Tech Giants Rally Today in Support of Net Neutrality (theverge.com)

From a report: Technology giants like Amazon, Spotify, Reddit, Facebook, Google, Twitter and many others are rallying today in a so-called "day of action" in support of net neutrality, five days ahead of the first deadline for comments on the US Federal Communications Commission's planned rollback of the rules. In a move that's equal parts infuriating and exasperating, Ajit Pai, the FCC's new chairman appointed by President Trump, wants to scrap the open internet protections installed in 2015 under the Obama administration. Those consumer protections mean providers such as AT&T, Charter, Comcast, and Verizon are prevented from blocking or slowing down access to the web. Sites across the web will display alerts on their homepages showing "blocked," "upgrade," and "spinning wheel of death" pop-ups to demonstrate what the internet would look like without net neutrality, according to advocacy group Battle for the Net. But most of the pop-ups The Verge has seen have been simple banners or static text with links offering more information.

Comments

Really need XXX Giants to join in

[Beerdood]

Imagine if pornhub, xhamster, etc... decided to band together and block all access from Congress (or even all of Washington D.C) for 24 hours from accessing their sites. Bonus points if they add some sort of family-values message to their site ("We at [website] have taken the necessary steps to prevent our elected representatives from accessing the ungodly smut they claim is destroying this great nation. You're welcome").

Now that might actually trigger some change!

Re:Regulation helps incumbents

[Opportunist]

The problem here is that it's incumbent vs incumbent. And in this struggle, I side with the one that actually allows competition to arise.

What you're dealing with is the same we had in Europe in some countries where monopolists that owned the cable networks (that the taxpayer paid for) were privatized. Those countries where they were forced to split the company into one that owns the cable and one that provides ISP services prospered and now have some rather stiff competition between ISPs that the cable-owning ex-monopolist has to sell at the same conditions as their former "other half", while countries where that ex-monopolist was allowed to own the cable AND become an ISP now struggle because they, of course, tried to make it near impossible to use those cables by competing providers.

I'm lucky. My internet is affordable, and should my provider try anything funny I'm gone before he's done making me some offer to stay because I have a few others to choose from, in the middle of nowhere, not in some large city.