Feb 21, 2017The future of the internet that net neutrality seeks to avoid is Apple’s walled garden on a larger scale: ISPs restricting content from users. If Trump-supporting Gab users believe that Apple is overstepping its bounds by moderating its app store too heavily, it’s not much of a leap to assume that they feel similarly about internet-service providers.
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Net neutrality evens the playing field—but under Trump, the web will favor big business.
- In advance of a full repeal, Trump's FCC is undermining net neutrality. Updated Feb 21, 2017 ago
- Killing net neutrality would vastly strengthen the relationship between where you get your data and what you can surf.
- Repealing net neutrality may spawn backlash from the very trolls whose platforms the regulations protect.
In advance of a full repeal, Trump's FCC is undermining net neutrality.
The FCC will have to vote, but with the board's two top Democrats gone, it's almost a foregone conclusion that net neutrality's days are numbered. They've already dropped inquiries into the practice of zero-rating, looked at askance by proponents of net neutrality who see the practice—in which a provider doesn't count content from favored sites against a consumer's data cap—as a prelude to the total teardown of net neutrality, T minus three months.
Toppling net neutrality is just part of the pro-corporate agenda Trump's web regulators have in mind. They're also likely to oppose efforts by municipalities to develop high-speed public networks and support consolidation by mega-merger.
Corporations will flourish while venture capitalists "freak out" that start-ups won't be treated fairly.
Feb 21, 2017Eliminating regulations essentially means ISPs can continue charging consumers for access to the internet while simultaneously charging institutions for prioritized access to those customers. This means any organization without deep enough pockets to pay an ISP’s ransom will load much slower than those with ties to ISPs.
↩︎ TechCrunch
Feb 21, 2017In any way limiting the Lifeline program, at this moment in time, exacerbates the digital divide. It doesn't address it in any positive way.
↩︎ Washington Post
Mainstream civil rights orgs push for corporate telecoms—who happen to be their donors.
The NAACP, National Urban League, and others sent a letter to the FCC supporting the end of net neutrality. Other civil rights organizations say an end to net neutrality would enable discrimination and undermine the web as a platform for activism.
The civil rights group opposed to net neutrality have employed several arguments against the proposal. In one filing made in 2010, the NAACP signed onto an argument from MMTC that net neutrality reforms were a waste of resources because the FCC should focus on “more pressing racial discrimination and exclusionary hiring and promotion practices of certain Silicon Valley high-tech companies.” In a separate filing in 2014, MMTC and the NAACP argued that reclassification would threaten the “fragile state of minority engagement in the digital ecosystem.”
There's a chip in your smartphone that lets you listen to FM radio, but turning it on is bad for corporate profits.
Your smartphone can actually pick up FM radio. Most US phones don't have the chip turned on, but in Mexico 80 percent of smartphone users can get FM radio, which public-safety wonks love because it's a reliable way to reach populations in an emergency.
Ajit Pai, Trump's FCC chief, wants more companies to turn the chip on, but says he won't force Apple or any other provider to do so. (They keep it off in hopes you'll pay for Spotify or Apple Music.)
The Editors' Longreads Picks
- An excellent essay on poverty and writing by Starr Davis. Updated May 31, 2022
- Novelist Héctor Tobar tries to understand the 1992 Los Angeles riots through the experiences of a single high school.
- Steven Johnson with a long assessment of the current state of A.I. and language. (The illusion has gotten very good.)
Welcome to The Morning News Tournament of Books, 2017 edition.
- Our championship match is decided in the Tournament of Books, with news of a Rooster surprise debuting this summer. Updated Mar 31, 2017
- In Thursday's action, Reyhan Harmanci sets up a colossal final.
- The Zombie round opens with Buzzfeed's Isaac Fitzgerald reading The Nix and The Underground Railroad.
Все ваши Белый дом принадлежит нам.
- "Will Putin expose the failings of American democracy or will he inadvertently expose the strength of American democracy?" Updated Mar 3, 2017
- Wilbur Ross just wanted to make some money in ethically gray areas (that should've prevented him from taking office).
- Jeff Sessions's spokeswoman can't help but continue to lie.
The oceans are under assault, and not just from the White House and friends.
- Trump's assault on the environment begins with American headwaters. Updated Mar 1, 2017
- Don't just blame the oil companies for destroying the oceans—blame sushi restaurants.
- Nothing escapes the deepest trenches of the ocean floor. Not light, not nutrients, not pollutants.