Anna Gomez confirmation means “FCC can act swiftly to restore net neutrality.”
“If confirmed, she would give the Democrats a majority at the FCC that would enable them to impose a radical left-wing agenda, including investment-killing and job-killing so-called net neutrality rules, otherwise known as Obamacare for the Internet” Cruz said.
What
It’s just right-wing buzzword scrabble with that guy. No need to even speak in complete sentences, just say a bunch of words that your voters want to demonize, and take home the money.
“Radical” “Obamacare” “Left-wing” Triple word score!
I was honestly nodding my head in agreement until I got the the word investment-killing. Then I realized it was meant to sound bad lol
God damn, Cruz will molest talking points into a sentence by any means necessary. It’s like he rolls dice each morning to decide which random words he has to slap together.
Drag shows are literally banning gas stoves through an Antifa deep state Obamacare abortion.
Political madlibs except you can’t call them that because it has libs in it
Reminds me of the dolphins from South Park who write tv episodes. We already know all the lines and ideas, they just shuffle them now and then to break up the monotony (but will never help small businesses by breaking up a monopoly)
As a Canadian I think it’s hilarious that anyone thinks Joe Biden is the radical left.
No worries, the Democrats will do what the party does best with a majority - pretty much nothing.
Enough to say “see? We’re better than the other guys”, but not enough to even nudge the status quo.
I wish it was going to be radical left wing. Gimme that socialized internet!
I hate Ted Cruz so much.
That sounds… hawt. Republicans make Democrats sound cool.
Oh boy, I can’t wait for nothing of any measurable significance to happen as a result of this.
BoTh SiDeS aRe ThE sAmE
Tired of this reductionist room temp IQ bullshit.
They both have problems and identifying those issues isn’t claiming they have the same ones or that the issues are equal/pan out.
Republicans are trash because they’re authoritarian, and Democrats are trash because they never follow through with anything or accomplish any kind of actual change.
No one here is trying to say they’re equally bad or bad in the same way, but ignoring the fact that democrats don’t make any attempts at actual change is just being willfully ignorant of their uselessness.
Yep, two sides of the same coin.
NET NEUTRALITY NOW
I hope they don’t fuck this up. It’d be really easy for these incompetent bastards to do something stupid like “all internet traffic must be given the same priority.”
Traffic shaping is important. Certain packets, like those for real time transmission, have to be given priority (think packets for game movement or phone calls or video conferencing) whereas things that can be downloaded or buffered into larger packets (streaming video, file downloads) the packets can be transmitted with lower priority.
The important part of this is the shaping doesn’t happen on a per origin basis, but shaping for purpose is critical. I’m hoping any regulation isn’t the nonsense that was spelled out previously, it’d be a disaster because it’s like the dumb asses didn’t bother to consult actual network engineers before drafting the proposals.
I hope they do it right if they’re gonna do it.
Is Rosenworcel still commissioner? I feel like she’s the only one in recent memory to do something useful with the ‘power’ of the FCC
Dems have the majority? Time for a recess.
Here’s a contrarian hot take. The net neutrality fight is one of those uniquely American issues that simply should not matter, like school shooter drills, complicated tax filings, and tipping. The Wikipedia page on net neutrality in the United States is about as long as War and Peace, yet in most other countries “net neutrality” is not even enshrined as a distinct legal concept and they do just fine.
In the US, net neutrality has not been a general requirement for ISPs since the issue first surfaced over a decade ago, and efforts to enshrine net neutrality into federal law have failed. The dystopia of a balkanized Internet floated by net neutrality campaigners (e.g. ISPs charging people extra to access Netflix) has not come to pass. Yet it’s a live issue because (i) Americans are paranoid about corporations screwing them over, (ii) American corporations have a long history of screwing them over, and (iii) Americans of all camps love waging long and complicated legal battles against each other.
What’s really needed is not net neutrality, but a more competitive ISP market. What the net neutrality fears are really about is ISPs having power over consumers. If only one ISP serves your area, they can screw you over by forcing you to shell out more money to access Netflix or whatever. But government efforts are ultimately better spent increasing market competitiveness, such as setting up “shared fiber” requirements. If there are a bunch of ISPs all competing against each other, “net neutrality” will fall naturally into place simply because none of them want to piss off their customers.
The dystopia of a balkanized Internet floated by net neutrality campaigners (e.g. ISPs charging people extra to access Netflix) has not come to pass.
You may be unaware, but that dystopia already exists today: Mobile service providers (= ISPs for their customers) are selling e.g. WhatsApp traffic quotas separately from other internet traffic. You’ll buy a package, and you’ll get X GB traffic, but Y GB WhatsApp traffic separately, with Y sometimes even being > X.
Meaning in effect that people have to pay more to access the non WhatsApp-Internet, which means “ISP charging people extra to access Netflix” (among other services). It encourages people who have little money to stay in their WhatsApp filter bubble.
In a competitive market, bundling/unbundling is good, not bad. It’s a way for consumers to get a better deal. For example, if a tiny minority of users take up a huge chunk of internet traffic through their use of WhatsApp, bundling WhatsApp separately allows the majority of non-power-users to pay less. If you don’t like it, just jump to the other providers.
It’s under conditions of market power that bundling/unbundling becomes problematic. When your ISP is a monopoly, they can impose bundles on you not because it’s a good way to offer consumer choice, but because it’s a way to stealthily increase prices.
I think you missed my point, being that the absence of net neutrality by legislation has brought us exactly what those promoting such legislation have warned about.
When your ISP is a monopoly
Well look at that, they all are. Next.
Everything you wrote is wrong, firstly because this is not just an American problem and that matters, this stupid economic liberalism has never worked and that’s why everything is the shit it is. The market does not regulate itself, there is no invisible hand of the market, if left alone corporations will fuck consumers and workers to fill the pockets of shareholders. This theory is what gave us Google and Amazon.
This is like when Europeans or people in other countries say, “racism isn’t a problem here, it’s a ‘uniquely American’ problem.” Not because racism doesn’t exist in these other countries, but because these other countries aren’t actually talking about racism and often don’t care about it.
It’s more like saying European schools are not well prepared for school shootings. Indeed they aren’t, and this is in principle a problem, but they’ve settled the issue at a deeper level.
That’s not really true. Emerging internet markets are right to be worried about this too. For example India codified net neutrality just a few years ago.
While more competition in ISPs would prevent this being needed, having the backing of a law is a good fallback.