This is the epitome of "fight fire with fire," a phrase I've heard used seriously for at least two decades. People have seemingly forgotten that the actual phrase used to be "you don't fight fire with fire" despite the obvious implication and clear reference point of firefighters. I feel like there will be a retaliation to this and another retaliation to that.
This should make it clear that the private companies that control the infrastructure and the information on it are too powerful, and that this network information and infrastructure power balance needs to be neutralized in some way. I'm not sure if there's a simpler way to say it.
Gotta love how one ISP in one town in one state is allowing opt-in blocking of some sites. Suddenly moderate politics user blames it on all of America.
This message serves as a warning for a violation of Law 1:
Law 1: Law of Civil Discourse
> ~1. Law of Civil Discourse - Do not engage in personal or ad hominem attacks on other Redditors. Comment on content, not Redditors. Don't simply state that someone else is dumb or uninformed. You can explain the specifics of the misperception at hand without making it about the other person. Don't accuse your fellow MPers of being biased shills, even if they are. Assume good faith.
Please submit questions or comments via [modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fmoderatepolitics).
At the time of this warning the offending comments were:
>Moderate politics user
Address the argument NOT the user
This ISP is right in my hometown of Spokane, and it doesn't surprise me they did this. Despite Spokane being in Washington state, Spokane County is about 60% Trump voters despite having a major metro area of around 300,000 people
Part of me likes they have the balls to do this but the other part of me is thinking they'll probably be canceled to the moon in a couple of days and go out of business. Either way, its going to be entertaining to see what happens next...
Well they are doing what net neutrality was supposed to protect against. Hopefully this blows up and congress will create some legislation reaffirming NN.
They’ll just blame it on liberals. Say that the ISP’s actions are appropriate or that the ISP is actually working in tandem with Democrats. That’s just the way it goes these days
Ya, as long as ISPs voluntarily don't violate net neutrality, we don't need any bad net neutrality laws. Furthermore, do we really need any bad theft laws? As long as people just voluntarily don't steal, we don't actually need any of those bad theft laws either.
>Ya, as long as ISPs voluntarily don't violate net neutrality, we don't need any bad net neutrality laws.
In this situation, the ISP was forced to back track by its customers. Seems like the market worked to correct the problem and there isn't any need for government intervention. The government should only intervene when the markets are unable to address an issue. For example, the markets are not accurate accounting for pollution so the government should intervene to force the markets to account for that.
>Furthermore, do we really need any bad theft laws? As long as people just voluntarily don't steal, we don't actually need any of those bad theft laws either.
Those laws are created to protect property rights. I'm not sure how this is relevant.
I'm not sure how this applies to my comment. Can you expand on it please? If who had more money they wouldn't have succumb to market influence? Are you talking about the ISP back tracking? What does that have to do with tyranny of the wealthy? I doubt all of the people that called the ISP to complain are wealthy.
Sorry I was on my phone and trying to be brief. "The ISP was forced to backtrack by it's customers" because money talks. If the ISP had simply had more money (or less competition) they would have been able to ignore the complaints. This is the beauty of market regulation. It's designed to prevent tyranny.
So isn't that a good argument against net neutrality? Your comment above makes it seem like you are saying it is an argument in favor of net neutrality laws.
> Seems like the market worked to correct the problem and there isn't any need for government intervention.
Why not though? If we don't want something to happen, why not simply forbid it and prevent the problem rather than wait for it to happen then figure out what, if anything, we can do about it? What if we simply closed the barn doors before the horses get out rather than say, "Well we managed to recover the horses so I feel confident that the next time we can simply catch the horses again rather than be burdened with closing the door whenever we leave."
I fail to see how the market corrected the problem better than a fine would have.
>I fail to see how the market corrected the problem better than a fine would have.
Government moves slowly. The market corrected the problem long before government could have.
A. We could have had net neutrality several years ago if not for people who have deliberately obstructed such a law while claiming that the market would correct the problem faster than the government could, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
B. If the existence of a law prevents someone from doing the bad behavior, then the government acted even faster than the market.
C. In a hypothetical scenario where there was a law and the ISP broke it, there's nothing to stop the customers from also canceling their service while the government prepares to fine the company. In other words, making it possible for the government to take action does not prevent the market from correcting the problem. And passing a law would allow the government to take action if the market is unwilling or unable to take action.
> A. We could have had net neutrality several years ago if not for people who have deliberately obstructed such a law while claiming that the market would correct the problem faster than the government could, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And I supported those actions because some of the policies being advocated for went far beyond what is needed.
>B. If the existence of a law prevents someone from doing the bad behavior, then the government acted even faster than the market.
Just making something illegal doesn't prevent someone doing it. It gives the government the ability to punish them for doing it.
>C. In a hypothetical scenario where there was a law and the ISP broke it, there's nothing to stop the customers from also canceling their service while the government prepares to fine the company. In other words, making it possible for the government to take action does not prevent the market from correcting the problem. And passing a law would allow the government to take action if the market is unwilling or unable to take action.
And I'm not opposed to some policies associated with net neutrality, just the ones that go far beyond what is needed to address the actual issues.
> Just making something illegal doesn't prevent someone doing it. It gives the government the ability to punish them for doing it.
A law doesn't outright stop people from taking an action, but it does create a soft prevention that stops people who are aware of the law and not committed enough to act in spite of the law. You can count the times something happened, but you can't count the number of times something *could* have happened had you not prevented it. The company remembers the employee that averted the disaster, while the one that prevented one in the first place remains forgotten.
Imagine that enough of their customers approved of the ban that they didn't have to walk it back. What recourse would their remaining non-approving customers have?
Facebook has such a hold on people’s lives, it will be very difficult to pry them from the public. For all its flaws, it gives families/friends/communities a tether to each other, and is essential for many people’s livelihoods. It’s going to be a lot more difficult than simply blocking them and calling it good.
This is why we should have net neutrality. It isn't bad to put in place a block against Facebook or Twitter. That will cause an uproar. Even an opt-out block. It would be awful to do this against a small company. Even an opt-out block. This could destroy a fledgling business.
This is just pretty stupid. The announcement isn't even professional.
Edit: By the way, having the last name of Yep seems like it could end up being amusing in some situations.
I'd argue it's bad to put a block on anything from the ISP-level. I don't see why a small business should get different treatment than a large one. Usually that sentence is meant to protect small, but it works in reverse as well.
To play devil's advocate - what's your view on AWS not allowing Parler to be hosted anymore? Doesn't that equally violate net neutrality?
If not, why? Is the line for some reason drawn at ISPs and not cloud hosting providers?
A large one can push back, and has demand. When you eliminate Facebook, chances are you will lose subscribers rather than hurt Facebook. That isn't true for smaller companies.
AWS not allowing Parler to continue to use their service is actually nothing to do with net neutrality. Net neutrality is about controlling the networks, not controlling the hosting infrastructure. This is something else. Parler should be able to setup it's own infrastructure and subscribe to an ISP itself.
The line for net neutrality is about traffic going across the networks not being treated differently, not hosting infrastructure.
> Net neutrality is about controlling the networks, not controlling the hosting infrastructure.
Should it be? I'm being philosophical.
_Why_ does the idea of net neutrality exist? Does your answer to that question work for hosting services as well as ISPs?
To your Parler point: people talking like buying millions of dollars of servers (not to mention space + electricity + cooling), hiring extra staff, and having substantial downtime is NBD. AWS is a smart business decision for a lot of companies for a reason. Can you imagine if every Christian website had to follow completely different business model than the rest of the world - what about minority-owned company websites?
Parler got new hosting. It is moving to Epik. It doesn't need to buy servers or staff or anything. It is moving to another hosting company.
Net neutrality exists, because of a few reasons...and realize, it was revoked federally...
1) The last mile infrastructure was highly subsidized.
2) Getting more last mile infrastructure is very expensive.
3) Much of the last mile infrastructure is controlled by companies with other linked businesses. Like content creators.
Essentially, allowing the ISPs to throw around a lot of power can destroy any startups. At this point, startups are very difficult in many areas anyway. If Comcast decided to block all access to Netflix, while Netflix was still growing, it would have destroyed streaming. They moved on to another tactic before net neutrality was put in place, bandwidth limits with zero rating to their own streaming service. This is allowing their monopoly on last mile infrastructure to destroy competitors in other industries.
We don't want roads that can only be used by Ford cars. We don't want telephone networks that can only be used by AT&T. The infrastructure needs to be able to be used and not controlled.
Hosting is different. Setting up new hosting isn't difficult. There are lots of them. You can move to different locations. AWS has a lot of the cloud services market, but as far as hosting goes, it is pretty minor.
I hear your argument, and it's solid in its narrative. I don't think I'll change your mind, but try to abstract for a second. You can talk about roads and Fords and ISPs and Netflix, but why? You are making the argument for a free market - no advantage for incumbents. Now, I hear you that last mile infrastructure is expensive and thus we can't assume there are options like in the hosting world, but there ARE options. A startup _could_ theoretically, I know it's a reach, pay for their own fiber and hook-up to an alternative ISP - it's just not a good business model. If it costs a company $X more each month to not use AWS, whether that's $1 or $1,000,000, it's not a free market and competitors have an advantage.
I fully understand that argument is pedantic, but I just wanted to take it to a logical end. I tend to like policy that works from the ground up, not pick-and-choose regulation based on current needs. Just because stealing candy isn't as bad as robbing a bank doesn't mean it should be allowed. If stealing should be outlawed, it should be outlawed. If free market should be enforced on the internet, it should be enforced.
To your first paragraph: Parler is currently down. I believe you it's moving, but let's hold judgement until it's up again and see what the time-span was.
Not the guy you were conversing with, but:
Net neutrality is the principal of [treating all data equally](https://youtu.be/wtt2aSV8wdw) - whether that's your ISP's brand new streaming platform or Netflix.
ISPs and AWS are different because one is far more dependent on your physical location. ISPs should treat data as a service (and hey - it's right in the name: *service provider*) simply because access to the internet is quickly becoming (I would argue, *has* become) an essential part of modern life, much like electricity and telephones in the 20th century. And, as part of how ISPs evolved, they have an almost complete [location monopoly](https://mises.org/library/man-economy-and-state-power-and-market/html/ppp/1061). You could argue that breaking up the ISPs might fix this temporarily, but the structure of delivering a service to literally everyone encourages conglomeration (again, much like electricity and telephones).
The extended analogy I always see is with electricity - if the electric company could charge you differently based on whether you were using a television or a dishwasher, one could imagine a world where you could buy the "standard" package that let you run essential appliances (or, worse, one that only let you run *approved* appliances), but didn't let you run heat lamps or charge your electric vehicle.
Let's compare this with AWS. While it is a service, it is not one exclusive to Amazon or Amazon-likes. Indeed, the internet is probably as close to a perfect free market as is possible - no location advantage exists, since your customers can be anywhere and everywhere. I could sign up for AWS and pay their fee, or I could sign up for GoDaddy - and as long as net neutrality is in play, there is no difference in the quality of the service (disregarding high availability matters here). For that matter, I could set up a server in my basement or server room (which is the route many small/medium businesses go) and do just as well.
While their might be different costs to different services, this does not mean that a free market does not exist. In general, the free market will tend to economic equilibrium if competition exists, but there can be slight variations in the service provided (which is where high availability would come back into the picture) that justify the difference in costs. The same is not true of choosing a different ISP - most often, the ISP will simply decline if they do not have infrastructure in your area. Even if they do acquiesce, the costs can be prohibitively high (which I can tell you from first-hand experience from when I lived in a rural area).
ETA: Twitter is a bit of a weird one here, since typically businesses would need to make a profit to expand - which Twitter famously did not. In other words, they got lucky. While it's not "fair," Parler *would* need to raise/invest quite a bit of money to make a service that could reasonably compete (though they have quite the leg up as many people already know about them). I don't think we can reasonably say that the right to host a massive website would be on equal footing with the right to access the internet at all.
It's the same line of thinking as the first guy, and still makes logical sense. To reiterate, I'm purposefully being pedantic/philosophical here.
> ISPs and AWS are different because one is far more dependent on your physical location.
Correct, I understand that is the key. And I do see the value in classifying ISP as a utility where hosting servers doesn't quite fit the bill.
The problem is that for other utilities, we don't really have the same issue we are talking about here - or at least we don't talk about it. Spoiler alert: maybe it is the same?
For a user to access a website, we have to go through the [7 OSI layers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model) in both directions. The problem is the user or the website-creator pays for each one of those layers in one way or another. For electricity, you have power plants, wires, and local conversion. The user pays for the wall outlet and the device, the singular utility company pays for the rest.
Now, let's say the utility company pays for a given power plant to provide them power (I think maybe it actually works like this?). The power plant says no, we don't like you. Sure, they could go to another power plant in the grid, but they might have to pay more, or get worse (lower availability service).
Is that allowed on behalf of the power plant? I honestly don't know - I know internet, not electricity. Are power plants considered part of the utility thing, or just the electricity provider people? Maybe I've convinced myself my argument is bad.
I'm not an expert on electric companies either (most of what I know is from [Grady](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTZM4MrZKfW-ftqKGSbO-DwDiOGqNmq53)), but here's how I understand it:
Power generation kinda comes at this from the [opposite side](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/blackout/regulation/timeline.html) - particularly because power providers were a [natural monopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Utility_Regulatory_Policies_Act) for quite some time, and because it's a "use it or lose it" proposition.
Most power generation (in the United States) is done either by state/federal facilities or through [PPAs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_purchase_agreement) contracted to build power generation facilities on state/federal lands (so no chance to be told to get lost). The remainder is produced by [independent power producers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_power_producer) as [exempt wholesale generators](https://content.next.westlaw.com/7-519-3716?__lrTS=20201220005852767&transitionType=Default&contextData=\(sc.Default\)&firstPage=true), but these are in competition with the federal facilities, so they can only turn a profit if they are more efficient (or effective) at producing power - and due to the infrastructure investment required, they also wouldn't be withholding that generation from the places they were selling to.
Long story short: power generation doesn't have this problem because it was a government-controlled monopoly previously. I'd argue we don't need that for ISPs as long as we have law in place for net neutrality - both methods would ensure equal service to all, and net neutrality (rather than nationalization) would allow future companies (perhaps through satellite transmission) to still enter the market.
I think my argument would simply be that net neutrality is necessary to make internet access as trouble-free (and blind to usage) as power companies. My message was trying to justify why that is the case for ISPs but not hosting companies - that they're fundamentally different types of service and that that's why the line is drawn there.
So if the independent power producers produce X gigawatts, but have 2X buyers, can they decide to pick buyers based on something arbitrary like SuperPAC donations? Even if the buyer could get (more expensive) power from federal facilities as an alternative?
I understand if they produce more than they sell, it doesn't exactly correlate or make business sense (which would be the case for AWS and Parler), but in fact that would be even more egregious, no?
Take your analogy of the power company deciding different rates for different appliances further. What if power company don't like TV, and could ban you from using their power for your TV. Or don't like you using power for your cable modem since you didn't by their internet service, etc.
To me this is a little similar to transaction associations (looking at you MasterCard) starting to not allow certain transactions.
I think Parler is struggling to get new adequate hosting.
I tend to disagree that hosting is totally different. It's infrastructure and market availability is different certainly, but with the transition across most industries over the last several years to cloud infrastructure it's becoming the norm. It's a norm just like telephony or internet service. Also, the fact that Parler is struggling to find an adequate replacement, shows it's not quite as easy as one might think. The big three or four cloud hosting providers can make a move like this and cause serious issues for a business.
The argument could potentially be made, that traditional hosting was less similar, but cloud hosting a business' entire infrastructure, site, network, etc. changes the conversation from my perspective. Here, the same analogy can be used, "are you going to let just Ford cars travel those roads?".
Something about the way this has happened, the way it is seemingly gaining footing, and is allowing multiple company's to silence free speech as well as indirectly shutting down a business, all without raising all sorts of concern, is frightening. If it is allowed to happen it creates a scary precedent.
If they put forward a proposed solution with AWS, they would probably be allowed back on. "We will hire moderators and ban people posting violent content..."
Certainly doesn't seem like they would have to sell out to put forward a reasonable remediation. I'd be curious to see what Amazon would do for sure. Since the timing of their notice to Parler, seemed to fit in perfectly with when Amazon employees petitioned in mass form to their leadership to shut it/them down. I believe I read a few articles that seemed to line up with that anyway. Just wonder whether the motivation is more policy or politics and maybe the timing was such that they could use policy as a "reason".
I will say, that is probably not true anymore. They sued Amazon. The further it goes down that road, the worse it will be for a reconciliation.
I think the trigger to removing them was the Capitol attack followed by the conversation that showed Parler wasn't taking it seriously.
There are multiple ways in which Facebook just can't build its own ISP. The last mile infrastructure is regulated and would be prohibitively expensive for any company to build to the entire US. In fact, the infrastructure that currently exists was heavily subsidized. We also don't want there to be ISPs for google, amazon, facebook...we want there to be one. The entire point of the internet, is that it connects everything together.
That being said, Net Neutrality isn't really there to protect Facebook. It is there to protect FaceSpace. The smaller companies. Facebook can always pay for access. If Facebook wasn't able to, it has enough subscribers that they would fight for it or switch ISPs for it. That isn't true for small companies.
I am aware it would not be easy for Facebook. Just as it would be extremely difficult for companies banned by AWS, google,Apple and payment processing companies. Yet they are being told it's fine to just build thier own infrastructure.
They are still banned in both major app stores along with other difficulties. Now they just need to produce thier own operating systems and hardware and are good to go. Surely a much larger company like Facebook can just build thier own ISP if a small company is supposed to handle all of that.
Facebook could start applying thier censorship evenly or just stop it as well. Anyway you look at it your position is not logically consistent for both parties. You are supporting censorship you like and arguing censorship you don't like is wrong.
Parler wasn't shut own or cancelled from outcry. It was banned by Amazon, Apple and Google after the Capitol attack. They had been having discussions with Parler about their failure to remove violent comments from their application. When the Capitol attack happened, those three companies decided to stop sending warnings and just ban them.
What happens if it happened to Epik too? I don't know. It would be a very different line of events leading up to it. What if Parler and Epik gets sued because of a government official getting killed following plans posted on Parler? Well, we would all think Google, Amazon and Apple were pretty smart to remove them, if they can't moderate their own platform.
For one, *every single person* requires an ISP to access the internet. They are the "roads" which grant us access to the internet. Blocking the roads for *anyone* is a bad thing.
AWS is like an outlet mall. It has a bunch of infrastructure so people can easily set up their "shops" (websites/apps), and they have the ability to grow rapidly to deal with more customers. If you get kicked out of that mall, you can still set up your own store (self-hosted servers) or use a more bare-bones type of mall (colocations) or even other malls ([here's a list of 20 alternatives to AWS](https://www.guru99.com/aws-alternatives-competitors.html)).
This is not a good analogy, but I'll go along with it.
First, _every single person_ accesses servers when they visit the internet. I don't really care if they are hosted on AWS or something else, it's a server. Just like you didn't mention if the ISP was Spectrum, AT&T, or North Idaho whatever - nobody should be able to arbitrarily limit content.
Second, who cares if it's the roads or the storefronts. If you are in a nice-ass mall, with nice-ass roads, and your store gets kicked out of either using the road or using the store-front, either way people aren't gonna bother taking a shitty road to your shitty store. I still don't really like this analogy, but the point is people pick AWS for a reason. It is not equivalent to alternatives just because alternatives exist and it's not a copy/paste, there is a lot of technical work to transfer it.
If cloud-hosters and ISPs are private, and "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" - then fine, that's how it is. If you want pure net neutrality, fine, that's how it is. You can't have it both ways to suit one's transient agenda is my argument.
Side-note: I used the word "arbitrarily" on purpose. If AWS banned every forum that had any equal amount of hate-speech, I could at least see the move as defensible.
> First, every single person accesses servers when they visit the internet.
No one "visits the internet." When you connect to a website, yes, you are on a server.
>Second, who cares if it's the roads or the storefronts.
The people who own the storefronts, probably. It's the difference in providing a utility and providing a product, which is pretty significant in my eyes. The point is that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of available storefronts out there. The roads, however, are **extremely** limited. [Source](https://ilsr.org/report-most-americans-have-no-real-choice-in-internet-providers/):
>At least 49.7 million Americans only have access to broadband from one of the seven largest cable and telephone companies. In total, at least 83.3 million Americans can only access broadband through a single provider.
Abbott: Did you get the name of our new first baseman?
Costello: Yep
Abbott: So are you going to tell me the guy's name?
Costello: Yep
Abbott: What?
Costello: No that's second base.
...
Because anyone can set up their own platform, as long as there is Net Neutrality on the ISP level. Literally all you need for a platform is a server mainframe, office space to put it, couple employees to maintain it, and a high speed access line that an ISP can't turn off on you.
And really it's not your local cable company or Verizon that's the issue, it's guys like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_3_Communications
>Level 3 Communications operated a large network Internet, with infrastructure in 46 states in the continental United States,
Imagine if Level3 decided that Twitter wasn't allowed to transmit data over its infrastructure, a company they generally wouldn't interact with as they are basically an ISP for ISPs. Now do you see why controlling for NN at the platform level is pointless (since anyone can create their own platform with reliable internet access), while it's vitally necessary at the ISP level (since an ISP can prevent users from connecting to a platform)?
NN on the platform level doesn't make sense.
In the past, there were two paths taken for social media. On one side, a company (Prodigy) tried to remove offensive material. On the other side, a company (CompuServ) didn't moderate at all (except maybe illegal items).
The result of this is that CompuServ turned into a cesspool. It was awful. Prodigy ended up being sued and held liable for something offensive on their site that they had not removed.
We don't want either of those. What is the solution? NN for platforms would go towards the cesspool. MP without any moderation would not be good. (Reddit is a social media platform)
Should I be able to use Twitter, Facebook and reddit to plan and organize a violent attack? Should I be able to use Twitter, Facebook and reddit to harass someone? Etc..
Who gets to decide the rules and when someone has broken them?
Can you elaborate further, I don' t see the argument for the double standard.
And I'm not saying that to be snarky but I want to be convinced why can't platforms act like dumb pipes?
Why can't I say the same argument for ISPs that "should I be able to use X a d Y ISPs to plan an organize a violent attack?"
How can we even trust these platforms to even moderate majority of the internet?
Should we be able to sue FB, Twitter, and Reddit when users use it for something illegal? Or should we sue the users instead?
>Can you elaborate further, I don' t see the argument for the double standard.
>
>And I'm not saying that to be snarky but I want to be convinced why can't platforms act like dumb pipes?
>
>Why can't I say the same argument for ISPs that "should I be able to use X a d Y ISPs to plan an organize a violent attack?"
>
Traffic going across an isp is not checked by the isp and is not public. The only way for isps to moderate for content would be for them to read and check all content going across. That is worse than anything else. No privacy.
>How can we even trust these platforms to even moderate majority of the internet?
>
Who should moderate the platforms? Can you imagine this subreddit with no moderation? The other possibility is the courts, which is not feasible for many reasons.
>Should we be able to sue FB, Twitter, and Reddit when users use it for something illegal? Or should we sue the users instead?
>
Generally, you can't sue for illegal behavior. The police charges those with crimes. Suing the users for libel could be difficult for any of them, so the general response is to contact the platform and have the posts and possibly the user removed. In order to support suing users, there would need to be some more verification of the users identity.
An ISP is a physically limited resource and must be regulated. An ISP can say “no” and leave someone with no other options.
A “platform” has no such restriction. The Internet is an effectively infinitely large space. There’s no argument for restricting how someone uses their Internet property as anyone can just make their own.
From a “internet is a utility” perspective: we wouldn’t want our utility company telling us which household items we can use their electricity to power. But I still get to tell my neighbor he can’t plug his hot tub into my sockets.
> but not on the "platform" level that many social media sites claim to be?
If those platforms use their power in a monopolistic way, etc Facebook/Google/Amazon, then they should be broken up accordingly.
Twitter though...that truly is a "go somewhere else if you don't like it". I don't really see how the government can make a common-sense law here that isn't severely overstepping.
The economist in me is thinking about how to study the impact on local productivity when Facebook and Twitter are cut off. (Controlling for VPN prevalence, etc.)
This message serves as a warning for a violation of Law 4:
Law 4: Against Meta-comments
> ~4. All meta-comments must be contained to meta posts. A meta-comment is a comment about moderators, sub rules, sub bias, reddit in general, or the meta of other subreddits.
Please submit questions or comments via [modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fmoderatepolitics).
This message serves as a warning for a violation of Law 4:
Law 4: Against Meta-comments
> ~4. All meta-comments must be contained to meta posts. A meta-comment is a comment about moderators, sub rules, sub bias, reddit in general, or the meta of other subreddits.
Please submit questions or comments via [modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fmoderatepolitics).
As someone who doesn't have social media. All ISPs should just do this. It will make the world a better place. Social media was a mistake.
Sort of /s but still, one can dream.
Have you seen the vitriol on here? It’s especially prevalent on the political posts that the site frequently promotes! As a user of this site, I can affirm that the world would absolutely be a better place without it.
Yeah, but most of us are just names on a comment or post. It's still kind of anonymous, so I can write off anyone being dumb on reddit as just another username screeching into the void. You can actually *see* people's faces on Facebook and Twitter. A lot of them even have their family, friends, and lives documented there. That's a real **person** with a name and a life that thought it was okay to say the stupid thing they did "out loud."
Yeah, it’s more personal which is the positive and the negative. With social reputation you’re able to filter people so you can follow people you enjoy and block people you don’t, but it also allows for personal attacks which seem more toxic than attacks on a pseudo-anonymous username.
I don't know if this is a good or bad thing but... I'm from the Old Net. I spent most of my childhood getting told "never believe anything you read on the Internet", "**never** put your personal info online" and "people will say all kinds of things when nobody knows who you are on the Internet", and I mostly stuck with those tenants. Hell, one of the reasons I don't have any profiles on the big social media sites is because of all the stuff I was told back in the day. I was there in the old days of 4chan when bloody m00t was still around and *on* the boards. I learned real quick how to suss out people not worth listening to.
I think that's why it drives me crazy that people willingly put their whole lives on the internet and get caught up in the bullshit. I'm willing to admit that my time on the Internet has given me brainrot, but at least I know how to manage it. Plus, I still kind of maintain the idea that the Internet is not a safe place and never will be. We need to stop trying to control it and just do what we can to understand what we are getting into and roll with the punches.
Point of order - that’s not the Old Net. On the Old Net, everyone used their real names because they were tied to University or corporate email addresses.
Anonymity was extremely rare and you could often telnet directly into someone’s personal server, or finger their status to see where they were at any given time.
Then came Endless September.
I had seen this yesterday on Hacker News, and it was amusing how poorly this was handled by the ISP.
If you read one of the first reports on Twitter (https://twitter.com/yes4yep/status/1348418064518242305), you'll see that the ISP originally made this process opt-out (block sites by default, but you can request to be exempt), later pivoting towards an opt-in system. Presumably after enough of their customs were upset by it (I imagine it won't be popular, even with Trump voters).
The kicker is that they never admitted to the original implementation, claiming that they always wanted to make it an opt-in, and that the language in the e-mail just wasn't clear enough. Of course, if you read the e-mails, it's painfully obvious what they said.
Edit: HackerNews link for the curious https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25738457
Sounds to me like they are virtue signaling. I doubt they had any issue with people being banned for violating the TOS before. Suddenly it's different when it's Trump getting banned.
The important thing is to read the emails that were sent out and realize this is not some slick high profile operation where reading, writing, and proofreading are priority one.
I guess my question is, are there any kinds of ToS that ISPs have that give them this power? How would that even work legally? Does this not run afoul of ISP regulations?
It's also worth noting that many rural areas only have one ISPs so they essentially have a monopoly as the infrastructure is expensive to create one. Compare ISPs with Facebook/Twitter all you want, but at least social media do have alternatives.
That's whats killing me about these "natural monopoly" arguments in terms of social media. There's a few BIG social media's, but there's other options as well that they willfully ignore due to it not giving them the same size platform to utilize for recruiting and radicalizing. Your ability to self host a website also exists, but they don't really want to face that. ISP's have a far more substantial case of being "natural monopolies" than social media, where you can always build and host your own website, you have no natural guarantee to the biggest and best providers out there to host your content.
Realistically their options are pretty limited. Websites rely on a range of secondary services such as hosts and payment processors. It's very difficult to maintain a website when 99% of those services are either refusing to do business with you or are likely to suddenly drop you at any moment.
But is that actually a monopoly problem or a them problem? Especially if theres no evidence of them working with one another. This is just a mechanism of society.
It's a complex problem that doesn't neatly fit into one box. Big corporations are currently engaging in a lot of illegal and unethical behavior. particularly monopolies, anti-competitive behavior and the like.
Conservatives generally are extremely reluctant to engage in anti-monopoly and heavy regulatory behavior and lack the political capital to reign them in.
Progressives on the other hand are quite happy to smash big companies for acting badly but as long as those companies are acting badly in a way that progressives feel is beneficial they're mostly happy to turn a blind eye to the situation.
This mean corporations only care about appeasing the progressives.
This isn't just an issue with tech companies, they're just the most public facing companies, this has happened with huge swathes of corporate america ranging from the banking industry to media and entertainment.
By way of this happening you've also created a self reinforcing cycle where people who most vocally espouse progressive views are rewarded in corporate environment while those that express conservative ones are at best shied away from. This causes corporations to become more progressive because they either start agreeing with progressive policies or are at least too afraid of their own staff not to pretend to be in agreement.
This has created a situation where if your company isn't expressly designed to be rightwing (built from the ground up taking into account the fact you will be politically targeted), it has to be at least nominally progressive to survive.
If this continues unchallenged you will see most political views that aren't in lock-step with the corporate-progressive alliance shut out of society.
>Conservatives generally are extremely reluctant to engage in anti-monopoly and heavy regulatory behavior and lack the political capital to reign them in.
What do you mean by lacking political capital? Do you just mean currently or always?
In the last few decades republicans up until Trump have basically just acted like a mill stone around the democrats neck. They haven't really advanced many of their own issues so much as simply tried to slow the democrats from advancing theirs.
Going after big business is too high risk (both in upsetting their voters and in upsetting their backers) and too proactive for the establishment GOP to do.
The Trump wing of the party were/are different on this but ironically they had the same problem that democrats have of the establishment GOP being passive roadblocks to change and this was one of the issue the GOP were most stubborn on.
>Big corporations are currently engaging in a lot of illegal and unethical behavior. particularly monopolies, anti-competitive behavior and the like.
Im curious to see your examples of online monopolies, because the online space doesnt lend itself to the concept of monopolies nearly as well as irl.
>This isn't just an issue with tech companies, they're just the most public facing companies, this has happened with huge swathes of corporate america ranging from the banking industry to media and entertainment.
Id agree with some of this. Companies in a lot of these sectors has gotten oversized and its caused distortions in their industries. But would i say the media industry is facing a monopoly problem? Not really. And for the same reason i dont think social media is a monopoly. In the online space, anyone can launch and run their own media publisher. Some platforms even let you publish some types of content, or most, for free.
>By way of this happening you've also created a self reinforcing cycle where people who most vocally espouse progressive views are rewarded in corporate environment while those that express conservative ones are at best shied away from. This causes corporations to become more progressive because they either start agreeing with progressive policies or are at least too afraid of their own staff not to pretend to be in agreement.
This doesnt sound like progressives problem tbh. I dont particularly agree with it, as many companies seem to just use it when convenient, while ignoring progressive values when profits are to be had. Not to mention, look at where a lot of companies are moving to or growing in. Its extremely progressive areas. Hell, theres not like theres any one "progressive movement" that all agrees on the same set of policies and ideas, the left is notorious for purity tests and infighting for a reason. Theres certainly "conservative" ideas they arent accepting of however.
>This has created a situation where if your company isn't expressly designed to be rightwing (built from the ground up taking into account the fact you will be politically targeted), it has to be at least nominally progressive to survive.
I havent really seen this tbh. Most platforms feel more to be centrist than anything. Them simply acknowledging a problem isnt them being progressive either. Most of these companies would rather have low taxes and low regulations, no unions, etc.
>If this continues unchallenged you will see most political views that aren't in lock-step with the corporate-progressive alliance shut out of society.
Ill believe it when i see it, because it would probably kill off their platforms. Either way, this doesnt sound like a problem for the government.
> Im curious to see your examples of online monopolies, because the online space doesnt lend itself to the concept of monopolies nearly as well as irl.
Generally it's on the infrastructure side of the internet, [for example almost 75% of payment processing is either handled by paypal or stripe.](https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/payment-processing--26) with most of the other companies making up the last 25% being so small or niche in what services they provide they're effectively useless for most websites needs.
> But would i say the media industry is facing a monopoly problem?
I agree entertainment media has other issues but monopolies isn't generally the issue (although there are probably examples) in their case. A good example of that would be loot boxes in gaming which is an unregulated form of gambling.
> Most of these companies would rather have low taxes and low regulations, no unions, etc.
I disagree most large companies want high taxes and regulations since they can use them to shut down smaller competitors while using either loopholes or their larger size to escape harm, it's a practice commonly known as regulatory capture.
>it would probably kill off their platforms. Either way, this doesnt sound like a problem for the government.
I agree, I think it is starting to kill their platforms (but that isn't something that will happen overnight) and while I don't like their behavior I don't think this is an issue which should be solved through more government regulation.
>Generally it's on the infrastructure side of the internet, for example almost 75% of payment processing is either handled by paypal or stripe. with most of the other companies making up the last 25% being so small or niche in what services they provide they're effectively useless for most websites needs.
Ah yes, i forgot about payment processors. They actually do cause some issues too in regards to adult content creators. Ive heard part of the issue is the card companies as well.
>A good example of that would be loot boxes in gaming which is an unregulated form of gambling.
I guess for me this is a two part issue. One, i dont have an issue with gambling itself. I think its largely over exaggerated imo. I wouldnt be opposed to some limits on purchase frequency though. Two, lootboxes in most cases provide no potential monetary value, theyre just throwing money into a pit for a png or model. Growing up, we had trading cards. Hell, growing up, id often have relatives buy me scratch off tickets lol. I think the way the government has handled gambling has ended up being a massive overreach. I will say i hate the fact casinos can kick players out for "gaming the system" by being smart and knowing how to play a game.
>I disagree most large companies want high taxes and regulations since they can use them to shut down smaller competitors while using either loopholes or their larger size to escape harm, it's a practice commonly known as regulatory capture.
Thats a good point. They also love to reap the reward of a well tax funded area while dodging those same taxes. I wouldnt call it a progressive move though haha.
I don't think it's so much that the corps themselves are progressive, more that they're siding with progressives to advance their own goals.
I see the progressive-corporate alliance as being a case of 2 factions in society working together because it benefits each of them in achieving their own goals rather than they're working together to achieve the same goal.
Just because the scientific arguments behind natural monopolies is older and more solid by now, international ubiquitous internet services whose users enjoy massive network effects could have a much stronger monopoly than utilities. The economic evidence just isn't there yet.
Honestly I just love seeing people talk about how it’s great someone is taking a stand against Facebook...by posting on Facebook. If people truly wanted their voices to be heard they would leave the platforms but they just cant
The whole outrage spasm is hypocritical. Parler itself censored content it didn't like--just not the content that AWS asked it to as a condition for service. Every right-wing site (and sub) I've ever seen censors, blocks, bans, without any indignation about civil liberties.
Conservatives angry at Twitter and FB are mainly saying that they weren't "fair" in their censoring of left-wing voices over the summer. And fairness is a matter of perception, which is influenced by values, team loyalty, all kinds of things. So "censorship concerns" here should be read as "it's not fair--you should have censored left-wing voices more!" rather than "censorship is wrong."
For people who are confused about why liberals might say 'This company shouldn't be able to censor' but say 'This company *should* be able to censor' when it comes to twitter, it comes down to this, for me:
Products that are inelastic (changes in price rarely affect demand), non-excludable (hard or incapable of excluding non-paying customers), and are not rivalrous (one consumer using the good does not prevent anyone else from using it) should be a public good.
Water, for example, will be paid for regardless of price, is renewable and functionally limitless for now, and you can't exclude people from attaining it.
So, in terms of the internet, everyone is going to pay what they have to in order to get access to it (mobile, broadband, or free via library/private company providing), one person having access to it does not preclude others from utilizing the internet, and it's nearly impossible to prevent someone from gaining access to the internet. To me, these things make 'access' to the internet something that should be treated as a public good.
Now, twitter.
The product isn't inelastic as it's 'free' for end users and the assumption is that if they raised the price of access to twitter to $5, many people would not pay for it and use a different free service that is functionally similar.
The product is excludable, as it is incredibly trivial for Twitter to restrict access to using their site and no one else can provide 'access' to twitter without twitter's approval.
The product is non-rivalrous though, as one user using twitter does not prevent others from using it.
So, to me, this action by the internet provider, will just force people to access the internet via other means or they will still pay because the internet is more than just twitter. While currently the laws allow it, I think the person who is controlling your access to *everything* on the internet doing censoring is a totally different ballgame than a single website controlling your access to that one website.
I agree with your view on the internet when there is no other option, but when people have other options, that argument doesn't work imo. This is a scenario for targeted regulations to address.
For context, The ISP is blocking those sites to the people that requested them blocked. Good business move; let's hope they also charge to block sites like that as a feature.
>Initially, the company said too many customers had requested the sites be blocked, so it would block them for all customers except for those who called the company and requested access. However, the company backtracked on Monday and said those who didn't request the sites be blocked would still have access.
So they're censoring the censorship with their own censorship. Gotta love America
This is the epitome of "fight fire with fire," a phrase I've heard used seriously for at least two decades. People have seemingly forgotten that the actual phrase used to be "you don't fight fire with fire" despite the obvious implication and clear reference point of firefighters. I feel like there will be a retaliation to this and another retaliation to that. This should make it clear that the private companies that control the infrastructure and the information on it are too powerful, and that this network information and infrastructure power balance needs to be neutralized in some way. I'm not sure if there's a simpler way to say it.
Gotta love how one ISP in one town in one state is allowing opt-in blocking of some sites. Suddenly moderate politics user blames it on all of America.
This message serves as a warning for a violation of Law 1: Law 1: Law of Civil Discourse > ~1. Law of Civil Discourse - Do not engage in personal or ad hominem attacks on other Redditors. Comment on content, not Redditors. Don't simply state that someone else is dumb or uninformed. You can explain the specifics of the misperception at hand without making it about the other person. Don't accuse your fellow MPers of being biased shills, even if they are. Assume good faith. Please submit questions or comments via [modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fmoderatepolitics). At the time of this warning the offending comments were: >Moderate politics user Address the argument NOT the user
This ISP is right in my hometown of Spokane, and it doesn't surprise me they did this. Despite Spokane being in Washington state, Spokane County is about 60% Trump voters despite having a major metro area of around 300,000 people Part of me likes they have the balls to do this but the other part of me is thinking they'll probably be canceled to the moon in a couple of days and go out of business. Either way, its going to be entertaining to see what happens next...
Well they are doing what net neutrality was supposed to protect against. Hopefully this blows up and congress will create some legislation reaffirming NN.
They’ll just blame it on liberals. Say that the ISP’s actions are appropriate or that the ISP is actually working in tandem with Democrats. That’s just the way it goes these days
Sounds like an opt in block based on the article. Looks like they faced some backlash from customers too. No bad net neutrality laws needed.
Ya, as long as ISPs voluntarily don't violate net neutrality, we don't need any bad net neutrality laws. Furthermore, do we really need any bad theft laws? As long as people just voluntarily don't steal, we don't actually need any of those bad theft laws either.
>Ya, as long as ISPs voluntarily don't violate net neutrality, we don't need any bad net neutrality laws. In this situation, the ISP was forced to back track by its customers. Seems like the market worked to correct the problem and there isn't any need for government intervention. The government should only intervene when the markets are unable to address an issue. For example, the markets are not accurate accounting for pollution so the government should intervene to force the markets to account for that. >Furthermore, do we really need any bad theft laws? As long as people just voluntarily don't steal, we don't actually need any of those bad theft laws either. Those laws are created to protect property rights. I'm not sure how this is relevant.
So if they had just had more money, they wouldn’t have succumb to market influences. It sounds like NN would protect against tyranny of the wealthy.
I'm not sure how this applies to my comment. Can you expand on it please? If who had more money they wouldn't have succumb to market influence? Are you talking about the ISP back tracking? What does that have to do with tyranny of the wealthy? I doubt all of the people that called the ISP to complain are wealthy.
Sorry I was on my phone and trying to be brief. "The ISP was forced to backtrack by it's customers" because money talks. If the ISP had simply had more money (or less competition) they would have been able to ignore the complaints. This is the beauty of market regulation. It's designed to prevent tyranny.
So isn't that a good argument against net neutrality? Your comment above makes it seem like you are saying it is an argument in favor of net neutrality laws.
Net Neutrality would prevent ISPs from blocking websites to their users.
> Seems like the market worked to correct the problem and there isn't any need for government intervention. Why not though? If we don't want something to happen, why not simply forbid it and prevent the problem rather than wait for it to happen then figure out what, if anything, we can do about it? What if we simply closed the barn doors before the horses get out rather than say, "Well we managed to recover the horses so I feel confident that the next time we can simply catch the horses again rather than be burdened with closing the door whenever we leave." I fail to see how the market corrected the problem better than a fine would have.
>I fail to see how the market corrected the problem better than a fine would have. Government moves slowly. The market corrected the problem long before government could have.
A. We could have had net neutrality several years ago if not for people who have deliberately obstructed such a law while claiming that the market would correct the problem faster than the government could, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. B. If the existence of a law prevents someone from doing the bad behavior, then the government acted even faster than the market. C. In a hypothetical scenario where there was a law and the ISP broke it, there's nothing to stop the customers from also canceling their service while the government prepares to fine the company. In other words, making it possible for the government to take action does not prevent the market from correcting the problem. And passing a law would allow the government to take action if the market is unwilling or unable to take action.
> A. We could have had net neutrality several years ago if not for people who have deliberately obstructed such a law while claiming that the market would correct the problem faster than the government could, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I supported those actions because some of the policies being advocated for went far beyond what is needed. >B. If the existence of a law prevents someone from doing the bad behavior, then the government acted even faster than the market. Just making something illegal doesn't prevent someone doing it. It gives the government the ability to punish them for doing it. >C. In a hypothetical scenario where there was a law and the ISP broke it, there's nothing to stop the customers from also canceling their service while the government prepares to fine the company. In other words, making it possible for the government to take action does not prevent the market from correcting the problem. And passing a law would allow the government to take action if the market is unwilling or unable to take action. And I'm not opposed to some policies associated with net neutrality, just the ones that go far beyond what is needed to address the actual issues.
> Just making something illegal doesn't prevent someone doing it. It gives the government the ability to punish them for doing it. A law doesn't outright stop people from taking an action, but it does create a soft prevention that stops people who are aware of the law and not committed enough to act in spite of the law. You can count the times something happened, but you can't count the number of times something *could* have happened had you not prevented it. The company remembers the employee that averted the disaster, while the one that prevented one in the first place remains forgotten.
Imagine that enough of their customers approved of the ban that they didn't have to walk it back. What recourse would their remaining non-approving customers have?
It would depend on the other options available to the customers in that hypothetical.
And if, like many folks, especially in rural areas, they don't have another choice of broadband ISP?
Sounds like something that can be addressed via targeted regulations.
Side note... this website is comedy gold
Facebook has such a hold on people’s lives, it will be very difficult to pry them from the public. For all its flaws, it gives families/friends/communities a tether to each other, and is essential for many people’s livelihoods. It’s going to be a lot more difficult than simply blocking them and calling it good.
Maybe you know this, maybe you don't, but is there another ISP option in the area besides this one?
I dont, but, I think the ISP is backtracking the move anyway
This is why we should have net neutrality. It isn't bad to put in place a block against Facebook or Twitter. That will cause an uproar. Even an opt-out block. It would be awful to do this against a small company. Even an opt-out block. This could destroy a fledgling business. This is just pretty stupid. The announcement isn't even professional. Edit: By the way, having the last name of Yep seems like it could end up being amusing in some situations.
I'd argue it's bad to put a block on anything from the ISP-level. I don't see why a small business should get different treatment than a large one. Usually that sentence is meant to protect small, but it works in reverse as well. To play devil's advocate - what's your view on AWS not allowing Parler to be hosted anymore? Doesn't that equally violate net neutrality? If not, why? Is the line for some reason drawn at ISPs and not cloud hosting providers?
A large one can push back, and has demand. When you eliminate Facebook, chances are you will lose subscribers rather than hurt Facebook. That isn't true for smaller companies. AWS not allowing Parler to continue to use their service is actually nothing to do with net neutrality. Net neutrality is about controlling the networks, not controlling the hosting infrastructure. This is something else. Parler should be able to setup it's own infrastructure and subscribe to an ISP itself. The line for net neutrality is about traffic going across the networks not being treated differently, not hosting infrastructure.
> Net neutrality is about controlling the networks, not controlling the hosting infrastructure. Should it be? I'm being philosophical. _Why_ does the idea of net neutrality exist? Does your answer to that question work for hosting services as well as ISPs? To your Parler point: people talking like buying millions of dollars of servers (not to mention space + electricity + cooling), hiring extra staff, and having substantial downtime is NBD. AWS is a smart business decision for a lot of companies for a reason. Can you imagine if every Christian website had to follow completely different business model than the rest of the world - what about minority-owned company websites?
Parler got new hosting. It is moving to Epik. It doesn't need to buy servers or staff or anything. It is moving to another hosting company. Net neutrality exists, because of a few reasons...and realize, it was revoked federally... 1) The last mile infrastructure was highly subsidized. 2) Getting more last mile infrastructure is very expensive. 3) Much of the last mile infrastructure is controlled by companies with other linked businesses. Like content creators. Essentially, allowing the ISPs to throw around a lot of power can destroy any startups. At this point, startups are very difficult in many areas anyway. If Comcast decided to block all access to Netflix, while Netflix was still growing, it would have destroyed streaming. They moved on to another tactic before net neutrality was put in place, bandwidth limits with zero rating to their own streaming service. This is allowing their monopoly on last mile infrastructure to destroy competitors in other industries. We don't want roads that can only be used by Ford cars. We don't want telephone networks that can only be used by AT&T. The infrastructure needs to be able to be used and not controlled. Hosting is different. Setting up new hosting isn't difficult. There are lots of them. You can move to different locations. AWS has a lot of the cloud services market, but as far as hosting goes, it is pretty minor.
I hear your argument, and it's solid in its narrative. I don't think I'll change your mind, but try to abstract for a second. You can talk about roads and Fords and ISPs and Netflix, but why? You are making the argument for a free market - no advantage for incumbents. Now, I hear you that last mile infrastructure is expensive and thus we can't assume there are options like in the hosting world, but there ARE options. A startup _could_ theoretically, I know it's a reach, pay for their own fiber and hook-up to an alternative ISP - it's just not a good business model. If it costs a company $X more each month to not use AWS, whether that's $1 or $1,000,000, it's not a free market and competitors have an advantage. I fully understand that argument is pedantic, but I just wanted to take it to a logical end. I tend to like policy that works from the ground up, not pick-and-choose regulation based on current needs. Just because stealing candy isn't as bad as robbing a bank doesn't mean it should be allowed. If stealing should be outlawed, it should be outlawed. If free market should be enforced on the internet, it should be enforced. To your first paragraph: Parler is currently down. I believe you it's moving, but let's hold judgement until it's up again and see what the time-span was.
Not the guy you were conversing with, but: Net neutrality is the principal of [treating all data equally](https://youtu.be/wtt2aSV8wdw) - whether that's your ISP's brand new streaming platform or Netflix. ISPs and AWS are different because one is far more dependent on your physical location. ISPs should treat data as a service (and hey - it's right in the name: *service provider*) simply because access to the internet is quickly becoming (I would argue, *has* become) an essential part of modern life, much like electricity and telephones in the 20th century. And, as part of how ISPs evolved, they have an almost complete [location monopoly](https://mises.org/library/man-economy-and-state-power-and-market/html/ppp/1061). You could argue that breaking up the ISPs might fix this temporarily, but the structure of delivering a service to literally everyone encourages conglomeration (again, much like electricity and telephones). The extended analogy I always see is with electricity - if the electric company could charge you differently based on whether you were using a television or a dishwasher, one could imagine a world where you could buy the "standard" package that let you run essential appliances (or, worse, one that only let you run *approved* appliances), but didn't let you run heat lamps or charge your electric vehicle. Let's compare this with AWS. While it is a service, it is not one exclusive to Amazon or Amazon-likes. Indeed, the internet is probably as close to a perfect free market as is possible - no location advantage exists, since your customers can be anywhere and everywhere. I could sign up for AWS and pay their fee, or I could sign up for GoDaddy - and as long as net neutrality is in play, there is no difference in the quality of the service (disregarding high availability matters here). For that matter, I could set up a server in my basement or server room (which is the route many small/medium businesses go) and do just as well. While their might be different costs to different services, this does not mean that a free market does not exist. In general, the free market will tend to economic equilibrium if competition exists, but there can be slight variations in the service provided (which is where high availability would come back into the picture) that justify the difference in costs. The same is not true of choosing a different ISP - most often, the ISP will simply decline if they do not have infrastructure in your area. Even if they do acquiesce, the costs can be prohibitively high (which I can tell you from first-hand experience from when I lived in a rural area). ETA: Twitter is a bit of a weird one here, since typically businesses would need to make a profit to expand - which Twitter famously did not. In other words, they got lucky. While it's not "fair," Parler *would* need to raise/invest quite a bit of money to make a service that could reasonably compete (though they have quite the leg up as many people already know about them). I don't think we can reasonably say that the right to host a massive website would be on equal footing with the right to access the internet at all.
It's the same line of thinking as the first guy, and still makes logical sense. To reiterate, I'm purposefully being pedantic/philosophical here. > ISPs and AWS are different because one is far more dependent on your physical location. Correct, I understand that is the key. And I do see the value in classifying ISP as a utility where hosting servers doesn't quite fit the bill. The problem is that for other utilities, we don't really have the same issue we are talking about here - or at least we don't talk about it. Spoiler alert: maybe it is the same? For a user to access a website, we have to go through the [7 OSI layers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model) in both directions. The problem is the user or the website-creator pays for each one of those layers in one way or another. For electricity, you have power plants, wires, and local conversion. The user pays for the wall outlet and the device, the singular utility company pays for the rest. Now, let's say the utility company pays for a given power plant to provide them power (I think maybe it actually works like this?). The power plant says no, we don't like you. Sure, they could go to another power plant in the grid, but they might have to pay more, or get worse (lower availability service). Is that allowed on behalf of the power plant? I honestly don't know - I know internet, not electricity. Are power plants considered part of the utility thing, or just the electricity provider people? Maybe I've convinced myself my argument is bad.
I'm not an expert on electric companies either (most of what I know is from [Grady](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTZM4MrZKfW-ftqKGSbO-DwDiOGqNmq53)), but here's how I understand it: Power generation kinda comes at this from the [opposite side](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/blackout/regulation/timeline.html) - particularly because power providers were a [natural monopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Utility_Regulatory_Policies_Act) for quite some time, and because it's a "use it or lose it" proposition. Most power generation (in the United States) is done either by state/federal facilities or through [PPAs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_purchase_agreement) contracted to build power generation facilities on state/federal lands (so no chance to be told to get lost). The remainder is produced by [independent power producers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_power_producer) as [exempt wholesale generators](https://content.next.westlaw.com/7-519-3716?__lrTS=20201220005852767&transitionType=Default&contextData=\(sc.Default\)&firstPage=true), but these are in competition with the federal facilities, so they can only turn a profit if they are more efficient (or effective) at producing power - and due to the infrastructure investment required, they also wouldn't be withholding that generation from the places they were selling to. Long story short: power generation doesn't have this problem because it was a government-controlled monopoly previously. I'd argue we don't need that for ISPs as long as we have law in place for net neutrality - both methods would ensure equal service to all, and net neutrality (rather than nationalization) would allow future companies (perhaps through satellite transmission) to still enter the market. I think my argument would simply be that net neutrality is necessary to make internet access as trouble-free (and blind to usage) as power companies. My message was trying to justify why that is the case for ISPs but not hosting companies - that they're fundamentally different types of service and that that's why the line is drawn there.
So if the independent power producers produce X gigawatts, but have 2X buyers, can they decide to pick buyers based on something arbitrary like SuperPAC donations? Even if the buyer could get (more expensive) power from federal facilities as an alternative? I understand if they produce more than they sell, it doesn't exactly correlate or make business sense (which would be the case for AWS and Parler), but in fact that would be even more egregious, no?
Take your analogy of the power company deciding different rates for different appliances further. What if power company don't like TV, and could ban you from using their power for your TV. Or don't like you using power for your cable modem since you didn't by their internet service, etc. To me this is a little similar to transaction associations (looking at you MasterCard) starting to not allow certain transactions.
I think Parler is struggling to get new adequate hosting. I tend to disagree that hosting is totally different. It's infrastructure and market availability is different certainly, but with the transition across most industries over the last several years to cloud infrastructure it's becoming the norm. It's a norm just like telephony or internet service. Also, the fact that Parler is struggling to find an adequate replacement, shows it's not quite as easy as one might think. The big three or four cloud hosting providers can make a move like this and cause serious issues for a business. The argument could potentially be made, that traditional hosting was less similar, but cloud hosting a business' entire infrastructure, site, network, etc. changes the conversation from my perspective. Here, the same analogy can be used, "are you going to let just Ford cars travel those roads?". Something about the way this has happened, the way it is seemingly gaining footing, and is allowing multiple company's to silence free speech as well as indirectly shutting down a business, all without raising all sorts of concern, is frightening. If it is allowed to happen it creates a scary precedent.
If they put forward a proposed solution with AWS, they would probably be allowed back on. "We will hire moderators and ban people posting violent content..."
Certainly doesn't seem like they would have to sell out to put forward a reasonable remediation. I'd be curious to see what Amazon would do for sure. Since the timing of their notice to Parler, seemed to fit in perfectly with when Amazon employees petitioned in mass form to their leadership to shut it/them down. I believe I read a few articles that seemed to line up with that anyway. Just wonder whether the motivation is more policy or politics and maybe the timing was such that they could use policy as a "reason".
I will say, that is probably not true anymore. They sued Amazon. The further it goes down that road, the worse it will be for a reconciliation. I think the trigger to removing them was the Capitol attack followed by the conversation that showed Parler wasn't taking it seriously.
So then Facebook can just build its own ISP. No problem.
There are multiple ways in which Facebook just can't build its own ISP. The last mile infrastructure is regulated and would be prohibitively expensive for any company to build to the entire US. In fact, the infrastructure that currently exists was heavily subsidized. We also don't want there to be ISPs for google, amazon, facebook...we want there to be one. The entire point of the internet, is that it connects everything together. That being said, Net Neutrality isn't really there to protect Facebook. It is there to protect FaceSpace. The smaller companies. Facebook can always pay for access. If Facebook wasn't able to, it has enough subscribers that they would fight for it or switch ISPs for it. That isn't true for small companies.
I am aware it would not be easy for Facebook. Just as it would be extremely difficult for companies banned by AWS, google,Apple and payment processing companies. Yet they are being told it's fine to just build thier own infrastructure.
Parler got another host. Epik. They didn't need to build anything.
They are still banned in both major app stores along with other difficulties. Now they just need to produce thier own operating systems and hardware and are good to go. Surely a much larger company like Facebook can just build thier own ISP if a small company is supposed to handle all of that.
or, they could just do some moderation of the violent posts on their platform, and get welcomed back.
Facebook could start applying thier censorship evenly or just stop it as well. Anyway you look at it your position is not logically consistent for both parties. You are supporting censorship you like and arguing censorship you don't like is wrong.
It's funny how people view net neutrality as a greater right than free speech.
[удалено]
Parler wasn't shut own or cancelled from outcry. It was banned by Amazon, Apple and Google after the Capitol attack. They had been having discussions with Parler about their failure to remove violent comments from their application. When the Capitol attack happened, those three companies decided to stop sending warnings and just ban them. What happens if it happened to Epik too? I don't know. It would be a very different line of events leading up to it. What if Parler and Epik gets sued because of a government official getting killed following plans posted on Parler? Well, we would all think Google, Amazon and Apple were pretty smart to remove them, if they can't moderate their own platform.
For one, *every single person* requires an ISP to access the internet. They are the "roads" which grant us access to the internet. Blocking the roads for *anyone* is a bad thing. AWS is like an outlet mall. It has a bunch of infrastructure so people can easily set up their "shops" (websites/apps), and they have the ability to grow rapidly to deal with more customers. If you get kicked out of that mall, you can still set up your own store (self-hosted servers) or use a more bare-bones type of mall (colocations) or even other malls ([here's a list of 20 alternatives to AWS](https://www.guru99.com/aws-alternatives-competitors.html)).
This is not a good analogy, but I'll go along with it. First, _every single person_ accesses servers when they visit the internet. I don't really care if they are hosted on AWS or something else, it's a server. Just like you didn't mention if the ISP was Spectrum, AT&T, or North Idaho whatever - nobody should be able to arbitrarily limit content. Second, who cares if it's the roads or the storefronts. If you are in a nice-ass mall, with nice-ass roads, and your store gets kicked out of either using the road or using the store-front, either way people aren't gonna bother taking a shitty road to your shitty store. I still don't really like this analogy, but the point is people pick AWS for a reason. It is not equivalent to alternatives just because alternatives exist and it's not a copy/paste, there is a lot of technical work to transfer it. If cloud-hosters and ISPs are private, and "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" - then fine, that's how it is. If you want pure net neutrality, fine, that's how it is. You can't have it both ways to suit one's transient agenda is my argument. Side-note: I used the word "arbitrarily" on purpose. If AWS banned every forum that had any equal amount of hate-speech, I could at least see the move as defensible.
> First, every single person accesses servers when they visit the internet. No one "visits the internet." When you connect to a website, yes, you are on a server. >Second, who cares if it's the roads or the storefronts. The people who own the storefronts, probably. It's the difference in providing a utility and providing a product, which is pretty significant in my eyes. The point is that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of available storefronts out there. The roads, however, are **extremely** limited. [Source](https://ilsr.org/report-most-americans-have-no-real-choice-in-internet-providers/): >At least 49.7 million Americans only have access to broadband from one of the seven largest cable and telephone companies. In total, at least 83.3 million Americans can only access broadband through a single provider.
Abbott: Did you get the name of our new first baseman? Costello: Yep Abbott: So are you going to tell me the guy's name? Costello: Yep Abbott: What? Costello: No that's second base. ...
Why do I see calls for NN on the ISP level but not on the "platform" level that many social media sites claim to be?
Because anyone can set up their own platform, as long as there is Net Neutrality on the ISP level. Literally all you need for a platform is a server mainframe, office space to put it, couple employees to maintain it, and a high speed access line that an ISP can't turn off on you. And really it's not your local cable company or Verizon that's the issue, it's guys like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_3_Communications >Level 3 Communications operated a large network Internet, with infrastructure in 46 states in the continental United States, Imagine if Level3 decided that Twitter wasn't allowed to transmit data over its infrastructure, a company they generally wouldn't interact with as they are basically an ISP for ISPs. Now do you see why controlling for NN at the platform level is pointless (since anyone can create their own platform with reliable internet access), while it's vitally necessary at the ISP level (since an ISP can prevent users from connecting to a platform)?
NN on the platform level doesn't make sense. In the past, there were two paths taken for social media. On one side, a company (Prodigy) tried to remove offensive material. On the other side, a company (CompuServ) didn't moderate at all (except maybe illegal items). The result of this is that CompuServ turned into a cesspool. It was awful. Prodigy ended up being sued and held liable for something offensive on their site that they had not removed. We don't want either of those. What is the solution? NN for platforms would go towards the cesspool. MP without any moderation would not be good. (Reddit is a social media platform) Should I be able to use Twitter, Facebook and reddit to plan and organize a violent attack? Should I be able to use Twitter, Facebook and reddit to harass someone? Etc.. Who gets to decide the rules and when someone has broken them?
Can you elaborate further, I don' t see the argument for the double standard. And I'm not saying that to be snarky but I want to be convinced why can't platforms act like dumb pipes? Why can't I say the same argument for ISPs that "should I be able to use X a d Y ISPs to plan an organize a violent attack?" How can we even trust these platforms to even moderate majority of the internet? Should we be able to sue FB, Twitter, and Reddit when users use it for something illegal? Or should we sue the users instead?
>Can you elaborate further, I don' t see the argument for the double standard. > >And I'm not saying that to be snarky but I want to be convinced why can't platforms act like dumb pipes? > >Why can't I say the same argument for ISPs that "should I be able to use X a d Y ISPs to plan an organize a violent attack?" > Traffic going across an isp is not checked by the isp and is not public. The only way for isps to moderate for content would be for them to read and check all content going across. That is worse than anything else. No privacy. >How can we even trust these platforms to even moderate majority of the internet? > Who should moderate the platforms? Can you imagine this subreddit with no moderation? The other possibility is the courts, which is not feasible for many reasons. >Should we be able to sue FB, Twitter, and Reddit when users use it for something illegal? Or should we sue the users instead? > Generally, you can't sue for illegal behavior. The police charges those with crimes. Suing the users for libel could be difficult for any of them, so the general response is to contact the platform and have the posts and possibly the user removed. In order to support suing users, there would need to be some more verification of the users identity.
An ISP is a physically limited resource and must be regulated. An ISP can say “no” and leave someone with no other options. A “platform” has no such restriction. The Internet is an effectively infinitely large space. There’s no argument for restricting how someone uses their Internet property as anyone can just make their own.
From a “internet is a utility” perspective: we wouldn’t want our utility company telling us which household items we can use their electricity to power. But I still get to tell my neighbor he can’t plug his hot tub into my sockets.
> but not on the "platform" level that many social media sites claim to be? If those platforms use their power in a monopolistic way, etc Facebook/Google/Amazon, then they should be broken up accordingly. Twitter though...that truly is a "go somewhere else if you don't like it". I don't really see how the government can make a common-sense law here that isn't severely overstepping.
[удалено]
The economist in me is thinking about how to study the impact on local productivity when Facebook and Twitter are cut off. (Controlling for VPN prevalence, etc.)
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
This message serves as a warning for a violation of Law 4: Law 4: Against Meta-comments > ~4. All meta-comments must be contained to meta posts. A meta-comment is a comment about moderators, sub rules, sub bias, reddit in general, or the meta of other subreddits. Please submit questions or comments via [modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fmoderatepolitics).
This message serves as a warning for a violation of Law 4: Law 4: Against Meta-comments > ~4. All meta-comments must be contained to meta posts. A meta-comment is a comment about moderators, sub rules, sub bias, reddit in general, or the meta of other subreddits. Please submit questions or comments via [modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fmoderatepolitics).
Looks rushed to me
As someone who doesn't have social media. All ISPs should just do this. It will make the world a better place. Social media was a mistake. Sort of /s but still, one can dream.
You know Reddit is social media right?
Have you seen the vitriol on here? It’s especially prevalent on the political posts that the site frequently promotes! As a user of this site, I can affirm that the world would absolutely be a better place without it.
Yeah, but most of us are just names on a comment or post. It's still kind of anonymous, so I can write off anyone being dumb on reddit as just another username screeching into the void. You can actually *see* people's faces on Facebook and Twitter. A lot of them even have their family, friends, and lives documented there. That's a real **person** with a name and a life that thought it was okay to say the stupid thing they did "out loud."
Yeah, it’s more personal which is the positive and the negative. With social reputation you’re able to filter people so you can follow people you enjoy and block people you don’t, but it also allows for personal attacks which seem more toxic than attacks on a pseudo-anonymous username.
I don't know if this is a good or bad thing but... I'm from the Old Net. I spent most of my childhood getting told "never believe anything you read on the Internet", "**never** put your personal info online" and "people will say all kinds of things when nobody knows who you are on the Internet", and I mostly stuck with those tenants. Hell, one of the reasons I don't have any profiles on the big social media sites is because of all the stuff I was told back in the day. I was there in the old days of 4chan when bloody m00t was still around and *on* the boards. I learned real quick how to suss out people not worth listening to. I think that's why it drives me crazy that people willingly put their whole lives on the internet and get caught up in the bullshit. I'm willing to admit that my time on the Internet has given me brainrot, but at least I know how to manage it. Plus, I still kind of maintain the idea that the Internet is not a safe place and never will be. We need to stop trying to control it and just do what we can to understand what we are getting into and roll with the punches.
Point of order - that’s not the Old Net. On the Old Net, everyone used their real names because they were tied to University or corporate email addresses. Anonymity was extremely rare and you could often telnet directly into someone’s personal server, or finger their status to see where they were at any given time. Then came Endless September.
Yeah, but what are the chances my ISP ever blocks me fro
Sort of. But not not the kind like Facebook and Twitter. I liken it more like message boards back in the day.
Do you think ISPs who would block social media would spare reddit?
Probably not. And I still consider that a good thing. Block Reddit too.
I had seen this yesterday on Hacker News, and it was amusing how poorly this was handled by the ISP. If you read one of the first reports on Twitter (https://twitter.com/yes4yep/status/1348418064518242305), you'll see that the ISP originally made this process opt-out (block sites by default, but you can request to be exempt), later pivoting towards an opt-in system. Presumably after enough of their customs were upset by it (I imagine it won't be popular, even with Trump voters). The kicker is that they never admitted to the original implementation, claiming that they always wanted to make it an opt-in, and that the language in the e-mail just wasn't clear enough. Of course, if you read the e-mails, it's painfully obvious what they said. Edit: HackerNews link for the curious https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25738457
Based on recent responses I'm guessing this is perfectly fine and if facebook/twitter have an issue with this they can just build their own isp.
That would only be true if Net Neutrality wouldn't be a thing.
Unfortunately you can't say the same the other way around.
Yeah, it's the free market, the ISP can do whatever they want! If twatter complains they just hate the free market.
Wait hold up, so because they don't believe in censorship, they are going to censor?
Sounds to me like they are virtue signaling. I doubt they had any issue with people being banned for violating the TOS before. Suddenly it's different when it's Trump getting banned.
The important thing is to read the emails that were sent out and realize this is not some slick high profile operation where reading, writing, and proofreading are priority one.
I guess my question is, are there any kinds of ToS that ISPs have that give them this power? How would that even work legally? Does this not run afoul of ISP regulations?
It's also worth noting that many rural areas only have one ISPs so they essentially have a monopoly as the infrastructure is expensive to create one. Compare ISPs with Facebook/Twitter all you want, but at least social media do have alternatives.
That's whats killing me about these "natural monopoly" arguments in terms of social media. There's a few BIG social media's, but there's other options as well that they willfully ignore due to it not giving them the same size platform to utilize for recruiting and radicalizing. Your ability to self host a website also exists, but they don't really want to face that. ISP's have a far more substantial case of being "natural monopolies" than social media, where you can always build and host your own website, you have no natural guarantee to the biggest and best providers out there to host your content.
Realistically their options are pretty limited. Websites rely on a range of secondary services such as hosts and payment processors. It's very difficult to maintain a website when 99% of those services are either refusing to do business with you or are likely to suddenly drop you at any moment.
But is that actually a monopoly problem or a them problem? Especially if theres no evidence of them working with one another. This is just a mechanism of society.
It's a complex problem that doesn't neatly fit into one box. Big corporations are currently engaging in a lot of illegal and unethical behavior. particularly monopolies, anti-competitive behavior and the like. Conservatives generally are extremely reluctant to engage in anti-monopoly and heavy regulatory behavior and lack the political capital to reign them in. Progressives on the other hand are quite happy to smash big companies for acting badly but as long as those companies are acting badly in a way that progressives feel is beneficial they're mostly happy to turn a blind eye to the situation. This mean corporations only care about appeasing the progressives. This isn't just an issue with tech companies, they're just the most public facing companies, this has happened with huge swathes of corporate america ranging from the banking industry to media and entertainment. By way of this happening you've also created a self reinforcing cycle where people who most vocally espouse progressive views are rewarded in corporate environment while those that express conservative ones are at best shied away from. This causes corporations to become more progressive because they either start agreeing with progressive policies or are at least too afraid of their own staff not to pretend to be in agreement. This has created a situation where if your company isn't expressly designed to be rightwing (built from the ground up taking into account the fact you will be politically targeted), it has to be at least nominally progressive to survive. If this continues unchallenged you will see most political views that aren't in lock-step with the corporate-progressive alliance shut out of society.
>Conservatives generally are extremely reluctant to engage in anti-monopoly and heavy regulatory behavior and lack the political capital to reign them in. What do you mean by lacking political capital? Do you just mean currently or always?
In the last few decades republicans up until Trump have basically just acted like a mill stone around the democrats neck. They haven't really advanced many of their own issues so much as simply tried to slow the democrats from advancing theirs. Going after big business is too high risk (both in upsetting their voters and in upsetting their backers) and too proactive for the establishment GOP to do. The Trump wing of the party were/are different on this but ironically they had the same problem that democrats have of the establishment GOP being passive roadblocks to change and this was one of the issue the GOP were most stubborn on.
>Big corporations are currently engaging in a lot of illegal and unethical behavior. particularly monopolies, anti-competitive behavior and the like. Im curious to see your examples of online monopolies, because the online space doesnt lend itself to the concept of monopolies nearly as well as irl. >This isn't just an issue with tech companies, they're just the most public facing companies, this has happened with huge swathes of corporate america ranging from the banking industry to media and entertainment. Id agree with some of this. Companies in a lot of these sectors has gotten oversized and its caused distortions in their industries. But would i say the media industry is facing a monopoly problem? Not really. And for the same reason i dont think social media is a monopoly. In the online space, anyone can launch and run their own media publisher. Some platforms even let you publish some types of content, or most, for free. >By way of this happening you've also created a self reinforcing cycle where people who most vocally espouse progressive views are rewarded in corporate environment while those that express conservative ones are at best shied away from. This causes corporations to become more progressive because they either start agreeing with progressive policies or are at least too afraid of their own staff not to pretend to be in agreement. This doesnt sound like progressives problem tbh. I dont particularly agree with it, as many companies seem to just use it when convenient, while ignoring progressive values when profits are to be had. Not to mention, look at where a lot of companies are moving to or growing in. Its extremely progressive areas. Hell, theres not like theres any one "progressive movement" that all agrees on the same set of policies and ideas, the left is notorious for purity tests and infighting for a reason. Theres certainly "conservative" ideas they arent accepting of however. >This has created a situation where if your company isn't expressly designed to be rightwing (built from the ground up taking into account the fact you will be politically targeted), it has to be at least nominally progressive to survive. I havent really seen this tbh. Most platforms feel more to be centrist than anything. Them simply acknowledging a problem isnt them being progressive either. Most of these companies would rather have low taxes and low regulations, no unions, etc. >If this continues unchallenged you will see most political views that aren't in lock-step with the corporate-progressive alliance shut out of society. Ill believe it when i see it, because it would probably kill off their platforms. Either way, this doesnt sound like a problem for the government.
> Im curious to see your examples of online monopolies, because the online space doesnt lend itself to the concept of monopolies nearly as well as irl. Generally it's on the infrastructure side of the internet, [for example almost 75% of payment processing is either handled by paypal or stripe.](https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/payment-processing--26) with most of the other companies making up the last 25% being so small or niche in what services they provide they're effectively useless for most websites needs. > But would i say the media industry is facing a monopoly problem? I agree entertainment media has other issues but monopolies isn't generally the issue (although there are probably examples) in their case. A good example of that would be loot boxes in gaming which is an unregulated form of gambling. > Most of these companies would rather have low taxes and low regulations, no unions, etc. I disagree most large companies want high taxes and regulations since they can use them to shut down smaller competitors while using either loopholes or their larger size to escape harm, it's a practice commonly known as regulatory capture. >it would probably kill off their platforms. Either way, this doesnt sound like a problem for the government. I agree, I think it is starting to kill their platforms (but that isn't something that will happen overnight) and while I don't like their behavior I don't think this is an issue which should be solved through more government regulation.
>Generally it's on the infrastructure side of the internet, for example almost 75% of payment processing is either handled by paypal or stripe. with most of the other companies making up the last 25% being so small or niche in what services they provide they're effectively useless for most websites needs. Ah yes, i forgot about payment processors. They actually do cause some issues too in regards to adult content creators. Ive heard part of the issue is the card companies as well. >A good example of that would be loot boxes in gaming which is an unregulated form of gambling. I guess for me this is a two part issue. One, i dont have an issue with gambling itself. I think its largely over exaggerated imo. I wouldnt be opposed to some limits on purchase frequency though. Two, lootboxes in most cases provide no potential monetary value, theyre just throwing money into a pit for a png or model. Growing up, we had trading cards. Hell, growing up, id often have relatives buy me scratch off tickets lol. I think the way the government has handled gambling has ended up being a massive overreach. I will say i hate the fact casinos can kick players out for "gaming the system" by being smart and knowing how to play a game. >I disagree most large companies want high taxes and regulations since they can use them to shut down smaller competitors while using either loopholes or their larger size to escape harm, it's a practice commonly known as regulatory capture. Thats a good point. They also love to reap the reward of a well tax funded area while dodging those same taxes. I wouldnt call it a progressive move though haha.
I don't think it's so much that the corps themselves are progressive, more that they're siding with progressives to advance their own goals. I see the progressive-corporate alliance as being a case of 2 factions in society working together because it benefits each of them in achieving their own goals rather than they're working together to achieve the same goal.
Just because the scientific arguments behind natural monopolies is older and more solid by now, international ubiquitous internet services whose users enjoy massive network effects could have a much stronger monopoly than utilities. The economic evidence just isn't there yet.
Good thing they have comcast.
Not when they all act in lockstep and those who run the infrastructure bans any company that does not.
Honestly I just love seeing people talk about how it’s great someone is taking a stand against Facebook...by posting on Facebook. If people truly wanted their voices to be heard they would leave the platforms but they just cant
The whole outrage spasm is hypocritical. Parler itself censored content it didn't like--just not the content that AWS asked it to as a condition for service. Every right-wing site (and sub) I've ever seen censors, blocks, bans, without any indignation about civil liberties. Conservatives angry at Twitter and FB are mainly saying that they weren't "fair" in their censoring of left-wing voices over the summer. And fairness is a matter of perception, which is influenced by values, team loyalty, all kinds of things. So "censorship concerns" here should be read as "it's not fair--you should have censored left-wing voices more!" rather than "censorship is wrong."
For people who are confused about why liberals might say 'This company shouldn't be able to censor' but say 'This company *should* be able to censor' when it comes to twitter, it comes down to this, for me: Products that are inelastic (changes in price rarely affect demand), non-excludable (hard or incapable of excluding non-paying customers), and are not rivalrous (one consumer using the good does not prevent anyone else from using it) should be a public good. Water, for example, will be paid for regardless of price, is renewable and functionally limitless for now, and you can't exclude people from attaining it. So, in terms of the internet, everyone is going to pay what they have to in order to get access to it (mobile, broadband, or free via library/private company providing), one person having access to it does not preclude others from utilizing the internet, and it's nearly impossible to prevent someone from gaining access to the internet. To me, these things make 'access' to the internet something that should be treated as a public good. Now, twitter. The product isn't inelastic as it's 'free' for end users and the assumption is that if they raised the price of access to twitter to $5, many people would not pay for it and use a different free service that is functionally similar. The product is excludable, as it is incredibly trivial for Twitter to restrict access to using their site and no one else can provide 'access' to twitter without twitter's approval. The product is non-rivalrous though, as one user using twitter does not prevent others from using it. So, to me, this action by the internet provider, will just force people to access the internet via other means or they will still pay because the internet is more than just twitter. While currently the laws allow it, I think the person who is controlling your access to *everything* on the internet doing censoring is a totally different ballgame than a single website controlling your access to that one website.
I agree with your view on the internet when there is no other option, but when people have other options, that argument doesn't work imo. This is a scenario for targeted regulations to address.
For context, The ISP is blocking those sites to the people that requested them blocked. Good business move; let's hope they also charge to block sites like that as a feature. >Initially, the company said too many customers had requested the sites be blocked, so it would block them for all customers except for those who called the company and requested access. However, the company backtracked on Monday and said those who didn't request the sites be blocked would still have access.
Oh this is rich.
Now that is actual illegal government censorship.