Re: net neutrality, I have no insider knowledge, this is just my personal opinion as an observer.
Little has changed since the NN repeal precisely because there was a relatively strong outcry at the time. It’s hard to think of another issue that polls with 60-80% support across both parties.
Practically, “little has changed” in the sense that AFAIK in these 4 years no ISP has switched to a business model based on charging internet companies for access to “fast lanes”. IMO this is only because introducing tiered pricing would likely generate significant backlash, and ISPs have good reason to believe that, given the outcry at the time of repeal.
The downsides of NN include unpredictable tail risks of a kind of lock-in that is very hard to undo.
At the time of repeal, I think there were basically two categories of “sky is falling” rhetoric. (1) rational actors trying to drum up public opposition despite knowing that the worst-case scenario is unlikely, and (2) media actors who jumped on the NN bandwagon, simply because it generated engagement.
Doesn’t make sense for (1) to state “I was wrong” takes because nothing in these past 4 years falsifies the claim that eroding NN could gradually lead to an ossified internet with (much more) rent-seeking ISPs. (2) probably wouldn’t recant anything since “we were wrong” stories seem like ineffective clickbait.
In short, I think nothing bad has happened yet because people were so fired up about NN in the first place, and because practically a rent-seeking ISP would need more time to capitalize on the repeal.
I think this is interesting and plausible, but I’m somewhat skeptical in light of the fact that there doesn’t seem to have been much (or at least, very effective) outcry over the rollback of net neutrality.
Re: net neutrality, I have no insider knowledge, this is just my personal opinion as an observer.
Little has changed since the NN repeal precisely because there was a relatively strong outcry at the time. It’s hard to think of another issue that polls with 60-80% support across both parties.
Practically, “little has changed” in the sense that AFAIK in these 4 years no ISP has switched to a business model based on charging internet companies for access to “fast lanes”. IMO this is only because introducing tiered pricing would likely generate significant backlash, and ISPs have good reason to believe that, given the outcry at the time of repeal.
The downsides of NN include unpredictable tail risks of a kind of lock-in that is very hard to undo.
At the time of repeal, I think there were basically two categories of “sky is falling” rhetoric. (1) rational actors trying to drum up public opposition despite knowing that the worst-case scenario is unlikely, and (2) media actors who jumped on the NN bandwagon, simply because it generated engagement.
Doesn’t make sense for (1) to state “I was wrong” takes because nothing in these past 4 years falsifies the claim that eroding NN could gradually lead to an ossified internet with (much more) rent-seeking ISPs. (2) probably wouldn’t recant anything since “we were wrong” stories seem like ineffective clickbait.
In short, I think nothing bad has happened yet because people were so fired up about NN in the first place, and because practically a rent-seeking ISP would need more time to capitalize on the repeal.
I think this is interesting and plausible, but I’m somewhat skeptical in light of the fact that there doesn’t seem to have been much (or at least, very effective) outcry over the rollback of net neutrality.