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Zero-Rating Harms Poor People, Public Interest Groups Tell FCC (vice.com)
An anonymous reader links to an article on Motherboard: The nation's largest internet service providers are undermining US open internet rules, threatening free speech, and disproportionately harming poor people by using a controversial industry practice called "zero-rating," a coalition of public interest groups wrote in a letter to federal regulators on Monday. Companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T use zero-rating, which refers to a variety of practices that exempt certain services from monthly data caps, to undercut "the spirit and the text" of federal rules designed to protect net neutrality, the principle that all content on the internet should be equally accessible, the groups wrote. Zero-rated plans "distort competition, thwart innovation, threaten free speech, and restrict consumer choice -- all harms the rules were meant to prevent," the groups wrote. "These harms tend to fall disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of color, who tend to rely on mobile networks as their primary or exclusive means of access to the internet."
No, the argument is basically that the poor make bad choices and the world should be re-arranged to accommodate those poor choices.
It's been well studied. The number one cause of poverty (by far) in the USA: having children at a young age before you've established a career and are financially prepared to care for them. This is a fact, known to anyone willing to do the research.
That children are expensive is well known, or easily known to anyone willing to say "gee, bringing a life into this world is a pretty big step, maybe I should get some basic facts before deciding if I'm ready to do that yet". We all know how babies are made. In light of these two things, yes you really can say that most poverty in the USA is caused by bad choices.
If you're talking about a third-world nation that's completely different and arguments of "victim blaming" would actually apply. They certainly don't apply to people in the USA who get knocked up at a young age because of poor impulse control and bad planning. Adults who make bad decisions and suffer are not victims. They don't deserve this aura of sainthood in which nothing is ever their fault. Please stop doing this -- it's not helping to change anything.