The FCC has voted to restore net neutrality rules, which were previously rescinded under former president Donald Trump.
The vote reinstates protections established in 2015 that treat broadband as a utility, like water or electricity, and means all internet traffic must be treated equally. Here's more on what it means for you, from @CNN
It’s worth noting that the FCC’s so-called “Open” Internet Advisory Committee (#OIAC) tragically gives two seats on the board to:
Cloudflare
Comcast
Both of whom are abusers of #netneutrality, especially Cloudflare. A well-informed Trump-free administration should be showing Cloudflare and Comcast the door ASAP.
Sure, Trump would just bring them back. But it’d at least be a good symbolic move.
Indeed, as someone else pointed out, the needed change should come from pro-netneutrality legislation. And the legislation needs to be broad enough to block Cloudflare’s broad discriminatory arbitrary attack on access equality, not just tinker with speeds at the ISP consumer level.
"In a 3–2 vote, the FCC voted to restore Net Neutrality protections & reclassify high-speed-internet access services as telecom services subject to Title II of the Communications Act.
The decision is a major victory for the public interest: Title II authority empowers the FCC to hold companies: AT&T, Comcast, Spectrum... accountable for a wide range of harms to internet users across the US, fast, open +fair for all of us.”
The linked page is accessible to everyone because a US-based NGO has mirrored Belgian law and made it accessible to all people. But attempts to directly visit www.ejustice.just.fgov.be is blocked if you are on the Tor network. The packets are silently dropped making it look as if the website is offline; so the Tor community is...
Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel backs it: "A return to the FCC’s overwhelmingly popular and court-approved standard of net neutrality will allow the agency to serve once again as a strong consumer advocate of an open internet.”
this adds +1 to the time to live of your computer's packets and fools simple detectors which try to block tethering on the basis that it is one extra hop from computer to phone before going to the telco. #netneutrality#deviceneutrality
Reality has a distinct anti-conservative bias, but conservatives have an answer: when the facts don't support your policies, just get different facts. Who needs #EvidenceBasedPolicy when you can have #PolicyBasedEvidence?
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Think of #NetNeutrality, the idea that if you pay an ISP for internet service, they should make a best effort to deliver the data you request, rather than deliberately slowing down your connection in the hopes that you'll seek out data from the company's preferred partners, who've paid a bribe for "premium delivery."
Since last year, republicans have launched a campaign to get conservatives on school boards. This is the political party in the US who favors privatization of everything. They are sympathetic to giant corporations and champion #citizensUnited (which elevates corporations above humans). #Ohio has a large number of extremists...
#Apnews is Tor-hostile. I do not support excluding people so I shared a link that is open to the public and inclusive.
If AP News would have also blocked archive.org (thus public libraries) then I would not have shared the link at all — out of respect for #netneutrality (access equality).
The thing is, any feed or search result is "algorithmic." "Just show me the things posted by people I follow in reverse-chronological order" is an algorithm. "Just show me products that have this SKU" is an algorithm. "Alphabetical sort" is an algorithm. "Random sort" is an algorithm.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
I've proposed something similar, applicable across multiple kinds of digital businesses: an #EndToEnd principle for online services. The end-to-end principle is as old as the internet, and it decrees that the role of an intermediary should be to deliver data from willing senders to willing receivers as quickly and reliably as possible. When we apply this principle to your ISP, we call it #NetNeutrality.
FCC to restore #NetNeutrality and also, hey, to protect our online activity from scrapping--be it for #ArtificialIntelligence training without our consent, or for even more nefarious purposes.
When the public comment period opens, for your own interest, comment--the vultures will, by the thousands, using bots/AI, so we need to show up and make sure our voices are heard, and our interests protected.
Network neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, without discrimination in favor of particular apps, sites or services...
Net neutrality may be popping up in your tech headlines and social media timelines. ZDNet explains exactly what it is, why the Federal Communications Commission wants to restore it and what it might mean for internet broadband prices.
Remember #NetNeutrality, ISPs being common carriers and them not meddling with the pages users want to see? This is similar.
Under a "remote neutral" approach each #fediverse instance leaves the tight opinionated moderation policies to their own users users and the content their users generate or share with the aim of running a safe and welcoming instance for their members that's safe to federate with.
However, remote content is only moderated whenever there is a report and only blocked if it's straight out illegal to host / cache or constitute unsolicited spam/harassment. Otherwise objectionable remote content is limited at most and users can block it if they want.
Net neutrality is back as FCC votes to regulate internet providers ( www.cnn.com )
Belgium blocks Tor users from accessing legal statutes on privacy protection law ( web.archive.org )
The linked page is accessible to everyone because a US-based NGO has mirrored Belgian law and made it accessible to all people. But attempts to directly visit www.ejustice.just.fgov.be is blocked if you are on the Tor network. The packets are silently dropped making it look as if the website is offline; so the Tor community is...
Free software in education will take a step back -- republicans are going after school board positions nationwide in the US ( web.archive.org )
Since last year, republicans have launched a campaign to get conservatives on school boards. This is the political party in the US who favors privatization of everything. They are sympathetic to giant corporations and champion #citizensUnited (which elevates corporations above humans). #Ohio has a large number of extremists...
The FCC is Expected to Propose the Return of Net Neutrality Protections Oct 19th ( www.eff.org )
Network neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, without discrimination in favor of particular apps, sites or services...