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Zero-Rating Harms Poor People, Public Interest Groups Tell FCC (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the along-the-lines-of-net-neutrality dept.

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."

3 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. SJWs must in league with the ISPs... by MikeRT · · Score: 0, Troll

    "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."

    So, let me get this straight. T-Mobile decides to exempt a whole swath of data-intensive services from the data cap and that is harming these people who otherwise could never be a real user of Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, etc. Wait, I'm having problems following your SJW "logic" here. They can't afford mobile and wired broadband. Wireless, for obvious reasons, has more restrictions ordinarily than wired on data consumption. A company decides to give people unlimited data use on preferred, highly popular services. Services that those same communities really, really want.

    I'm struggling to find the argument for network neturality here, and I am generally a proponent of it. If anything, these SJWs have just created an argument that everyone in Congress from the Black Caucus, to the Tea Party, to the moderates in the establishment could agree is a good reason to abolish network neturality.

  2. Re: can someone give the TL;DR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Quit trying to get the free market to solve all your issues for you - this is exactly what happens.

    There fixed that for you.

  3. World ends, poor and minorities disproportionately by mpercy · · Score: 1, Troll

    World ends, poor and minorities disproportionately affected...

    Why does *everything* have to be filtered through an SJW lens?