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Where's the meaningful action against ISP's? In my opinion, ISP monopolies and collusion cause orders of magnitude more consumer harm than FAANG by a lot. If on

Where's the meaningful action against ISP's? In my opinion, ISP monopolies and collusion cause orders of magnitude more consumer harm than FAANG by a lot. If one is truly interested in helping out consumers, start with the less flashy lawsuits against monopolies that do more direct consumer harm than FAANG. Starting with FAANG (in my opinion) betrays the true motivation of this action which is political theater instead of meaningful action.

throw8383833jj 5y ago
Yes. There are alternatives to using facebook and especially instagram. But, when it comes to your ISP, there is no alternative and that makes ISPs a much bigger threat and much more harmful to society. It's especially egregious that ISPs bribe politicians and engage in rent seeking behavior, something we don't see much of from Facebook. i mean, sure facebook isn't ideal but it's also not the biggest foe we need to worry about.
bradknowles 5y ago
With respect, “whataboutism” doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t also solve the problem of Fuckerberg and whatever he’s calling his latest sneeze machine.
encryptluks2 5y ago
Thank you. I always bring this up. Politicians like targeting things that they gripe about being excluded from to get more votes, but there are much more serious problems that they are ignoring.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  Because they don't actually care about helping anyone besides themselves. Both sides of the aisle, its all just posturing to maintain power
gilgamesh3 5y ago
IMHO Visa and Mastercard duopoly are way more powerful than other companies like Facebook or Google. In the end, people still need to pay for services and they use credit cards to pay for it. If Mastercard or Visa don't want a service do exist, they can simply block it and then people won't be able to use the service. The recent OnlyFans and PornHub controversies prove my point. OnlyFans was in the verge of banning explicit porn in their plataform. https://www.protocol.com/policy/onlyfans-visa-mastercard https://www.protocol.com/policy/onlyfans-visa-mastercard
- bradknowles 5y ago
  With respect, “whataboutism” doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t also solve the problem of Fuckerberg and whatever he’s calling his latest sneeze machine.
- steelstraw 5y ago
  Chamath argued in a recent episode of the All in Podcast that Visa and Mastercard are going to get wrecked soon, as it becomes apparent they are an unnecessary trillion dollar parasite on the economy. They add a 2-3% tax on every transaction and can block people out at will, as you note. But now we increasingly have cheaper alternatives that are also censorship resistant.
  - notdemo88 5y ago
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    > But now we increasingly have cheaper alternatives that are also censorship resistant I really hope you're not referring to crypto.
    - hda2 5y ago
      It exists. It works. And governments, companies, and individuals have started to adopt it for real transactions (rather that speculation). The ship has already sailed. Get over it.
Retric 5y ago
Modern Cellular and Starlink are actually bringing some real competition. For the average consumer a Tablet with unlimited data on any major network crushes DSL’s speeds and cost. Starlink is still rolling out, but I suspect it will keep cell networks honest and they both will end up keeping wired ISP’s honest.
- Brendinooo 5y ago
  This is a good point; if I recall, the Sirius/XM merger was allowed to proceed because, even though that created a monopoly in satellite radio, they were competing in a broader landscape.
- Jaepa 5y ago
  Its worth mentioning that both LEO & WISP are explicitly not include in net neutrality provisions. That being said any net neutrality provisions outside of CA is kind of up in the air right now so I don't know if that really matters.
orev 5y ago
A few years ago when Net Neutrality was a big topic, there was a lot of focus on them. At some point I felt the news cycle was being manipulated as ISPs kept pointing fingers (and I suspect increased their lobbying budget) at FAANG that they were just as bad, if not worse. “Why should we be subject to regulations when these other Internet companies aren’t!”, completely ignoring that there’s a huge difference between the utility companies who provide the actual Internet connection vs ones who provide services via a web site. Evidently most people seem to have taken the bait, and everyone stopped caring that ISPs are tracking and selling every DNS query you make from their networks.
- Const-me 5y ago
  Over the last few years, most of the internet upgraded to TLS. This technological shift made it much harder, and in many cases borderline impossible, for ISPs to mess with the traffic.
  - orev 5y ago
    That’s why I mentioned DNS queries, as those are/were not protected by TLS. This behavior is one of the major reasons browsers pushed so hard for DNS over HTTPS.
    - Const-me 5y ago
      Yeah, but I’m pretty sure DNS over HTTPS will become default in a couple of years. I don’t believe the government should spend taxpayer’s money fighting a problem which will soon disappear automatically, regardless of their [in]actions.
- ummonk 5y ago
  By the way, if you haven't already you should enable DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS. Hopefully device providers make it standard sooner rather than later and eliminate insecure DNS.
DesiLurker 5y ago
I'd rather them do this and then go after ISPs too than give a free pass to both because of such whataboutism based criticism.
the-dude 5y ago
What is the actual harm? I can choose between copper, coax and fiber and there are at least multiple providers on the copper. Prices are reasonable and speeds are good.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  > I can choose between copper, coax and fiber and there are at least multiple providers on the copper. Your experience is unusual; I don't think I've ever lived anywhere with more than 2 options, and surprising chunks of the USA have fewer.
  - ksdale 5y ago
    Yeah, in most of the places I've lived, I've only had one choice, and it's been quite expensive for the quality.
- lp0_on_fire 5y ago
  Many places in the United States don't have the luxury. I'm in a county of half a million people and there are are basically two options: Comcast cable (which is decently fast for downloads) and a variety of resellers who all run on Verizon's DSL network. No fiber options unless I want to give Comcast the blood of my firstborn and then pay $300 a month for the privilege. Verizon has been promising fiber "any day now" for the past 10 years.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    My street also only got fiber this year. What is the actual harm / collusion? You can choose from a wide variety of ISPs, which are decent to your own admission, but the harm is it is not fiber ? Cry me a river.
    - lostdog 5y ago
      Most places in the US only have a single ISP option. There's a word that describes this situation that rhymes with "phonopoly."
arrosenberg 5y ago
My more charitable take is that they are trying to pick a fight they can win based on the political and legal landscape. Antitrust enforcement has been weakened, diminished, and atrophied since the Borkism infected both political parties in the late 70s and early 80s. As such, they have to pick their early battles careful in order to gain experience, figure out which strategies can prevail in court, in public opinion, etc. We all want to see them take on the big fight with monopolists like the ISPs, but no one has more experience fighting antitrust action. The current set of DOJ lawyers and federal judges are not the ones who broke up ATT in the 50s and 80s, they're going to have to rebuild the foundation of antitrust enforcement.
- namelessoracle 5y ago
  The current set of lawyers and judges and officials for this are political appointees one and all, and will only pick fights on behalf of the political faction. The current detente was only because "each side" had their pet companies. Facebook has messed up in that managed to anger both sides of the political spectrum. They foolishly thought they could thread a needle here. Now one side is going to make an example of them. The best we can hope is that the other side will make an example on the opposite end when they take power. But make no mistake that they will take anti trust action against parties that have successfully threaded the needle like the ISPs. Both sides are bought by them
  - arrosenberg 5y ago
    Eh, there are three sides - Democrats, Republicans and true believers like Lina Khan. The believers need to notch some wins before taking on a big bad like Charter or ATT, and as you note, Facebook made themselves an attractive target. You take those where you can get them and win big to build cachet for going after bigger cases in the future.
    - namelessoracle 5y ago
      True believers think this will open a door. But in reality they are just being used to do all the work to kill a target one side wants dead. They will then see the doors firmly shut again. The only way this doesnt happen is if the other side decides they should do the same trick to their opponents using the same true believers as weapons. We may be at the point where this back and forth is preferable.....
pyrale 5y ago
Nice whataboutism. In reality, US ISPs are a PITA with limited impact, while OTTs have gotten a grasp on large parts of our society, both domestically and abroad. The worst part about your claim is that the likes of Google or Facebook have gotten there by relentlessly lobbying for ISP power to be controlled by regulation. It's only fair that now that they have become unavoidable entities, they also get labeled and regulated as utility.
- candiddevmike 5y ago
  What does OTT stand for? Don't think I've seen that acronym before.
  - Jaepa 5y ago
    From what I understand Over The Top. Basically the services that run using the internet infrastructure. This framing feels a bit weird though so I very well may be wrong.
- gruez 5y ago
  > Nice whataboutism. It's "whataboutism" to question the priorities of our politicians now?
  - pyrale 5y ago
    Questioning that a well-deserved lawsuit going ahead on the basis that others would also deserve the attention is definitely whataboutism.
3327 5y ago

throw8383833jj 5y ago

Yes. There are alternatives to using facebook and especially instagram. But, when it comes to your ISP, there is no alternative and that makes ISPs a much bigger threat and much more harmful to society. It's especially egregious that ISPs bribe politicians and engage in rent seeking behavior, something we don't see much of from Facebook. i mean, sure facebook isn't ideal but it's also not the biggest foe we need to worry about.

bradknowles 5y ago

With respect, “whataboutism” doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t also solve the problem of Fuckerberg and whatever he’s calling his latest sneeze machine.

encryptluks2 5y ago

Thank you. I always bring this up. Politicians like targeting things that they gripe about being excluded from to get more votes, but there are much more serious problems that they are ignoring.

netizen-936824 5y ago
Because they don't actually care about helping anyone besides themselves. Both sides of the aisle, its all just posturing to maintain power

gilgamesh3 5y ago

IMHO Visa and Mastercard duopoly are way more powerful than other companies like Facebook or Google. In the end, people still need to pay for services and they use credit cards to pay for it. If Mastercard or Visa don't want a service do exist, they can simply block it and then people won't be able to use the service. The recent OnlyFans and PornHub controversies prove my point. OnlyFans was in the verge of banning explicit porn in their plataform. https://www.protocol.com/policy/onlyfans-visa-mastercard https://www.protocol.com/policy/onlyfans-visa-mastercard

bradknowles 5y ago
With respect, “whataboutism” doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t also solve the problem of Fuckerberg and whatever he’s calling his latest sneeze machine.
steelstraw 5y ago
Chamath argued in a recent episode of the All in Podcast that Visa and Mastercard are going to get wrecked soon, as it becomes apparent they are an unnecessary trillion dollar parasite on the economy. They add a 2-3% tax on every transaction and can block people out at will, as you note. But now we increasingly have cheaper alternatives that are also censorship resistant.
- notdemo88 5y ago
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  > But now we increasingly have cheaper alternatives that are also censorship resistant I really hope you're not referring to crypto.
  - hda2 5y ago
    It exists. It works. And governments, companies, and individuals have started to adopt it for real transactions (rather that speculation). The ship has already sailed. Get over it.

Retric 5y ago

Modern Cellular and Starlink are actually bringing some real competition. For the average consumer a Tablet with unlimited data on any major network crushes DSL’s speeds and cost. Starlink is still rolling out, but I suspect it will keep cell networks honest and they both will end up keeping wired ISP’s honest.

Brendinooo 5y ago
This is a good point; if I recall, the Sirius/XM merger was allowed to proceed because, even though that created a monopoly in satellite radio, they were competing in a broader landscape.
Jaepa 5y ago
Its worth mentioning that both LEO & WISP are explicitly not include in net neutrality provisions. That being said any net neutrality provisions outside of CA is kind of up in the air right now so I don't know if that really matters.

orev 5y ago

A few years ago when Net Neutrality was a big topic, there was a lot of focus on them. At some point I felt the news cycle was being manipulated as ISPs kept pointing fingers (and I suspect increased their lobbying budget) at FAANG that they were just as bad, if not worse. “Why should we be subject to regulations when these other Internet companies aren’t!”, completely ignoring that there’s a huge difference between the utility companies who provide the actual Internet connection vs ones who provide services via a web site. Evidently most people seem to have taken the bait, and everyone stopped caring that ISPs are tracking and selling every DNS query you make from their networks.

Const-me 5y ago
Over the last few years, most of the internet upgraded to TLS. This technological shift made it much harder, and in many cases borderline impossible, for ISPs to mess with the traffic.
- orev 5y ago
  That’s why I mentioned DNS queries, as those are/were not protected by TLS. This behavior is one of the major reasons browsers pushed so hard for DNS over HTTPS.
  - Const-me 5y ago
    Yeah, but I’m pretty sure DNS over HTTPS will become default in a couple of years. I don’t believe the government should spend taxpayer’s money fighting a problem which will soon disappear automatically, regardless of their [in]actions.
ummonk 5y ago
By the way, if you haven't already you should enable DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS. Hopefully device providers make it standard sooner rather than later and eliminate insecure DNS.

DesiLurker 5y ago

I'd rather them do this and then go after ISPs too than give a free pass to both because of such whataboutism based criticism.

the-dude 5y ago

What is the actual harm? I can choose between copper, coax and fiber and there are at least multiple providers on the copper. Prices are reasonable and speeds are good.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> I can choose between copper, coax and fiber and there are at least multiple providers on the copper. Your experience is unusual; I don't think I've ever lived anywhere with more than 2 options, and surprising chunks of the USA have fewer.
- ksdale 5y ago
  Yeah, in most of the places I've lived, I've only had one choice, and it's been quite expensive for the quality.
lp0_on_fire 5y ago
Many places in the United States don't have the luxury. I'm in a county of half a million people and there are are basically two options: Comcast cable (which is decently fast for downloads) and a variety of resellers who all run on Verizon's DSL network. No fiber options unless I want to give Comcast the blood of my firstborn and then pay $300 a month for the privilege. Verizon has been promising fiber "any day now" for the past 10 years.
- the-dude 5y ago
  My street also only got fiber this year. What is the actual harm / collusion? You can choose from a wide variety of ISPs, which are decent to your own admission, but the harm is it is not fiber ? Cry me a river.
  - lostdog 5y ago
    Most places in the US only have a single ISP option. There's a word that describes this situation that rhymes with "phonopoly."

arrosenberg 5y ago

My more charitable take is that they are trying to pick a fight they can win based on the political and legal landscape. Antitrust enforcement has been weakened, diminished, and atrophied since the Borkism infected both political parties in the late 70s and early 80s. As such, they have to pick their early battles careful in order to gain experience, figure out which strategies can prevail in court, in public opinion, etc. We all want to see them take on the big fight with monopolists like the ISPs, but no one has more experience fighting antitrust action. The current set of DOJ lawyers and federal judges are not the ones who broke up ATT in the 50s and 80s, they're going to have to rebuild the foundation of antitrust enforcement.

namelessoracle 5y ago
The current set of lawyers and judges and officials for this are political appointees one and all, and will only pick fights on behalf of the political faction. The current detente was only because "each side" had their pet companies. Facebook has messed up in that managed to anger both sides of the political spectrum. They foolishly thought they could thread a needle here. Now one side is going to make an example of them. The best we can hope is that the other side will make an example on the opposite end when they take power. But make no mistake that they will take anti trust action against parties that have successfully threaded the needle like the ISPs. Both sides are bought by them
- arrosenberg 5y ago
  Eh, there are three sides - Democrats, Republicans and true believers like Lina Khan. The believers need to notch some wins before taking on a big bad like Charter or ATT, and as you note, Facebook made themselves an attractive target. You take those where you can get them and win big to build cachet for going after bigger cases in the future.
  - namelessoracle 5y ago
    True believers think this will open a door. But in reality they are just being used to do all the work to kill a target one side wants dead. They will then see the doors firmly shut again. The only way this doesnt happen is if the other side decides they should do the same trick to their opponents using the same true believers as weapons. We may be at the point where this back and forth is preferable.....

pyrale 5y ago

Nice whataboutism. In reality, US ISPs are a PITA with limited impact, while OTTs have gotten a grasp on large parts of our society, both domestically and abroad. The worst part about your claim is that the likes of Google or Facebook have gotten there by relentlessly lobbying for ISP power to be controlled by regulation. It's only fair that now that they have become unavoidable entities, they also get labeled and regulated as utility.

candiddevmike 5y ago
What does OTT stand for? Don't think I've seen that acronym before.
- Jaepa 5y ago
  From what I understand Over The Top. Basically the services that run using the internet infrastructure. This framing feels a bit weird though so I very well may be wrong.
gruez 5y ago
> Nice whataboutism. It's "whataboutism" to question the priorities of our politicians now?
- pyrale 5y ago
  Questioning that a well-deserved lawsuit going ahead on the basis that others would also deserve the attention is definitely whataboutism.

3327 5y ago