Net Neutrality, good bye internet.

So the greedy corporations have won, and successfully repealed net neutrality.

Net neutrality repeal means your internet may never be the same

Which means endless paywalls and micro transactions just to access what had been free. Does this mean the end of the internet age? Will people go back to the old ways of the old days (pre-80's)? I certainly will if it gets as bad as I suspect it will. Your thoughts and comments appreciated.


As per @Kapalika request.


"As companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast acquire more online content like video, they could give their own services priority on their networks, squeezing out competitors and limiting what you could access. This might mean fewer startups get a shot at becoming the next Facebook, Netflix or YouTube. Ultimately, it could lead to your internet experience looking more like cable TV, where all the content is curated by your provider.


Some critics also fear this control could lead to higher prices. And groups such as the ACLU say it could affect your First Amendment right to free speech as big companies control more of what you experience online."

A year ago they predicted....'
Hillary was a shoe in.
Trump would be Hitler.
The press would no longer be free.

And now....
The end of the internet.

I'll wager that a year from now, the internet will be just fine.

Enoch07 said:

So the greedy corporations have won, and successfully repealed net neutrality.

Net neutrality repeal means your internet may never be the same

Which means endless paywalls and micro transactions just to access what had been free. Does this mean the end of the internet age? Will people go back to the old ways of the old days (pre-80's)? I certainly will if it gets as bad as I suspect it will. Your thoughts and comments appreciated.

Click to expand...

Email tax is next.

Revoltingest said:

I'll wager that a year from now, the internet will be just fine.

Click to expand...

Well you are actually probably correct, because the phrase 'Net Neutrality' is actually a political buzzword. "The well-funded Net Neutrality campaign in the US is strongly backed (and funded) by internet content and services companies." (see link here). The term something is described with is not necessarily what it is.

The argument for the 'Net Neutrality' is that the FCC should force speeds to be the same, however it is possible that "We're projecting a utopian political concept into a place it doesn't belong" (same link).

I get that the current FCC director is a Republican appointee etc., however that does not mean that he's incorrect about this. The internet is not fully developed. It has to keep changing, and that means its not done. Its not ready to be locked into a particular way of being, yet. It needs to develop.

Revoltingest said:

I'll wager that a year from now, the internet will be just fine.

Click to expand...

But it's real this time!

I am just concerned because corporate greed hasn't give me a reason not to.

Revoltingest said:

A year ago they predicted....'
Hillary was a shoe in.
Trump would be Hitler.
The press would no longer be free.

And now....
The end of the internet.

I'll wager that a year from now, the internet will be just fine.

Click to expand...

Only time will tell. Nothing to do now but wait and see.

But, wait! There is something you can do...

Brickjectivity said:

Email tax is next.

Click to expand...

Internet Tax Freedom Act - Wikipedia

This stops that for now.

Willamena said:

But, wait! There is something you can do...

Click to expand...

I plan to post on RF...& a few other places.

I'm more concerned about censorship since net neutrality stops ISPs from both blocking sites as well as throttling you going to that site.

So not only could they say, throttle your speed if you wanted to go to religiousforums.com and make you pay $10 a month to access it and some other forums, but they could totally block it and other sites if it was competition for them.

Which is exactly why so many cable companies want to get rid of net neutrality. They want to not only sell their cable packages but want to wipe out youtube, netflix, hulu, and many others from competition. And then turn the rest of the internet into basically cable tv by selling them as packages. It's crony capitalism and will destroy the free market of the internet.

This isn't just anti-consumer it's anti-capitalism and anti-freedom because it will crush the millions of private sites and small company "mom and pop" businesses online (or whatever you want to call them). Anyone who freelances or sells things online will be crushed unless they sign up with some big corporation that will now take a big slice of their cake and they will need to pay extra so that you can even access their site at a reasonable speed assuming the ISP for some reason didn't decide to block any random sites "not in your package".

Net Neutrality stops all of that from happening. It isn't some vague thing. It's literally the only thing that for a very long time that has kept the internet open and accessible and a bastion of free speech. Now all of that is threatened. The 2015 rules just solidified what was already practice since the birth of the internet when pressure to change things came down hard.

Willamena said:

But, wait! There is something you can do...

Click to expand...

lol brilliant

The FCC chairman is lying when he says it's hurting innovation, like a bold face obvious lie to anyone who has enough understanding. The same cable companies that are banding together against net neutrality are the same ones that have been opposing development of municipal internet and the laying of new infrastructure by other companies or sharing of it among groups.

They don't want the internet to be classified as a utility, which at this point in it's importance... I mean every single job I know either requires or greatly prefers an online application, when I went to college a third of my classes had to be online and I had to apply, do my FASFA online and almost all the government related stuff I need to do has to be online. Most of my business is online as are many other people's. The internet has been much more important than landlines in a very long time and even actual telephone calls. All my banking is online even.

Datacaps have already been proven to be total BS and not affect the network (network congestion is totally different, and temporary throttling makes sense there) and they want the ability to "experiment" with business models around that more. In other words they mean they want to not count using THEIR cable services and online streaming towards your cap, AND charge you to use netflix, youtube, hulu ect AND count it towards your imaginary cap that does nothing. To stop competition.

Ya, it's that bad. I've been following this for years. This is really what it comes down to, anti consumerism and crony capitalism.

OP try putting this in the first post, from the article since we know often times people don't bother to read a link:

"As companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast acquire more online content like video, they could give their own services priority on their networks, squeezing out competitors and limiting what you could access. This might mean fewer startups get a shot at becoming the next Facebook, Netflix or YouTube. Ultimately, it could lead to your internet experience looking more like cable TV, where all the content is curated by your provider.


Some critics also fear this control could lead to higher prices. And groups such as the ACLU say it could affect your First Amendment right to free speech as big companies control more of what you experience online."

Enoch07 said:

So the greedy corporations have won, and successfully repealed net neutrality.

Net neutrality repeal means your internet may never be the same

Which means endless paywalls and micro transactions just to access what had been free. Does this mean the end of the internet age? Will people go back to the old ways of the old days (pre-80's)? I certainly will if it gets as bad as I suspect it will. Your thoughts and comments appreciated.

Click to expand...

Their greed is beyond imagination. If they shut us down so as to make things uninteresting, it will hurt business in a big way. There are a great many people who rely heavily for everything on the net who will not be able to afford it if things become too controlled with payments, etc.

I only read a little news on Yahoo. If I had to pay for that, I wouldn't care if they dropped an atomic bomb on some capital or not. Things are already going to hell in hand basket as far as I see it.

If things get too bad, I'll take my kayak out a few miles and see how quickly I can drown. At least, some fish would get back a little from all we have stolen from them. Next time you have sushi, it might contain a few cells from an old geezer. Yuck!

Revoltingest said:

I plan to post on RF...& a few other places.

Click to expand...

But will you do it when RF is not favored by your ISP and access speed is cut 75% unless you pay extra?

Such things like this are driving me further and further away from capitalism-as-we-know-it and more into radical government action to destroy large corporate dominance of the economy. For one, I want to see a corporate 'death penalty' enacted if a corporation is a person or corporate personhood abolished.

sunrise123 said:

But will you do it when RF is not favored by your ISP and access speed is cut 75% unless you pay extra?

Such things like this are driving me further and further away from capitalism-as-we-know-it and more into radical government action to destroy large corporate dominance of the economy. For one, I want to see a corporate 'death penalty' enacted if a corporation is a person or corporate personhood abolished.

Click to expand...

I'm reminded of a friend.
He tends to base decisions & beliefs on worst case scenarios...
Planning to live in a northern rural compound for when society goes all Mad Max.
I caution him to plan for what's likely instead of what's possible, eg, inflation,
personal aging issues. Don't solve unlikely problems in a way which will result
in solutions which generate likely problems.

Kapalika said:

OP try putting this in the first post, from the article since we know often times people don't bother to read a link:

"As companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast acquire more online content like video, they could give their own services priority on their networks, squeezing out competitors and limiting what you could access. This might mean fewer startups get a shot at becoming the next Facebook, Netflix or YouTube. Ultimately, it could lead to your internet experience looking more like cable TV, where all the content is curated by your provider.


Some critics also fear this control could lead to higher prices. And groups such as the ACLU say it could affect your First Amendment right to free speech as big companies control more of what you experience online."

Click to expand...

I'll admit this is my primary concern. Those who control the information control thought. Already corporations like Google make searches of some content impossible to find using their browser or search engine. The end of net neutrality would give them the legal means to take it one step further. Its not the end of the world by any means, but it is one step closer to a Orwellian dystopian world.

Revoltingest said:

I'm reminded of a friend.
He tends to base decisions & beliefs on worst case scenarios...
Planning to live in a northern rural compound for when society goes all Mad Max.
I caution him to plan for what's likely instead of what's possible, eg, inflation,
personal aging issues. Don't solve unlikely problems in a way which will result
in solutions which generate likely problems.

Click to expand...

The odds I'll get my wish are about equal to the odds you'll get yours. I feel totally free to enjoy my fantasies.

sunrise123 said:

But will you do it when RF is not favored by your ISP and access speed is cut 75% unless you pay extra?

Such things like this are driving me further and further away from capitalism-as-we-know-it and more into radical government action to destroy large corporate dominance of the economy. For one, I want to see a corporate 'death penalty' enacted if a corporation is a person or corporate personhood abolished.

Click to expand...

Personally, I think Americans have forgotten their history. We had nearly unbridled capitalism in this county before, it was devastating and the reason things like socialist values, worker rights and consumer protection was enacted and embraced. All anyone has to do is just pickup an American history book and start reading, the need to keep capitalism balanced by what the Right often considers "socialism" is clear to anyone with reason.

Jeremiahcp said:

Personally, I think Americans have forgotten their history. We had nearly unbridled capitalism in this county before, it was devastating and the reason things like socialist values, worker rights and consumer protection was enacted and embraced. All anyone has to do is just pickup an American history book and start reading, the need to keep capitalism balanced by what the Right often considers "socialism" is clear to anyone with reason.

Click to expand...

Great point. The pendulum will swing again hopefully starting next year.