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Amazon, Mozilla, Kickstarter, and Reddit Are Staging a Net Neutrality Online Protest (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Some of the Internet's biggest names are banding together for a "day of action" to oppose the Federal Communications Commission (alternative source), which is working to undo regulations for Internet providers that it passed during the Obama administration. Among the participants are Etsy, Kickstarter and Mozilla, the maker of the popular Firefox Web browser. Also joining the day of protest will be Reddit, the start-up incubator Y Combinator, and Amazon. On July 12, the companies and organizations are expected to change their websites to raise awareness of the FCC effort, which is aimed at deregulating the telecom and cable industries. Mozilla, for example, will change what users see on their screens when they open a new browser window. Other participants include Demand Progress, Etsy, Vimeo, Private Internet Access, Fight for the Future, EFF, DreamHost, Creative Commons, BitTorrent, American Library Association, ACLU, GreenPeace, Open Media, and Patreon. Find more details here.
"Mozilla should be spending 100% of its time working on its browser! Why are they wasting time doing anything other than rolling back the GUI to the one in Firefox 4.0? I hate the new Chrome look so damned much I switched to Chrome and never looked back."
Shouldn't that be "the *once* popular Firefox Web browser"? (Not a hater; it's my main browser, although the things it has done over the last few years has annoyed me and is starting to push me away.)
I wouldn't call 6.55% US market share and dropping popular.
It's nice to see a bunch of special interest groups work towards a goal that generally benefits the American citizens of the net (and certain corporations, at the expense of certain other corporations). Watching the right twist hard on this issue has been yet another source of bitter amusement for me over this last year (and believe me, I've had sources of bitter amusement from ALL political sides over the last year or two).
Here's the lowdown: net neutrality used to enjoy a broad coalition of pretty much everyone- the idea that carriers can't charge based on certain qualifications is a pretty appealing one. Some libertarians like it because the carriers are themselves a kind of monopoly (and therefore shouldn't be allowed the same power over their wires as if it was a free market), most liberals like it because it prevents corporations from screwing over the little guy, and some conservatives like it because it prevents conservative speech from being branded separately or upcharged ("CNN is free, Fox News costs extra!" or somesuch). This changed recently and rapidly: in addition to the more strict market libertarians (who were formerly pretty much the only natural philosophical opponents of net neutrality), the broad base of conservatism, led by Trump, are now opposed to net neutrality. Now it's meddlesome government, and (somehow!) the ability to censor data.
The conservative switch on this is not ENTIRELY surprising, given that the most recent action on net neutrality happened under Obama, but why would conservatives not be in favor of common carrier status? Certainly they don't want to pay more for electricity depending on its use (nor would they be ok with the power company monitoring everything in their house to ensure that they pay the correct rate for "television electricity" versus "microwave electricity"), so why the odd position?
The answer appears to be depressingly top-down. This coalition of dudes listed in the summary is pretty much all liberals (I'm not aware of any that even gave Trump credit for smashing the TPP, which they were opposed to), and they pretty much universally supported the losing Hillary Clinton in the election. Meanwhile, those who stand to benefit from the repeal of net neutrality didn't use their bully pulpit to denounce Trump for two years straight, and are broadly more Republican donors. That part I guess is part and parcel of our vaguely corporate Republic, but it is darkly amusing to watch the needs of the donors DRAG THE PHILOSOPHY IN REAL TIME. Just nuts.
I've been using Waterfox for years. It's based on the current branch of FF main but strips out the tracking bits and enables features Mozilla has disabled (NPAPI for those who still have need of it).
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Whither NetFlix?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
This is a non-starter protest. And I think Netflix CEO Reed Hasting's opinion on Net Neutrality "We're big enough not to care" is likely shared by the others, they just won't say it. Now that Yahoo is owned by Verizon, even they won't be part of the 'opposition'. Cards are falling into place very nicely for our corporate information overlords. Kudos to you Bezos and Amazon. You might be the last tech titan with actual principles.