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Burger King Makes the Case For Net Neutrality (variety.com)
An anonymous reader writes: By now you've probably seen Burger King's spoof ad on the decision by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to repeal net neutrality. In the ad, Burger King customers are informed that there are now three "lanes" for ordering Whoppers -- each with substantially different prices and waiting times. The ad has already generated over a million views on Youtube and is lighting up Twitter. One thing I missed the first time is that while the Burger King "counter service" is clearly in on the act, the customers are apparently real; they learn of the cockamamie scheme at the counter in the style of the old TV show Candid Camera. Variety notes that the video "ends with an apparent dig at FCC Chairman Ajit Pai [...] as the Burger King character is shown drinking from an oversized Reese's coffee mug. That is the type of coffee mug that Pai uses at FCC meetings."
So corporate brand jumps on popular bandwagon for kudos. I'm curious why so many companies still advertise in Hannity slots?
Burger King is selling an actual physical product, and one you could walk across the street and just as easily buy from Whataburger. The ISP's are generally a monopoly and it's either their way or nothing. And they are not selling a physical item that someone must fix for you, they are selling virtual bandwidth on a pipe that is already there. #SENDTHEMTOJAIL
Because it's (probably) not the consumer that pays (directly) for the preferred treatment. But in the end that's who will foot the bill, so...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No restaurant whatsoever (that I know of *) has two lanes, one fast and another slow, yet that there's no law to make sure that such a thing exists. There's no neutrality on the speed of food delivery inside a restaurant, and still there's no restaurant violating that. Why?
Because of competition of course. If a restaurant did that, they'd lose customers to other restaurants, plain and simple. So this video makes no sense Burger King. Your example just show how bad the people there understand the matter. I wonder what would Burger King say if they started to see their business regulated that way. Maybe they would drop this bullshit.
The truth is that if there was as much competition in the ISPs as there's in the restaurant market, no such law would be needed. And that the right move is in the direction of easing the market for competition by eliminating rules and regulation and not in the direction of more stifling regulation that only large ISPs can/want to meet.
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* And if there was, who fucking cares? there's still the other 99'999% of restaurants out there that you could go to.
When basic concepts are explained by burgers instead of healthy food, no wonder that people think themselves fat.
As many have pointed out their stunt is not depicting net neutrality but simply standard tiers of Internet service. Net neutrality would be more like if Burger King accepted payment from Pepsi to hamper (or block) Coca-Cola sales. And obviously Burger King would never do something that since they are signaling the proper non-discriminatory virtues. Oh, but wait, that is exactly what they do entering into exclusive drink supplier contracts. Can BK spell hippocritical?
If you think BK customers wouldn't wait in a slower line for a cheaper Whopper, you've never been in a fast food restaurant during some one-day "40-cheeseburgers-for-a-buck" sale. And anyone who could afford the 'fast line' ain't eating at fucking Burger King in the first place. Every line except the slow one would be completely disused, forcing them to make every line a 'slow' line to satisfy all the customers complaining about how fucking slow it is, yet not willing to pay for the fast line.
If anything it makes the case *for* NN repeal and letting the market take care of it. (But lets be real, they're just piggybacking on the latest internet shitstorm to try and sell burgers, with a good dose of virtue signalling while they're at it.)
If you're absolutely sure you don't want a Coke, just wait in line a bit longer.
(insert coke lines jokes below)
If I walked in and saw $26 for a whopper, I'd turn right around and go to the McDonald's, Wendy's, 5-guys, whatever, next door. Who wouldn't vote with their feet in this situation? You say, "we can't because ISPs have monopolies," to which I say, this is a bad analogy then.
But Burger King restaurants are filthy.
... to be able to choose more to get faster service at a restaurant. (Or conversely, get big savings if you are willing to wait.) Sounds good to me.
If BK actually had such a policy, their customers would shop elsewhere starting tomorrow -- obviously. The commercial unintentionally makes the free marketer's point for them.
To make matters worse, the old "neutrality" wasn't really neutral. The actual policy was more like BK could only sell burgers that the government let them sell.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Slashdot, when you absolutely positively want to discuss things dates after they already have been discussed in the general press.
Brilliant.
reduce regulatory red tape on infrastructure at state and local levels that allow for local monopolies and the issue will resolve its self. If municipalities, small or mid sized ISP companies, and perhaps even non profits like the Farm Bureau in rural areas, are allowed to sell services against Comcast and ATT, things will improve dramatically. There is no need to put bureaucrats in charge of what can and cant be seen online and make no mistake, the NN regs as they were written absolutely laid the framework for rulemaking about what can and cant be seen online. What else do you think all that talk about legal network traffic was? what is an illegal network traffic load? today its just a botnet or something but tomorrow that could be used to reclassify non politically correct speech as illegal traffic.
I guess I have a new reason to not eat at Burger King. I really hate it when companies use serious political issues as a marketing strategy. If they want to make a statement on how Net Nutrality affects their business, I have no problem with that, but to use it as a corny ad campaign just really turns me off. They see that most people favor some kind of Net Nutrality witch is just used as another demographic for marketing.
Admittedly, I enjoyed the commercial and it did do a good job watering down the issue for the absolute layman. However, the issue is not that simple. It's not only about the lack of net neutrality creating paid high speed lanes, it's also harming consumers who might not want to watch Comcast Xfinity content but are more interested in Netflix. Furthermore, without some kind of neutrality, what is to prevent the ISPs from charging a base price simply for web browsing at say 39.95 and charging extra to have social media, streaming, or other kinds of service unlocked.
Poster on the wall says "Wi-Fi only for 6.33"
Was that part of the fake ad, or is this real?!
Here in Canada we get free wi-fi from McDonald's or Tim Horton as soon as we buy something. A lot of them don't even lock or change the password so as soon as you're a customer once, you have access.
#DeleteFacebook
The slow lanes for ordering a burger are actually at Whataburger.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
ISPs are at the mercy of what Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon charge them, since those guys own the pipes needed for broadband. The last mile in each city and town was installed over many decades with the encouragement and subsidy from local governments, waiving complicated rules and rights and way. Even Google, with all its resources, has pretty much given up trying to compete in the local ISP market.
The FCC wants to deregulate a natural monopoly. That's a big problem.
'Nuff said.
I hope other conservatives will join with me in boycotting burger king. A shitty pus-buger selling joint (which has horrible dirty bathrooms, btw) should not be telling the American people how to run their own country. We elected a goverment specifically to protect the freedom of the market to decide, not for diarhea-burger places to decide.
They are, unfortunately, perpetuating a myth about network neutrality which is completely wrong. Burger King has now hurt the network neutrality case. Every ISP, always has, and always will, offer varying speeds. That's not a violation of neutrality.
Most large amusement parks offer "fast lanes", "fast pass", etc, so you can skip the long lines.
Many public highways have express lanes with tolls. Or HOV lanes you can use if you buy an EV or Hybrid.
Airlines, trains, etc, offer different classes of service at different price points.
Theater and show tickets have different prices for different locations in the theater, assuming you could buy them at all. They cost much more when you buy through a ticket broker.
Every manufacturer offers volume based pricing.
Examples go on and on
this isnt about FCC - its about local and state regs that prevent non incumbents from pulling new cable on existing poles. As I said, its about infrastructure. They dont have to use ATT or comcasts wires, they just need access to poles and underground viaducts.
Not taking anything away from the sentiment but "real customers" in the industry means:
Talent interviewer: "Hi Mr. Professional Actor, have you ever eaten at Burger King?"
Actor: "Yes."
Talent interviewer: *puts checkmark in the box marked "real BK customer" *
Freaking airplanes are a better example, if it is only because it is real. The lack of rules equivalent to net neutrality in airplanes has turned what never was a very pleasant experience into something borderline Kafkaesque. Huge middle finger to airlines world over.
Here is the thing. The Ad is awesome, but that's NOT how they would present it to customers. They would do something like say "for an extra $20 cents you can be in our priority queue to get your burger faster". In fact, I'm surprised some fast food restaurant has not already tried it.
Imagine if you couldn't call Pizza Hut without paying an additional $15 to Verizon, because Pizza Hut refused to pay Verizon for "access" to their customers. But if you call Papa John's, you get a 20% discount on your order because Papa John's *did* pay Verizon for access to the customers.
Now extend that to every phone call you make. Imagine if the only calls you could make for "free" (as part of your plan) were to individuals and businesses that are paying for the privilege of having Verizon customers call them without additional charges.
THAT is why not having net neutrality is bad. The entire internet will rapidly become pay-per-view, and only the BIGGEST companies will be able to afford to pay-off the bandwidth providers/ISPs to make their content "free".
Drivethrough use case has very different latency requirements than dining in, I don't mind BK deploing traffic shaping to account for that. For Netflix-style bulk consumption of the same item, it would make sense to just have a pile of burgers on the counter and have everyone grab one and swipe their credit card. Sure they get preferential service, but they also don't route their orders all the way to the kitchen and are in and out fast.
Haven't we always had a situation where you pay more for faster service with the postal system? Nobody ever complained about that or thought it was ridiculous. Book rate is cheaper than 2-day, which is in turn cheaper than overnight.
Many Toll Roads are built with the rationale that of you pay the toll, then you can travel faster than the rest of the schmucks.
A prime example of Austin, TX with a toll road with prices that vari with the traffic. Presumably, it's worth more to go faster.
Of course the reality is they fucked it up and people end up spending$5 to go a few miles just as slow as everyone else.
So if paying more at BK, or your ISP is bad, then certainly paying more fore essentially nothing is far worse.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
But that's the point; utility poles aren't on the property of the ISP. They are on municipal property (or private property with municipal easements) and the municipality has every right to regulate how they are maintained and who can use them. In many places, the poles were originally installed by the electrical utility and telcos and cable companies are just free-riders.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
If you're absolutely sure you don't want a Coke, just wait in line a bit longer.
That may actually be more brilliant than what they actually did. You can have your burger right now if you order a full value meal and supersize it. If you don't supersize it, you have to wait, and if you just get the sandwich, GFL. (The rest of the setup, including no special fees for chicken sandwiches, is still spot on.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not a big fan of this commercial, but only because I don't see an issue with paying for a bigger pipe. I think it's fair that I pay more for higher raw throughput for multiple streaming devices than my neighbour that only streams through one TV.
But add a "Fast Lane, sponsored by Coca-Cola" to the mix, where Burger King can push you to buy Coca-Cola instead of Pepsi, because Coca-Cola bid higher than Pepsi for prioritization privileges, and the real problem with repealing NN becomes apparent.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
Is there a lane for getting my order right? I'll pay a premium for that. Actually, BK gets it right more often than Checkers. With Checkers it's 2-3 times through the drive through.
Beau, Did msmash's strapon go too deep this time??
u sick fucktard.
How the hell is this news for nerds?
stupid dick head. I, We come here for technical shit, not this convoluted piece of shit.
Do you actually film, tape, record, capture the twisted sexual acts you commit? I mean when getting on ur knees do u actually focus on the point of penetration? Do u and msmash practice putting out cigars on your forearms while watching these "home movies" in a state of un-healthy arousal?
Hmm inquiring minds. NOT
It's a really bad analogy because when you're buying fast food, you're paying not just for food, but also for the speed at which it'll be prepared. In that regard, opting to pay extra to get your burger faster is pretty much the whole point for the fast food industry existing. People seeing net neutrality portrayed in this manner might conclude it's not such a bad thing.
The problem that net neutrality tries to address is that the customer has already paid for a certain level of service. You've paid for 100 Mbps, and the ISP should be required to deliver it to the best of its ability. Period. There should be no fast lanes because what specific site data the customer wants included in their 100 Mbps is none of the ISP's business. By throttling Netflix, the ISP is defrauding the customer by not delivering the 100 Mbps the customer paid for.
The correct fast food analogy to internet fast lanes is that if you order a cheeseburger, you will have to wait longer for it to be prepared than if you ordered a hamburger. Because the dairy farm has not paid Burger King a fee for selling the slice of cheese, the restaurant is deliberately making it more inconvenient for customers ordering dairy products. This makes clear what the ISPs are trying to do - extorting suppliers by delaying delivery of something the customer has already paid for.
No Coke. Pepsi.
Your criticisms of the BK commercial totally miss the point.
This ad is reaching people who either didn't care about NN, or didn't understand it. It's a great ad because it reaches people. That's all it needs to do!
If a person is reached and wants to learn more, they'll find out more. Jeez, the ad even includes a link at the end to encourage that behavior. You are complaining about the fine points of NN, or ads, or BK, or services versus products. In so doing you produce a word salad that the targets for this ad will tune out, so your message gets lost completely.
So many tech people do this and it's dumb. First you engage, then you educate. But you have to make people care first.
This ad makes people realize that they already have something that is valuable, and they could lose it. They never even thought in those terms before. Now they think, "the Big Bad FCC is taking away my internet!" Sure it's not accurate, but the point isn't accuracy, it's motivation. Accuracy can come later. And what about those citizens who never understand the issue accurately? They still support NN, because they understand it as a Good Thing.
...Rather than a laxative. Maybe then they can tackle issues outside their area of expertise.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Net Neutrality as it was written is pointless and is anything but what it should be. I really wish people would realize that - it doesn't fix the problem and makes it seem like the issue is private companies running amok, instead of the real issue being seen: there is extremely little competition in the last mile, especially in rural areas. This has to do with what others mentioned - access to poles, monopolies from both cities and large multi-tenant units, etc. This isn't about traffic prioritization, it's about lack of competition due to regulations/laws/case law.
Further, the law itself did absolutely nothing in making sure that companies can't effectively "prioritize" traffic anyway, see #1 below.
1. Only artificially limiting bandwidth via rate shaping, etc is covered by the old law. Technical "limitations" are not. You can't require an ISP to setup more peering points, increase transit, etc. ISP's use transit (generic traffic) and peering (sending traffic to a specific company.) Most major companies like to peer since it is generally far, far cheaper than paying for transit. If Comcast is peering with Netflix and only has a 100 mbps connection to them, but the actual bandwidth required from Netflix should be more like 1000 mbps without causing slowdowns, they can simply not facilitate increasing that. It costs money (to Comcast and Netflix) to increase that bandwidth between each other, so who pays for it, especially if that utilization is heavily one-sided? Same scenario will happen, but, a different "cause".
2. Having something labeled "Net neutrality" does not make it so. The only reason people haven't left the incumbent carriers in droves is because they have no other choice in many areas. You remove the barriers to competition and it will fix this situation without having the federal government needing to pass pointless laws.
3. Net Neutrality was passed in 2015, how many years prior did the internet exist and the world did end...
The moment Burger King announced they were executing a Tax Inversion with the Canadian company Tim Horton's, they went from my favorite fast food to the subject of a lifetime boycott of their business by myself. By doing the inversion, they externalized their costs on the American tax payers. I have not set foot in one of their restaurants since then. Never again will I do so. They have the right to run their business how they see fit and I have the right to vote with my feet.
ISPs are at the mercy of what Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon charge them, since those guys own the pipes needed for broadband.
I'm sorry, but no ISP doing real business resells Comcast or AT&T. It's just too expensive and limiting. They get a pipe from a real backbone provider. Even the major non-cable, non-telco ISP in my town goes through a commercial provider and doesn't just resell Comcast.
The last mile in each city and town was installed over many decades with the encouragement and subsidy from local governments, waiving complicated rules and rights and way.
You have no clue what the franchise process used to be like, do you? I can tell you for a fact there was no waiving of complicated rules or rights of way. Before the states co-opted the franchise process, the cities could put whatever kinds of rules they wanted into a franchise agreement.
Even Google, with all its resources, has pretty much given up trying to compete in the local ISP market.
And that's now, where the "complicated rules and rights of way" aren't complicated anymore. Why did they give up? It cost too much.
this isnt about FCC - its about local and state regs that prevent non incumbents from pulling new cable on existing poles.
And federal law pre-empts any such state or local law by requiring municipalities to issue second, third or even fourth franchises on the same basis as the first, and none of them can be exclusive. If the city lets the incumbent on a pole as part of the franchise, it has to let the newbie on the pole when it issues the franchise to them.
what the fuck are you doing in that country that fast food companies need to defend the democracy for you....
Srsly W Bush wasn't this fool like this Orange in charge.
Back in the early days, when the Internet as we know it was young, ISPs agreed to not charge transit and peering fees to each other because each ISP was bringing a large number of customers to the table, and each ISP's customer base wanted access to other customers and services on other ISP's networks. So in general it was win-win for ISPs to voluntarily do this, because they were all on equal footing and had the same revenue/cost model. Only they could be in the big internet exchanges, everyone else had to connect through one of them. This is net neutrality... the agreement by the major ISPs not to charge each other for peering and transit. E.g. if I'm AT&T and you CenturyLink, we agree not to charge each other for traffic because it pretty much benefits us and our customers equally and any charges/payments to each other would probably be a wash, anyway.
Well, eventually comes along Google and other large internet companies. They pay their way into the internet exchanges, bring their own links to their giant data centers with them. As we all know, originally and currently, the carriers let them do this under pretty much the same terms as other carriers. However, over the years as they have grown, the cost model has gotten quite different. The equation is rather lopsided. Google, et al. consume a massive amount of bandwidth, and only bring their own services to the table. They don't bring anybody to my network who wants my services or my own customer's services. Obviously this relationship is *not* the same as what I have with the other carriers.
So let's say I'm a big carrier and I Google has been peering with me. As mentioned, all they bring is themselves, not a bunch of other people and businesses like the other carriers do. They continue to use more and more bandwidth, costing me more and more money.
Now, I realize this is problematic for me, and I want Google to pay for their bandwidth the same as any other customer has to pay for bandwidth, because that's what they are. Google isn't any different than Joe Shmoe's Website Consulting in anything other than the amount of bandwidth they use.
But if I mention that Google isn't a carrier, and I want to charge them the same as all my other business customers, they run around and scream "net neutrality" as if they weren't the ones who changed how the equation works.
It's funny to watch people demand that Google be allowed an essentially free internet connection at some of the highest available speeds on the planet while they have to pay to get a measly 100 Mbit.
I wasn't confused at all. It makes a good case-example of Net Neutrality via Burger orders.