6 ms·

I'm still trying to grok why ISPs are supposed to treat all customers equally while PayPal, eBay, youtube, GoDaddy, Twitter, etc. are allowed to pick and choose

I'm still trying to grok why ISPs are supposed to treat all customers equally while PayPal, eBay, youtube, GoDaddy, Twitter, etc. are allowed to pick and choose. I'd be more comfortable with the arguments if people were consistent in them.

jamescostian 8y ago
If you get blocked on Twitter, you go to $OTHER_PLATFORM on the internet. If you don't have NN and you get blocked from Twitter, your ISP can also make it so that you can't go to $OTHER_PLATFORM.
- fein 8y ago
  What would this other platform be that provides a similar reach? Freedom of speech isn't just saying what you want while alone on your back patio. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc is the "digital public space". Hell just take a look at what private companies are doing to the attempts at making alternatives: gab is threatened daily, and BitChute keeps getting bumped by payment processors.
  - jamescostian 8y ago
    > Freedom of speech isn't just saying what you want while alone on your back patio. Freedom of speech isn't "You can say what you want on any platform and reach as many people as you want" either. Saying Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube are "digital public space" is akin to saying some sports stadium is a "public space" - yes, big crowds come to them, but they can still escort you off of the field. You can even just try protesting peacefully (in USA) and get a not-so-nice visit from the police. NN can prevent things like an ISP blocking $SOME_PRESIDENTIAL_CANDIDATE_WEBSITE or $ABORTION_CLINIC_WEBSITE or $GUN_STORE_WEBSITE. Not having NN is more like electricity company blocking you from charging Android phones and requiring that you only charge iPhones, or vice-versa.
    - fein 8y ago
      > some sports stadium You can actually go right outside that sports stadium and still have your message heard. If you're banned from Twitter, FB, and YT; you have effectively no voice on the internet. The social media companies that have monopolized public discourse on the internet would be more akin to the whole city being owned by the stadium owners, and that specific scenario has been ruled in favor of the first amendment in the past.
  - moorhosj 8y ago
    ==Freedom of speech isn't just saying what you want while alone on your back patio.== It's also not going onto other people's property and doing whatever you want. Having a successful platform doesn't make them the government.
    - fein 8y ago
      > It's also not going onto other people's property and doing whatever you want. It is when that property is considered the public space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama The internet should be regulated in the same way with defacto monopolies over "public" communications wrt. Twitter, FB, YT, etc.
      - moorhosj 8y ago
        At the bottom of your Wikipedia article there is a more relevant case: "While the Marsh holding at first appears somewhat narrow and inapplicable to the present day due to the disappearance of company towns from the United States, it was raised in the somewhat high-profile 1996 cyberlaw case, Cyber Promotions v. America Online, 948 F. Supp. 436, 442 (E.D. Pa. 1996). Cyber Promotions wished to send out "mass email advertisements" to AOL customers. AOL installed software to block those emails. Cyber Promotions sued on free speech grounds and cited the Marsh case as authority for the proposition that even though AOL's servers were private property, AOL had opened them to the public to a degree sufficient that constitutional free speech protections could be applied. The federal district court disagreed, thereby paving the way for spam filters at the Internet service provider level."
        fein 8y ago
        > A more relevant case So are we deliberately conflating spam with political discourse now? Seriously?
        moorhosj 8y ago
        Not at all, no idea where you got that idea. The discussion is about the right of the government to force private companies to do things with their own property. The AOL case is more relevant because it involves a private internet company and data crossing it's privately held servers, much like Twitter today. The Marsh case involves a company acting like a government, then trying to stifle free speech. Twitter never acted like a government.
titusjohnson 8y ago
I know you're just trolling, but one this is clearly apples and oranges.
- seorphates 8y ago
  But the trolling is a serious problem and more effort needs to go into addressing it directly. This is the stuff that righteous idiots grab a hold of - it's basically an iron buoy thrown to people that can't swim. To top poster: these two things are not the same. They are wholly different classes where at the very base level one cannot exist without the other, literally. One is a utility provisioning and the other an appliance, figuratively.
  - corerius 8y ago
    lol. I guess that I'm a righteous idiot then (ie. someone who might not agree with you). Mostly, the point is that people choose their battles based on bias or their own needs, not some sort of overall logic. I can understand the argument over the various sorts of non-neutrality. A need to bring together cable tv and internet pricing and bandwidth needs, the opportunity to break out fixed and variable pricing on bytes moved, etc. The main point is that it simply isn't as simple as waving a sign around and getting out the vote. Heck, we might as well all get worked up about the fact that the USPS allows you to buy 1 day shipping or that the shipping companies cut special deals with large customers. Another example is toll roads. The world is a complicated place and doesn't succumb well to slogans.
davnicwil 8y ago
The former provide infrastructure that the latter services run on. They are therefore in fundamentally different categories and so different regulations apply. That's why there isn't consistency between them, because they are different things.
- wang_li 8y ago
  The latter largely do not produce their own content and thus are not fundamentally different than what a carrier provides. Why would you say that it's ok for Google to ban Alex Jones from youtube, but not ok for level-3 to do the same? It's a convenient kind of bullshit to draw a line below layer 4 of the ISO stack and say "everything below this line has to be fully neutral, everything above this line can be fully biased and curated". A company that provides their own content, such as Netflix, is very different than providing a platform for other people's content, i.e. Youtube/Twitter/Facebook.
  - asdkhadsj 8y ago
    Because internet is more important than binge watching Netflix. To many of us, we're thinking of it on par with water, electricity, etc. With that said, I would agree that some other services such as information seekers ought to be regulated somehow. Ie, Google/Facebook can do massive harm these days, and their reign of independence is failing here. Another point is that, many companies have previously ran into issues of anti-competitive behavior. This in recent years has become very very lax, too lax I feel. Windows should be providing an equal platform for everyone to run on. They shouldn't be blocking competitors applications (a hypothetical). Same goes for ISPs. My ISP shouldn't block Netflix because the ISP prefers their own media site. To be honest, your objection really confuses me. You seem to argue that ISPs can do whatever they want, because we're inconsistent with other sites/etc. So rather than enforcing other sites, you want to give free reign to ISPs? How does that make sense? I agree consistency is important. Lets fix all abusers, not just ISPs. That should satisfy your argument, no?
    - corerius 8y ago
      "Lets fix all abusers, not just ISPs. That should satisfy your argument, no?" Yes. Of course, people want to build an internet that suits them personally, so there are a million answers.
kovek 8y ago
I think of the internet as a communication technology. It's not simply a product. I think we all agree that everyone should have reasonable access to water (cleaned and distributed), because it is very important, it satisfies very primitive needs. You could see electricity as another one of these technologies we think most people should have reasonable access to, but whose primitive importance situates itself between the importance of access to water technology and the importance of access to information communication technology (the internet). It's great how individuals' humane aspects can develop from access to information and communication technology. It's certainly not a need for a human being, but it's important for helping people grow. I can continue but I think this answers the difference between the importance of information communication technology and the importance of products or services found on the internet.
cirgue 8y ago
Those services all have vibrant competition, your ISP definitely doesn't. The whole point of common carrier regulation is to make sure that industries that are essential to the economy, inherently non-competitive, and impossible to implement effectively as a government service can exist and serve their purpose in society. Youtube/google/fb doesn't fit that definition. There is absolutely competition in that space, and there's little switching cost for individual actors.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Google has almost no competition in several different market categories, and not just regionally, but on a global scale. I have three ISPs which offer about comparable service offerings, and four major wireless carriers. And no wired ISP even can say it has national coverage. Tech monopolies are bigger, they have more money, and they've spent more of that money convincing you ISPs are the big bad. I'm not opposed to regulation, but regulation needs to apply to tech companies as well as ISPs equally. And you'll discover that support for regulation vanishes as soon as that comes into play. People have forgotten that tech companies now also do infrastructure and ISPs now also do services. So when tech companies are trying to get ISPs regulated, they're trying to lock down their competition. (Unsurprisingly, Google Fiber was known for trying to dodge being classifed as a telecommunications company specifically so it wasn't subject to the same regulations it's competitors weer.)
  - fedorareis 8y ago
    You are lucky to have 3 comparable ISPs. In the area where I live each town has at most 2 ISPs. One of them provides DSL and the other cable. This means if you want speeds above about 5Mbps you have 1 choice. We were forced to switch to cable because our DSL provider couldn’t even manage to maintain a consistent connection much less the 5Mbps we were paying for. All this to say there are plenty of places where there is effectively 0 competition between ISPs. On the other hand if I don’t like Facebook I can choose not to use it or I can use another social media platform. If I don’t like Google I can easily use an alternative (at least for all of the consumer products I use from them). I can’t easily go to a new ISP that is comparable if I don’t like my ISP.
_bxg1 8y ago
The ISP's are more important because of their physical locality. It's infinitely easier to create a competitor for Facebook than a competitor for Time Warner (Google, one of the world's most powerful companies, tried and failed). That said, with the amount of ubiquity and sway on society that self-proclaimed platforms like Facebook and Google have started to have, I would not be opposed to regulating some of those as utilities too. But that's a more nuanced issue. The ISP issue is so black and white as to be hilarious, if it weren't so disheartening.
- corerius 8y ago
  It seems to me that I have more choice between ISPs than in auction sites, as an example. The tendency towards monopoly in networks makes all these cases similar I think.
  - _bxg1 8y ago
    Most people have exactly one choice of ISP. If you're lucky, there might be a second one with the same price and 1/10 the speed. Whereas I could go build an auction site myself if I really wanted to. Scaling a business takes work, but the power of software is that it requires no material resources to get started. Laying fiber is not only immensely expensive in and of itself, but ISP's have also lobbied to stack the deck severely against newcomers: https://www.wired.com/2016/09/utility-poles-important-future-internet/ https://www.wired.com/2016/09/utility-poles-important-future...
    - deadmik3 8y ago
      I think the amount of effort and traction you'd get from trying to launch your own auction site to compete with eBay would be about equal to getting a couple shovels and burying some cat5 around your neighborhood to compete with comcast
      - _bxg1 8y ago
        Not if eBay started making extremely anti-consumer choices like Comcast has. At some point it would get to be too much, and competition would step in. We see that starting to happen a bit with Facebook lately, although the network effect there is stronger than with an auction site. But Comcast can do whatever the hell it wants, because nobody can even try to provide a way out.
fivre 8y ago
For consumer-facing eyeball ISPs, in almost all US markets, consumers have an extremely limited set of ISPs to choose from, typically a traditional telephone provider like AT&T or Verizon and a traditional cable provider like Comcast or Cox (if they're lucky enough to have both). As such, those eyeball providers have an effective monopoly, and if I don't like the network policies of my ISP, I have almost no recourse to change them. Those monopoly providers have also consistently lobbied against any challenges to their position: attempts to start a municipal ISP offering services to residents will be strongly challenged by incumbent providers, often to the point of outlawing municipal ISPs entirely at the state level. In contrast, I can very much choose alternate providers for everything else you've listed--I don't like GoDaddy and don't use them for domain registration or hosting, and I had thousands of options to choose from. Twitter is by no means the only social network in town, and has challengers within its specific microblogging niche.
- drdaeman 8y ago
  So, you don't really need a law for AT&T to not policy your traffic, but that you need competitors to be able to enter the market and provide services. Something even Facebook and Google has (although they're quite close to a monopoly) but US ISPs don't. If a service provider starts to do some silly stuff no one wants, there's no reason not to start a competing business, offer service without that silliness and win over the market. Except if entry barriers are too high.
asdkhadsj 8y ago
Do you think your water company should pick and choose? How about your electric company? Maybe they can charge you a higher electric rate during Game of Thrones because they know you want your power more than normal then? etc I don't want a company picking and choosing which bytes of mine are fast or slow. I'm buying byte containers, their job is to ship them. I dictate how fast, and who it gets shipped to. End of deal. Full stop. Any deviation of that is wrong in my book.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  Actually, electric companies already do charge higher rates at different times when demand is higher.
  - elago 8y ago
    I've seen electric companies bill like that to reflect the realities of power generation and usage, but it's applied equally to all consumers of electricity at the time of day. Using 1000w of electricity with a 1950's toaster cost the same as using 1000w of electricity with a 2018 microwave. And hopefully it would cost the same to use 1000w of electricity to power your home server hosting a website that criticizes the local electricity company.
    - asdkhadsj 8y ago
      > And hopefully it would cost the same to use 1000w of electricity to power your home server hosting a website that criticizes the local electricity company. Yea, I think this is the most important thing.
  - onemoresoop 8y ago
    Yes, but electric companies don't charge differently for different appliances that one is using (they couldn't know anyway), but it's applying those high peak rates globally and indiscriminately. The problem with internet post net neutrality is that internet providers could pick and choose based on what service one uses. And we all know that internet providers try to be something else besides moving the byte across the network. They want to be telcos, they want a share of the media and grab whatever they could get their hands on. Net neutrality, from my understanding, attempted to prevent just that. I would be OK with whatever speed I want to purchase and be stuck with that speed no matter what content I am choosing to consume. And in high demand if they chose to charge higher rates indiscriminately I'd be OK with that. If their pipes are at full capacity they should charge more but indiscriminately!

jamescostian 8y ago

If you get blocked on Twitter, you go to $OTHER_PLATFORM on the internet. If you don't have NN and you get blocked from Twitter, your ISP can also make it so that you can't go to $OTHER_PLATFORM.

fein 8y ago
What would this other platform be that provides a similar reach? Freedom of speech isn't just saying what you want while alone on your back patio. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc is the "digital public space". Hell just take a look at what private companies are doing to the attempts at making alternatives: gab is threatened daily, and BitChute keeps getting bumped by payment processors.
- jamescostian 8y ago
  > Freedom of speech isn't just saying what you want while alone on your back patio. Freedom of speech isn't "You can say what you want on any platform and reach as many people as you want" either. Saying Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube are "digital public space" is akin to saying some sports stadium is a "public space" - yes, big crowds come to them, but they can still escort you off of the field. You can even just try protesting peacefully (in USA) and get a not-so-nice visit from the police. NN can prevent things like an ISP blocking $SOME_PRESIDENTIAL_CANDIDATE_WEBSITE or $ABORTION_CLINIC_WEBSITE or $GUN_STORE_WEBSITE. Not having NN is more like electricity company blocking you from charging Android phones and requiring that you only charge iPhones, or vice-versa.
  - fein 8y ago
    > some sports stadium You can actually go right outside that sports stadium and still have your message heard. If you're banned from Twitter, FB, and YT; you have effectively no voice on the internet. The social media companies that have monopolized public discourse on the internet would be more akin to the whole city being owned by the stadium owners, and that specific scenario has been ruled in favor of the first amendment in the past.
- moorhosj 8y ago
  ==Freedom of speech isn't just saying what you want while alone on your back patio.== It's also not going onto other people's property and doing whatever you want. Having a successful platform doesn't make them the government.
  - fein 8y ago
    > It's also not going onto other people's property and doing whatever you want. It is when that property is considered the public space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama The internet should be regulated in the same way with defacto monopolies over "public" communications wrt. Twitter, FB, YT, etc.
    - moorhosj 8y ago
      At the bottom of your Wikipedia article there is a more relevant case: "While the Marsh holding at first appears somewhat narrow and inapplicable to the present day due to the disappearance of company towns from the United States, it was raised in the somewhat high-profile 1996 cyberlaw case, Cyber Promotions v. America Online, 948 F. Supp. 436, 442 (E.D. Pa. 1996). Cyber Promotions wished to send out "mass email advertisements" to AOL customers. AOL installed software to block those emails. Cyber Promotions sued on free speech grounds and cited the Marsh case as authority for the proposition that even though AOL's servers were private property, AOL had opened them to the public to a degree sufficient that constitutional free speech protections could be applied. The federal district court disagreed, thereby paving the way for spam filters at the Internet service provider level."
      - fein 8y ago
        > A more relevant case So are we deliberately conflating spam with political discourse now? Seriously?
        moorhosj 8y ago
        Not at all, no idea where you got that idea. The discussion is about the right of the government to force private companies to do things with their own property. The AOL case is more relevant because it involves a private internet company and data crossing it's privately held servers, much like Twitter today. The Marsh case involves a company acting like a government, then trying to stifle free speech. Twitter never acted like a government.

titusjohnson 8y ago

I know you're just trolling, but one this is clearly apples and oranges.

seorphates 8y ago
But the trolling is a serious problem and more effort needs to go into addressing it directly. This is the stuff that righteous idiots grab a hold of - it's basically an iron buoy thrown to people that can't swim. To top poster: these two things are not the same. They are wholly different classes where at the very base level one cannot exist without the other, literally. One is a utility provisioning and the other an appliance, figuratively.
- corerius 8y ago
  lol. I guess that I'm a righteous idiot then (ie. someone who might not agree with you). Mostly, the point is that people choose their battles based on bias or their own needs, not some sort of overall logic. I can understand the argument over the various sorts of non-neutrality. A need to bring together cable tv and internet pricing and bandwidth needs, the opportunity to break out fixed and variable pricing on bytes moved, etc. The main point is that it simply isn't as simple as waving a sign around and getting out the vote. Heck, we might as well all get worked up about the fact that the USPS allows you to buy 1 day shipping or that the shipping companies cut special deals with large customers. Another example is toll roads. The world is a complicated place and doesn't succumb well to slogans.

davnicwil 8y ago

The former provide infrastructure that the latter services run on. They are therefore in fundamentally different categories and so different regulations apply. That's why there isn't consistency between them, because they are different things.

wang_li 8y ago
The latter largely do not produce their own content and thus are not fundamentally different than what a carrier provides. Why would you say that it's ok for Google to ban Alex Jones from youtube, but not ok for level-3 to do the same? It's a convenient kind of bullshit to draw a line below layer 4 of the ISO stack and say "everything below this line has to be fully neutral, everything above this line can be fully biased and curated". A company that provides their own content, such as Netflix, is very different than providing a platform for other people's content, i.e. Youtube/Twitter/Facebook.
- asdkhadsj 8y ago
  Because internet is more important than binge watching Netflix. To many of us, we're thinking of it on par with water, electricity, etc. With that said, I would agree that some other services such as information seekers ought to be regulated somehow. Ie, Google/Facebook can do massive harm these days, and their reign of independence is failing here. Another point is that, many companies have previously ran into issues of anti-competitive behavior. This in recent years has become very very lax, too lax I feel. Windows should be providing an equal platform for everyone to run on. They shouldn't be blocking competitors applications (a hypothetical). Same goes for ISPs. My ISP shouldn't block Netflix because the ISP prefers their own media site. To be honest, your objection really confuses me. You seem to argue that ISPs can do whatever they want, because we're inconsistent with other sites/etc. So rather than enforcing other sites, you want to give free reign to ISPs? How does that make sense? I agree consistency is important. Lets fix all abusers, not just ISPs. That should satisfy your argument, no?
  - corerius 8y ago
    "Lets fix all abusers, not just ISPs. That should satisfy your argument, no?" Yes. Of course, people want to build an internet that suits them personally, so there are a million answers.

kovek 8y ago

I think of the internet as a communication technology. It's not simply a product. I think we all agree that everyone should have reasonable access to water (cleaned and distributed), because it is very important, it satisfies very primitive needs. You could see electricity as another one of these technologies we think most people should have reasonable access to, but whose primitive importance situates itself between the importance of access to water technology and the importance of access to information communication technology (the internet). It's great how individuals' humane aspects can develop from access to information and communication technology. It's certainly not a need for a human being, but it's important for helping people grow. I can continue but I think this answers the difference between the importance of information communication technology and the importance of products or services found on the internet.

cirgue 8y ago

Those services all have vibrant competition, your ISP definitely doesn't. The whole point of common carrier regulation is to make sure that industries that are essential to the economy, inherently non-competitive, and impossible to implement effectively as a government service can exist and serve their purpose in society. Youtube/google/fb doesn't fit that definition. There is absolutely competition in that space, and there's little switching cost for individual actors.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Google has almost no competition in several different market categories, and not just regionally, but on a global scale. I have three ISPs which offer about comparable service offerings, and four major wireless carriers. And no wired ISP even can say it has national coverage. Tech monopolies are bigger, they have more money, and they've spent more of that money convincing you ISPs are the big bad. I'm not opposed to regulation, but regulation needs to apply to tech companies as well as ISPs equally. And you'll discover that support for regulation vanishes as soon as that comes into play. People have forgotten that tech companies now also do infrastructure and ISPs now also do services. So when tech companies are trying to get ISPs regulated, they're trying to lock down their competition. (Unsurprisingly, Google Fiber was known for trying to dodge being classifed as a telecommunications company specifically so it wasn't subject to the same regulations it's competitors weer.)
- fedorareis 8y ago
  You are lucky to have 3 comparable ISPs. In the area where I live each town has at most 2 ISPs. One of them provides DSL and the other cable. This means if you want speeds above about 5Mbps you have 1 choice. We were forced to switch to cable because our DSL provider couldn’t even manage to maintain a consistent connection much less the 5Mbps we were paying for. All this to say there are plenty of places where there is effectively 0 competition between ISPs. On the other hand if I don’t like Facebook I can choose not to use it or I can use another social media platform. If I don’t like Google I can easily use an alternative (at least for all of the consumer products I use from them). I can’t easily go to a new ISP that is comparable if I don’t like my ISP.

_bxg1 8y ago

The ISP's are more important because of their physical locality. It's infinitely easier to create a competitor for Facebook than a competitor for Time Warner (Google, one of the world's most powerful companies, tried and failed). That said, with the amount of ubiquity and sway on society that self-proclaimed platforms like Facebook and Google have started to have, I would not be opposed to regulating some of those as utilities too. But that's a more nuanced issue. The ISP issue is so black and white as to be hilarious, if it weren't so disheartening.

corerius 8y ago
It seems to me that I have more choice between ISPs than in auction sites, as an example. The tendency towards monopoly in networks makes all these cases similar I think.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  Most people have exactly one choice of ISP. If you're lucky, there might be a second one with the same price and 1/10 the speed. Whereas I could go build an auction site myself if I really wanted to. Scaling a business takes work, but the power of software is that it requires no material resources to get started. Laying fiber is not only immensely expensive in and of itself, but ISP's have also lobbied to stack the deck severely against newcomers: https://www.wired.com/2016/09/utility-poles-important-future-internet/ https://www.wired.com/2016/09/utility-poles-important-future...
  - deadmik3 8y ago
    I think the amount of effort and traction you'd get from trying to launch your own auction site to compete with eBay would be about equal to getting a couple shovels and burying some cat5 around your neighborhood to compete with comcast
    - _bxg1 8y ago
      Not if eBay started making extremely anti-consumer choices like Comcast has. At some point it would get to be too much, and competition would step in. We see that starting to happen a bit with Facebook lately, although the network effect there is stronger than with an auction site. But Comcast can do whatever the hell it wants, because nobody can even try to provide a way out.

fivre 8y ago

For consumer-facing eyeball ISPs, in almost all US markets, consumers have an extremely limited set of ISPs to choose from, typically a traditional telephone provider like AT&T or Verizon and a traditional cable provider like Comcast or Cox (if they're lucky enough to have both). As such, those eyeball providers have an effective monopoly, and if I don't like the network policies of my ISP, I have almost no recourse to change them. Those monopoly providers have also consistently lobbied against any challenges to their position: attempts to start a municipal ISP offering services to residents will be strongly challenged by incumbent providers, often to the point of outlawing municipal ISPs entirely at the state level. In contrast, I can very much choose alternate providers for everything else you've listed--I don't like GoDaddy and don't use them for domain registration or hosting, and I had thousands of options to choose from. Twitter is by no means the only social network in town, and has challengers within its specific microblogging niche.

drdaeman 8y ago
So, you don't really need a law for AT&T to not policy your traffic, but that you need competitors to be able to enter the market and provide services. Something even Facebook and Google has (although they're quite close to a monopoly) but US ISPs don't. If a service provider starts to do some silly stuff no one wants, there's no reason not to start a competing business, offer service without that silliness and win over the market. Except if entry barriers are too high.

asdkhadsj 8y ago

Do you think your water company should pick and choose? How about your electric company? Maybe they can charge you a higher electric rate during Game of Thrones because they know you want your power more than normal then? etc I don't want a company picking and choosing which bytes of mine are fast or slow. I'm buying byte containers, their job is to ship them. I dictate how fast, and who it gets shipped to. End of deal. Full stop. Any deviation of that is wrong in my book.

umanwizard 8y ago
Actually, electric companies already do charge higher rates at different times when demand is higher.
- elago 8y ago
  I've seen electric companies bill like that to reflect the realities of power generation and usage, but it's applied equally to all consumers of electricity at the time of day. Using 1000w of electricity with a 1950's toaster cost the same as using 1000w of electricity with a 2018 microwave. And hopefully it would cost the same to use 1000w of electricity to power your home server hosting a website that criticizes the local electricity company.
  - asdkhadsj 8y ago
    > And hopefully it would cost the same to use 1000w of electricity to power your home server hosting a website that criticizes the local electricity company. Yea, I think this is the most important thing.
- onemoresoop 8y ago
  Yes, but electric companies don't charge differently for different appliances that one is using (they couldn't know anyway), but it's applying those high peak rates globally and indiscriminately. The problem with internet post net neutrality is that internet providers could pick and choose based on what service one uses. And we all know that internet providers try to be something else besides moving the byte across the network. They want to be telcos, they want a share of the media and grab whatever they could get their hands on. Net neutrality, from my understanding, attempted to prevent just that. I would be OK with whatever speed I want to purchase and be stuck with that speed no matter what content I am choosing to consume. And in high demand if they chose to charge higher rates indiscriminately I'd be OK with that. If their pipes are at full capacity they should charge more but indiscriminately!