content not approved by the government

Thats what NN prevents though…

@Chewybunny

>any benefits consumers and businesses have realized from competition among broadband-access providers will begin to disappear.

Besides just a very few handful of cities, there isn't any competition in the first place. Majority of Americans have 2 or less options for internet

>Utilities also do not innovate. Regulated utilities have no financial incentive to innovate.

Please do tell us the amazing innovations that ISPs have currently developed and implemented. Also, do tell the financial incentive for ISPs to currently innovate.

>Utilities do are not beholden to the public

Man, i'm so glad ISPs currently listen to their costumers.

sooooo, do you want to actually list anything that would actually change?

Hearing this got me angry enough to actually log into KYM once to complain after months of being idle, and I'm not even American. I think that's enough to conclude they fucked up pretty badly.

Anyhow. I don't expect things to get better from here, in fact, it makes my comment from a year or two ago about human rights being killed off actually sound plausible if the US government keeps hitting new lows.

Of course, that may be me over-reacting. But hearing how they allowed companies to pollute water with coal legally is pretty bad enough to start, and shows where we are going with the US, which is a company-driven 1984.

Lot of non-americans trying to be armchair political analysts. Makes me wonder if a lot of you actually took courses in US law and government or if the majority of you get your sources via Reddit.

Additionally, I have to wonder how a person can argue that making the internet controlled and monitored by a government organization means it's not controlled by the government in any way, shape, or form. To Ryumaru, the internet is not a necessity and denying people access to it is a loophole of not denying them the right to speak, just the right to a single medium to speak, something people have been advocating for years to happen on social media using just that same logic, ie Freedom of Speech doesn't mean Freedom from Consequences.

We've gotten to the point where we're arguing in circles, people demanding evidence from the people asking for evidence, and both sides saying that nothing's changed. So if nothing's changed, and we're currently living in the age of content denial and website throttling even when the FCC monitored the internet as a utility, what exactly did net neutrality do?

>what exactly did net neutrality do?

prevent this

"So if nothing’s changed, and we’re currently living in the age of content denial and website throttling even when the FCC monitored the internet as a utility, what exactly did net neutrality do?"

Keep things from getting even worse. With how bad things are it is the best we can do. Though I am pushing to break the monopoly (no I am not saying through laws and shit, I think they need to separate business and governments somehow). Until then what else do you expect? Nobody is saying Net Neutrality is sunshine's and rainbows.

You literally said "imagine a world where bad-mouthing Donald Trump got you years in prison for obscene content" i.e. exactly what the First Amendment forbids. Don't talk about how others don't understand US law when you got wrong the literal first and most important law on the books.

>What competition? There is no competition between ISPs in the US because most people only have access to one ISP in their location.

>Besides just a very few handful of cities, there isn’t any competition in the first place. Majority of Americans have 2 or less options for internet

That's just not true. Arstechnica covered this, and used data from the Department of Commerce (which is at this point 4 years old, a lifetime in the tech world)

>Please do tell us the amazing innovations that ISPs have currently developed and implemented. Also, do tell the financial incentive for ISPs to currently innovate.

Certainly. Has your internet speed gone up since 1996 when we were all on dial-up? Guess who invested the capital necessary to build that infrastructure and that technology. But that's just to rhetorically smarmy.

Since 1996 Investors pumped nearly $1.5 trillion into competing network technologies and competing providers, giving the United States four times as many wired connections as any other country, along with the most advanced mobile networks and the most fiber.

I will not post the image here because it's a mssive infographic: https://assets.entrepreneur.com/article/an-accelerated-history-internet-speed.jpg?_ga=2.187439276.523358200.1513305926-1588185075.1512506924 But this details the history of speed increases. All of which is due to investments being pumped in innovation and tech.

Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) uses data gleaned from the 2014 capital expenditures of the Fortune 150 companies disclosed in corporate accounts and in filings with the US authorities.

Of which they state "US Investment Heroes of 2105" discloses that last year the biggest investors in the US economy were American broadband providers. They were ahead of the rest of the pack by a country mile and then some. And the biggest 'heroes" of all were AT&T and Verizon. The two corporations respectively invested US$21 billion and $16 billion over the course of 2014."

Additonally since Net Neutrality went into affect in 2015 Following the FCC’s move to reclassify traditional telco’s under Title II of the Communications Act, investment in broadband infrastructure declined to $76 billion from about $77.9 billion in 2015, a new USTelecom study claims.

This is substantiated as well by "ITIF (Information Technology and Innovation Foundation" ":https://itif.org/publications/2017/06/02/broadband-myth-series-part-1-what-financial-data-shows-about-impact-title-ii

Showing a 2-3% drop in 2015 and 2016.

>Man, i’m so glad ISPs currently listen to their costumers.

They largely do.

May we compare the internet today to what it was before net neutrality and not the worst from a hypothetical future?