Slashdot Mirror
FCC Chairman Keeps Up Assault on Social Media (axios.com)
Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is doubling down on his critique of tech companies, asking whether social media is "a net benefit to American society" in remarks at the Media Institute on Wednesday. "Now, I will tell you upfront that I don't have an answer." From a report: What he said: Pai made the case that social media has been key to the politicization of many aspects of American life. "Everything nowadays is political. Everything. ... This view that politics-is-all is often made worse by social media," he said, per his prepared remarks.
It is also made worse by his policy ideas, so there's that.
Just get rid of the Media and America will reenter a glorious 1950s anew! Just trust this dotheneedful with money at stake. How could we not??
He dare not confront his boss directly, so he makes veiled statements whose meaning is clear to the Twitmeister.
I might be able to agree that social media is not a net benefit to American society. But for entirely different reasons than Ajit Pai.
Ajit Pai doesn't like it because people can express opinions -- oh my!
I think it is simply a huge black hole for time that could be productively used for employment, study, personal enrichment, and trolling slashdot. With the additional benefit of avoiding more ads. Don't get me started about TV.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
asking whether social media is "a net benefit to American society"
Arguably, most people's lives would probably be better off without social media creeping in like a drug. However, with that said, it's up to the individual if they cut off facebook or keep using it. The unwritten googolth amendment to the constitution is "the right to be a moron".
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
"whether social media is "a net benefit to American society" is irrelevant to any discussion of Net Neutrality.
Whether Twitter is biased is irrelevant to any discussion of Net Neutrality.
This is just more deflection. Pai has jumped the shark. Anything he says anymore does nothing to contribute to informed discussion.
Makes me miss Wheeler: he turned out to be far more reasonable than I ever expected and than Pai ever will be.,
it has squat to do with Net Neutrality. He's conflating issues and handwaving. It does not give the FCC justification to allow the foxes to run amok in the henhouse.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
"Social" media appeals the most to narcissists, sycophants, conspiracy nuts, and the just flat out crazy. That, however, has absolutely NOTHING to do with net neutrality.
I am gobsmacked that I agree with him. Social media (perhaps more accurately, the loose ethics of social media companies) has turned out to be a modern-day plague. I wouldn't be at all offended if they were regulated more heavily.
How do you know he's Republican???
I don't see the worth of social media either, but it isn't my place, or yours, to dictate what benefits society.
Slashdot, I think, has been at least a little anti-social media. I expect the tone here will change now because of this. Just like how much it changed, not totally, with TPP and H1B.
Why does he even bother? Anyone with any remote interest in the subject knows he is nothing more than a paid Verizon shill with an 8 year-old's buzz cut who has no place being the head of the FCC. . .
Why does he attempt to argue any kind of point online? He is selling out the future of the U.S. for pennies on the dollar and should go to prison for it. He might as well post "FU, bitche$, im gonna get PAID!" every morning when he wakes up, 'cause that is what we imagine he is thinking every time we see his pompous mouth-breather face. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I also know a lot of slashdotters are useless non-technical poseurs.
Freudian slip there from someone who doesn't understand the issues?
While I am not a big fan of social media, as it has its ups and downs..
I cry BULLSHIT..
WHOM THE FUCK IS HE TO DECRY WHAT IS A "NET" BENEFIT.
ajit, PULL YOUR HEAD OUT, THIS IS NOT YOUR JOB TO MAKE THOSE CALLS, MUCH LESS PUBLICLY PROMULGATE THEM AS WELL. DO YOU AND don-don REALIZE HOW YOUR STUPIDITY WILL SHAPE THE FUTURE? HOW YOUR FUCKING ARROGANCE MAY SHAPE TODAYS YOUTH IN A NEGATIVE WAY?
HOW DO YOU COME TO THIS CONCLUSION?
WHAT MAKES YOU THE AUTHORITY ON WHAT A "NET BENEFIT" IS FROM A NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE?
I THINK YOU MAY WANT TO TAKE A SEC TO RE-EVAULTATE HOW FAR YOU HAVE PLACED YOUR HEAD DEEP INSIDE (what I hope is your own anus.) PERHAPS THE FUMES FROM THE METHANE ARE CAUSING A THINKING PROBLEM.
NOW GO CRAWL UP EITHER YOUR ASS OR don-don's AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU DID, WHY IT WAS BAD, AND HOW CAN YOU AVOID IT IN THE FUTURE.
I realize the Syntax of this statement may be a little off, but let me assure you, there is intent. Its all about respect and/or lack thereof...
Social media gave it a better tool to market its product, influence. If anything politics and social media are symbiotic parasites living off the masses.
He's still right about social media and its effects on society.
Change it to something, anything, besides his goal of turning the Internet over to the money-hungry ISPs.
and I pluck my eyebrows. I don't think that's gay.
Net neutrality is about bandwidth allocations by upstream ISPs. Stop trying to conflate that with platform's own rules for content moderation. Furthermore, you're a bad person for trying to claim this only happens to "leftist" content or that "leftist" is even a thing.
Tell us now, Pai, what is the net benefit to american society of a fucking Trump schill, himself the little lapdog of Putin ?
Ironic, since Pai only has the job because of Russian manipulation of social media.
Play Command HQ online
He's just another astro-turfer, trying a new tactic for getting a rise out of us by blaming the real people here for the actions of other astro-turfers. Don't feed them by mistaking their statements as sincere.
Further still, you had the freedom to visit the social media sites of your choice without any barriers or bandwidth issues. That could, and likely will immediately, change without net neutrality.
But they are intrinsically linked and related. Phone companies cannot ban Nazis from using their lines yet the companies complaining the loudest about being under the same regulation want to be able to censor because xkcd made a comic about a weak excuse for censorship.
It's hard to take anyone seriously that argues in having and eating their cake.
Since his boss is throwing in his lot with proto-blackshirts and raging conspiracy theorists.
Do you really not see a spectrum of championed beliefs or values with respect to political leanings? Just curious about your view point, if you'd care to enlighten.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Net Neutrality is not only about bandwidth allocation but also about WHAT you are allowed to connect to. It is none of my ISP's business nor concern whether my packets are going across the state or across the planet. The source and destination (and contents) of my packets are none of the ISPs business beyond simply routing the packets.
This is true whether my packets to go a so called 'social' network (they do not) or to elsewhere.
Net Neutrality is about my connection to the internet and my choices to connect to sites of my liking. Not about what is allowed or not allowed on those sites. I can choose the sites for myself. I don't want my ISP choosing for me.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Uh, no. Not frosty. No thanks. I'd rather have to use Perl.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
It's interesting to see how your idea of net neutrality is twisted and manipulated to apply to only very specific cases that benefit those who want to force neutrality on others, but who don't want to be held to the same standard themselves.
Net neutrality is far more general than your faulty and limited definition.
Simply put, net neutrality is about treating all data the same.
It doesn't matter if we're talking about IP packets, or if we're talking about comments in a discussion forum, and so on. You're already violating the concept of neutrality by breaking up data using these artificial classifications that you insist on using!
Based on what you're said, you don't want to apply a consistent treatment to all data. You want to creating nonsensical divisions. You inherently can't be a supporter of net neutrality when doing such things.
Pai is obviously trying to prepare the case for how his actions do not represent the subversion of the wishes of the people he should be serving by trying to make a molehill out of a mountain.
Its clear who he serves, and it ain't the people*.
*Oh wait, corporations are people !
This must be in response to him no longer being able to see free puppies on Twitter anymore:
https://www.boredpanda.com/mes...
All the discussion of bias and politics misses the forest for the trees...and since Pai is speaking as an expert on these matters, that's clearly intentional on his part.
The FCC isn't there to eliminate bias, or create jobs, or reward investors/innovators/etc. It is there to protect a specific category of public resources, to safeguard it for the good of the nation. Just like the EPA, or the FDA. That regulation costs money is not sufficient reason to deregulate. The notion that 'net neutrality' is political only exists because one party doesn't believe in publicly owned resources any more, not if there's money to be made. No amount of potential earnings or future innovation justifies abdicating the responsibility of the government to protect national resources, and the internet is one of them. Title II was the right decision. The debate on whether media sites have a duty to honor free speech at the cost of free association is a separate issue worthy of discussion, but is being used as a smokescreen here. ISPs are geographical/natural monopolies acting as gateways to the largest repository of knowledge and human interaction ever created. They SHOULD be required to adhere to certain principles in their operation. The idea that such demands are both unnecessary AND too costly are ludicrous, and the FCC's (possibly illegal) move to preempt local regulation in the absence of national regulation gives away the game: Corporate interests and desires are being given priority over the benefit and well-being of citizens, and that is NOT the FCC's job.
> It has nothing to do with being neutral on the political spectrum
Ajit Pai made a specific statement trying to tie them together. Please don't derail the conversation, if you haven't read it. -1
Too bad, it seems your right..
so, is
msMash the one in the middle?
not trump or arjit
is she choking so hard on the bullshit, she is unable to exercise the facets of her job correctly? or as stated above, is she choking on someone else.,.
either way.. its a fucking shame...
but then again, it shows her Tru character, to which it seems is very lacking..
just do your fucking job
... asking whether social media is "a net benefit to American society" ...
I imagine the same can be asked of many of the following words: Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Helps me keep in touch with my family. And buy and sell groups for my local community. Thats about it though. )
[($)]
The issue at hand is NN and Title II regulation of ISPs not social media. This play is really starting to get tiresome /w everyone attempting to justify or deflect from their actions by pointing out what others are doing as if it's at all relevant to issue at hand or in any way justifies their own behavior.
As a separate matter I more or less agree with his sentiments. The media has basically turned itself into a professional trolling operation caring more about hyperbole and fear than useful information, bad governance (e.g. handing out megaphones to everyone) on sites like Twitter is done on purpose to maximize profit while people with psychology degrees are using their expertise to explicitly maximize addiction of children to social media platforms for profit. To say nothing of the insane aggregation of power over so many eyeballs by so few.
You've always said there's no such thing as Freeze Peach ;)
Now you have a advocate in the current administration.The only irony is that Ajit is 'assaulting' (really?!?) those social media sites that you setup as your base of operations.
Well, you win some you lose some.
An obligatory, related xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1357/
All data should be treated the same, but data is not the same thing as content/message/&c. All packets are created equal, but not all of their content is.
Relevant CAPTCHA: liberty
Sounds like he's upset that people actually realize the implications of his activities (and what is driving them) and have an outlet to make others aware of it as well. The proposed changes could only benefit the major ISPs, at the expense of pretty much everyone else. It basically allows the ISPs to double dip, charging the end users/server farms for their bandwidth, then charging the individual services again for the bandwidth the first two already paid for. And may even allow a level of censorship, depending on who can pay off the right people to get the right "fast lanes" at the right time.
It has nothing to do with being neutral on the political spectrum
Ajit Pai made a specific statement trying to tie them together.
Pai made a nonsensical statement trying to tie them together to distract from the topic. That doesn't make net neutrality and freedom of speech the same thing. It makes Pai a distributor of bullshit.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
"Everything nowadays is political. Everything. ... This view that politics-is-all is often made worse by social media".
Did he say that with a straight face, as if actually expected people to believe that politicization of, say, the FCC is somehow due to something other than people like Ajit Pai?
Why can't he have the guts to do the right thing, like Tom Wheeler mostly did once he became chair?
Need a hottie to scream "HE TOUCHED ME!"
Pai made a nonsensical statement trying to tie them together to distract from the topic.
It's not entirely nonsense, it's calculated. A Republican might consider the real crime to be that their beliefs aren't appreciated, and that everyone gets "fair and balanced" equal time. They don't see companies charging whatever contracts they want as being a problem at all. So perverting the notion of net neutrality is totally fine with them.
With an alltime low voter turnout last election it's good that people are more interested in politics.
And no, cat pictures, TV shows, comic book movies, pop music, snapshots of your food, the vast majority of what people discuss is still not political. I'm not convinced he's able to take proper stock of online discussions.
Twinstiq, game news
I can imagine the the napkin that was used to write down the initial idea...."need a way for people to publish ill considered thoughts and get themselves fired or otherwise ostracized. And do in in less than 140 characters. "
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Corporate clown Pai is throwing up an excellent smoke screen to distract the masses from the Net neutrality issue.
Sadly, it will work, and we're screwed.
Narcocide stated:
Net neutrality is about bandwidth allocations by upstream ISPs. Stop trying to conflate that with platform's own rules for content moderation. Furthermore, you're a bad person for trying to claim this only happens to "leftist" content or that "leftist" is even a thing.
You're right about net neutrality. You're wrong about Ajit Pai.
Pai is a bad person for a plethora of reasons - beginning with the fact that he's a shill for mega-ISPs. His attempt to leverage political division to bolster his bullshit is about 47th on the list ...
Check out my novel.
Think it through moron. That you believe there is bias in social media is merely due to the fact that there are far less retards that share your beliefs. It's not that there is censorship, it's that you are in a minority of retards and this why you don't see the racist/sexist bullshit on mainstream social media sites.
Maybe, this is the time to abolish FCC altogether — and have one fewer federal agency?
No? Too much to ask for us, crazy Libertarians... The Statists do not mind these agencies — so long as they are in their hands...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Something about MAGA!
Figures that the party of the most vocal critics of equal time* have become the party decrying the lack of "equal time" when it suits them, just because they disagree with someone's opinion.
* That was a huge debate back in the Reagan years, and the Republicans won by eliminating the "Fairness Doctrine" for broadcast news.
Gotta agree with Pai on this. Social media is a mixed bag, and probably a lot more bad than good.
I don't use any social media (unless /. counts?), I just watch videos and use old school MUD games and other gaming. I think Facebook and Twitter are stupid and a monumental waste of time. As a gamer, for me to say something is a waste of time.. it's gotta be pretty inane and worthless.
Sadly, at the same time, I'm observant enough to realize a lot of your average John Doe's actually think Facebook *IS* the Internet. Kinda feel sorry for them, it's soooooo much more.
What does that have to do with anything? I swear these politician assholes these days all keep trying to preach the same repeated sermon to their choir in the hopes none of their followers notices his wrongdoings.
Instead of social media overtly controlling content, Pai would prefer the ISPs covertly do it.
Here's an interesting list of who contributes money to whom. AT&T is predominantly Republican while Comcast is predominantly Democrat.
It's hard to take anyone seriously that mentions Nazis is anything but the historical context.
Is this another way of saying "we've started to realise that we're not in control of things like we imagine we were when you all accepted the narratives the media fed you. The internet is to blame, because it is obviously justified to treat American citizens like chattel slaves."?
At least that's what the DNC consultants for the Clinton campaign said...Import more brown people and the Republicans will never win again! Good luck with that.
The rest of us don't give a shit.
Fuck the Communists, Marxists and Socialists this is America.
Sorry, if your feelings were hurt. Welcome to politics and the Internet! Maybe attending to a peer support group with EA would help?
msmash caught sucking BeauHD's dick for coke..
that picture from the article, actually there i s a midget behind Ajit tooling his anus, releasing endorphans, testerone(since he really lacks most of his). In the deluge of the release, his mind floats away, all reason gone as he begins to ejackulate behind the podium, thus treleasing him from the guilt and crap that falls out of his mouth
I mean how else can you explain this shit..
news at 11
Someone should tell Pai that nobody cares about his opinion about what’s sent over the wires. We just want him to ensure that it gets carried in a way that benefits the public.
so your phone call should be sorted just the same as my newest linux iso? I'm not sure I agree with you. I don't care if the download takes an extra 10 minutes because packets get dropped, but you probably care when your call gets dropped. Oh by the way, your savior Obama's "net neutrality" didn't meaningfully interfere with your ISP's ability to do exactly what you fear.
Psyops be psyopin'!
so your phone call should be sorted just the same as my newest linux iso?
I'm fine with that. If you're using the internet for a service that is better served by a dedicated channel, then there are two options:
* Accept the internet's properties, and design around it (increasing latency by buffering, for example)
* Get your network providers to increase capacity so they aren't woefully oversubscribed. Because ISP's are woefully oversubscribed.
In the end, it comes down to peering. ISP's connect to various network tiers, and depending on the peering agreement, the packets are either transferred for "free", or are metered per Megabit packet transit. Even "free" peering is expensive: ISP's still have to pay for the fiber to connect, network hardware, power, etc. Packet transit is always a cost to the ISP.
Why? Because of CDN's: CDN's are not "the internet", but are instead large, high-speed, private networks. CDN's are company-owned WANs using leased-lines between sites, and not the internet. CDN's are "customers" of the ISP as well, and pay huge amounts of money to "deliver" content to the ISP's last mile.
ISP's want to turn their internet peering agreements on their head: ISP's want to be paid for packet transit from an upstream peer network, instead of peering being a cost. (ie. they want to turn the entire internet into a CDN that pays them)
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
This kind of chaff:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)
Really the ISP should know as little as possible how we use the internet as individuals unless there is a court order. Claims that its unfair that the pipe we pay for can't spy on us as much as free service that makes it's money solely by trading on our personal information is totally bogus.
As I understand it, the problem with treating VOIP packets differently from torrent packets is that people lie. It's hard to prioritize packets based on internal inspection, and the ISP can't rely on any marking of the packets.
This is annoying, because when I'm using VOIP I'm using little bandwidth but require low latency and no interruptions, while my torrenting uses a lot of bandwidth and I don't care if I get low latency or interruptions, but QoS is hard to get right.
The core of NN is that my packets can go where I want them and come from where I want without discrimination. QoS is compatible with that core.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Obviously he's looking for hard numbers, and under the SI system, the Pajool (Pj) is the unit of societal benefit. Given that PeeWee Herman is equivalent to 3.1416 Pj, all other values may be derived. For example: that computer chick on "Criminal Minds" = -23 Pj, Enya (but only for her "Boadicea" hymn) = +51 Pj, Enya (all of her other soft, fluffy trash) = -6 Pj, Steely Dan (almost anything prior to 1981) = +32 Pj, Fortuna's pepperoni = +106 Pj, the tendency to consider almost any kind of computer logic to be AI = -1287 Pj, Coffee Rio caramels (plain coffee only) = +201 Pj, employers that force you to have a LinkedIn account = -523 Pj. You're welcome.