Setting an example... (net neutrality)

How is that different to people paying for slow and fast internet access. If I pay for 100Mb download speeds, which is sufficient to watch Netflix and then they want to charge me extra for watching an internet site that requires high download speeds.

How is that not double dipping?

Still waiting for an explanation of how big tech isn’t the private sector. :sleeping:

Well, different issue again. Personally I think Internet packages are dishonestly marketed, but that might be because the ISPs know most people don’t know the difference between ‘Mb’ and ‘Mbps’ (:wink:) and would therefore be confused if they were more explicit.

The Mbps figure they offer you is the maximum theoretical bandwidth of your point-to-point link. They cannot possibly offer you any guaranteed bandwidth upstream, mainly because so much of it is out of their control. If (as IbisWtf said) they were more upfront about exactly what you get - say, giving you estimates of peak availability of the upstream pipe from your local hub - people might accept throttled connections for what they are, ie., an attempt to get maximum capacity from a limited resource.

If you think that censorship in the private sector should be allowed, then blessings to you :innocent:

Not at all. But I didn’t see it in Ibby’s paradox.

However, you probably wouldn’t like it if the government started telling you what you’re allowed to do with your private property and what you’re not.

Oh, the horror. The government says you can’t throw rocks at other people’s windows, even if they’re your own rocks from your own property. I’m crying an ocean right now. :sob:

What does that even mean? State censorship or self censorship?

(If there’s no clear answer I’ll have to call the GE.)

Inappropriate reductio ad absurdum, mainly because your example involves damage to other people’s property.

Telling network operators they can’t optimize their bandwidth usage is like telling you that you can’t use your washing machine during off-peak electricity periods.

How is it a different issue? Say you’re getting what you pay for, you’re happy with it. If suddenly they started saying you get 100MB but Netflix isn’t included - you need to pay extra - that is a load of crap. The concept that 100MB is actually 12.5 MB/s is irrelevant to the issue here.

It’s all about how your actions affect other people. It’s just more obvious when it’s a rock and a window.

If what you do with your electronic devices had no effect on other people, it would be the archetypal tree falling in the woods.

I agree. It’s a load of crap. My point was that the ‘100Mbps’ number is a stupid way of describing what they’re delivering. It’s completely meaningless.

If the ISP were to sell packages with different throttles, the accurate way to market them would be to show graphs of average and peak available bandwidth up to the local backbone. That would go waaay over most people’s heads, so the next best thing would be to do exactly as depicted in kelake’s graphic: pick the package which suits the services you use most.

Google, YT, Facebook and Twitter all apply “soft censorship”, hiding certain results from searches, or making some videos not show up even if you’re subscribed to a channel, making posts from some FB pages not appear to followers and deciding which users get verified and have their Tweets at the top, regardless of other factors.

This shouldn’t be allowed because they’re preventing people from accessing information on the bases that the information may be “problematic”.

It’s a completely different issue from ISPs throttling data to reduce the bandwidth usage of some websites/services that use large amounts of data.
If the new regulations will be used to apply “soft bans” to some websites, like:“Oh you were trying to access the Washington Post? Sorry the connection is messy, have a look at Russia Today instead” then I will have the same problem with it.

I’m not sure how you can go all:“IBBY’S PARADOX, CHECKMATE”, comparing internet censorship to data throttling. Before 2015 carriers often (always?) applied data throttling, people just didn’t know and/or didn’t care about it.

As long as tax-funded public right of way is used for laying fiber optic cable, the backbone of the Internet, and only so many cables can be accommodated there’s a clear public interest in determining what information is carried on that cable infrastructure and under what rules:

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But how does that make sense with the “customers will go elsewhere!” mentality? ISP decides that Netflix, Google, whatever, will cost extra. Customers will go from business A to business B.

Google, twitter, youtube, facebook - they don’t give priority to comments/posts/media I like! CENSORSHIP!

No no no no no, you just have to switch from company A to company B, don’t you?

Yep, private sector. Go ahead, call it (self) censorship. No argument from me.

This shouldn’t be allowed because they’re preventing people from accessing information on the bases that the information may be “problematic”.

It shouldn’t be allowed, you say? Oh, so you want the state to intervene. Censorship! Tyranny! :runaway:

It’s a completely different issue from ISPs throttling data to reduce the bandwidth usage of some websites/services that use large amounts of data.

Private sector again, but you don’t perceive it as part of the Illuminati Agenda™ (yet), so you’re okay with it. A law preventing it though, you seem to be calling that tyranny (or as Finsky would say, the government telling you what you can and can’t do! :scream:)

Yes, I call it Ibby’s Paradox. If Finley wants to share the credit, I’m willing to rename it. :slight_smile:

censoring content =/= reducing bandwidth

I still fail to understand how the two can be compared.

I’m not convinced the censoring you’re talking about is as bad as alarmists would have you believe. Twitter, for example, just have an algorithm that removes spam and posts from bots. If your post is removed, you’d be well within your rights to ask them to reinstate it and I think they would. If you’re talking about individual posters being banned, you may look into their reasons for being banned.

The most you could say about twitter is they perhaps give extra weight to hashtags they agree with. Possibly. In that context, it could be easily compared with reducing bandwidth.

Not that any of this is going to change anybody else’s minds. We’re all just shouting at brick walls, essentially.

Yes, I think that people should be able to access all sources of information, and media outlets (press, social media, YT etc etc) shouldn’t apply some form of censorship because they decide that some things are “problematic”.

Throttling data, which has been going on until 2015, is a very different thing, and I still fail to see how they can be compared.

What if they decide we deserve to be throttled because we’re “problematic”?

Well, lets start by removing that “perhaps”, since the hashtag meddling is a thing that has been going on for years now. They recently started to remove the certified tag from previously certified users in order to make them become invisible, as certified users can hide the content from non-certified ones. And I’m talking about really popular people. While at the same time, accounts of random people who just happen to receive a lot of likes because they follow a narrative that Twitter likes, receive the certified status. The same thing happens on FB, YT and in Google searches. Just yesterday I thought I was having an aneurysm when I opened Youtube; the homepage was showing me a video from one of my subscriptions, yet when I opened the subs page that video wasn’t there. It happens all the time to content creators who for some reason are considered “problematic”.

“Well, you can switch to Minds or other social media platforms”, true, but media platforms, be it a social media or news outlet, shouldn’t be allowed to exist in a grey area where they can select the kind of news and information that are available to the public. We don’t live in China or North Korea, and I don’t care about the:“We do it to protect you from fake news!!1” argument, that’s idiotic. The press and social media should be free from the state, but at the same time they have the responsibility of providing people with all the information, not just some.

I think it was a Google employee who in an interview proudly said:“We’re not censoring people, we’re just making sure that some things don’t show up in search results!”. That’s not throttling data to reduce the bandwidth, and if you were able to use the internet in 2015 and live a decent life, I doubt you’ll notice a huge difference in the coming future.

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No problem, nothing says you gotta use them! Let the free market decide!

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