If an ISP blocks something you care about, change or protest.

and how would you do that ? they can simply block your protest.

Your move :)

I'm so rural, I've got 0 ISPs to choose from. Well, technically 1, but they "aren't accepting new residential customers" right now.

See? They don't let you know about the ICANN sellout which basically destroyed ALL internet freedoms while they let you know about ISPs blocking internet access and ecnourage you to protest against them.

Lively debate

I can?

Making ICANN an independent organization stemmed from the Obama administration illegally seizing multiple international websites because of "copyright infringement." As long as it was a US entity, ICANN was going to be looked at unfavorably by the rest of the world, after that incident. Because it meant the US government had editorial and censorial control over the internet, if it was able to seize domains through ICANN.

https://www.cnet.com/news/u-s-seizes-sites-linked-to-copyright-infringement/

Before net neutrality laws, the Internet still worked. If an ISP blocks something you care about, change or protest. They are in it for money.

Though the big ISPs fight local and community broadband initiatives tooth and nail to limit competition. In some areas there is only ONE broadband provider.

There was a decent article about the lack of choice on Ars a year or so ago...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-broadband-still-no-isp-choice-for-many-especially-at-higher-speeds/

Google, Facebook...they're in it for something even worse and thanks to the behavior of these organizations over the past 18 months, I'm forced to reevaluate what I believe about net neutrality. And it's their fault.

The data collection by Google/Fb/Twitter/Alexa etc will work in the exact same manner, regardless of NN laws. The deranking, deplatforming and shaping of opinions will continue either way.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe. But they put us in this position. The position of being unable to trust their intentions so if you disagree with my questioning of the facts, ask yourself why you disagree.

Here's why I disagree.

While NN is complex, one of the CORE principles is to prevent ISPs and wireless carriers from shaping that data, and further deprioritizing data that aren't part of their vertically integrated media conglomerates.

ISPs should be unbiased dumb pipes between an end user and a site/service. Getting rid of NN just makes it easier for ISPs to BECOME another layer of gatekeeping, regardless of Google/Fb spying, while having no effect on said spying.

Hijacking current top comment to point out that OP is wrong.

Comcast got caught using traffic shaping program Sandvine to block/throttle legal bit-torrent traffic in 2007. The very next year, they were caught stacking courtrooms with people they paid to show up to make it look like people supported Comcast. The internet certainly did not just work prior to the net neutrality order.

This was all during the Bush administration, whose FCC was even more of a stonewalling fucking mess than it is now which is saying something.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/11/comcast-hit-with-class-action-lawsuit-over-traffic-blocking/

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080226/144346360.shtml

Also, people might remember, nobody on the internet trusted Tom Wheeler one fucking iota when he took office, because like Pai, he was just one more cable industry toady. And he WAS because he came to office with anti-net-neutrality policies. By April 2014, people on reddit were mercilessly skewering him for his anti-nn attitudes and policies endlessly. He was actually the first person at the FCC to really feel the brunt of the internet saying "fuck you, this is what we want." He only changed course when it became apparent that being anti-net neutrality was functionally political suicide for the Obama administration.

http://www.adweek.com/digital/fcc-commissioners-reddit-ama-went-about-terribly-youd-expect-161612/

https://www.wired.com/2014/05/fcc-proves-yet-again-that-its-out-to-kill-net-neutrality/

http://time.com/74703/net-neutrality-fcc-rules-plan-angers-advocates/

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/240zyj/hi_im_tom_wheeler_former_cable_and_telecom/

People have no excuses for not knowing this RECENT HISTORY. Reddit losing its collective shit over Wheeler wasn't even a full four years ago.

Yeah, Google and Netflix and Twitter et. al. support Net Neutrality, so does Wikipedia, Wikileaks, and Craigslist.

Net Neutrality actually makes it easier for someone to compete with a company like Google, because instead of Google being the only search engine that functions on your browser, because all the rest load up at dial-up internet speeds, because they don't have the money to pay for paid prioritization. Yeah, all you folks who use DuckDuckGo or Searx or any other less well known websites are gonna get fucking shafted trying to connect to them when this gets rolled back. Because only Google is going to be able to afford the fast, paid-priority pipes that Comcast et. al. are going to be asking for.

Because that's what this is about. If I make a website that says "Fuck Comcast" all Comcast has to do is throttle the speed to access my site, and then make me pay exorbitant fees to make that site actually accessible and useful to anyone who actually wants to visit my site. And how many people are actually going to take the time to come to my site when it loads like it's 1995? Very few. Attention spans are shorter than ever, and if you want Google to not have a monopoly on information, you sure as fuck should want net neutrality.

I wanted Clinton to lose, and I fully and wholeheartedly support net neutrality.

Yup, correlation vs causation, people.

This is idiotic. So you think that giving control over our internet to ISP can benefit us in any way, shape or form?? How??

Ending net neutrality doesn't take censorship ability away from Google et al. -- it just gives more censorship ability to ISPs in addition to existing methods of corporate censorship. More avenues for corporate censorship overall. Just less control over that censorship specifically for these particular tech companies. That's a good reason for them to oppose it -- they want to be the ones calling the shots, not to have to answer to the ISPs. But the ISPs are fundamentally on the exact same side. That isn't a reason to support ending net neutrality.

Imagine if there was a proposed law that would let insurance companies price gouge customers even more on prescription drugs, but pharmaceutical companies opposed it because it would benefit the insurance companies more than them. Pharmaceutical company opposition to the bill wouldn't be a sign that it was a good thing, despite the fact that they're unethical and exploitative as fuck. It's just competing interests all looking to screw us, squabbling about who gets to screw us more.

Personally I think the US needs to strengthen their consumer protection laws and anti trust laws. In fact they should probably be reformed and at least consumer protection laws come under a government type body so all consumers have access to make complaints.

If those laws are strengthened and actively applied, you wouldn't need to have net neutrality as complaints would be on a case by case basis.

From what I can gather from the comments here, getting rid of net neutrality will allow ISPs to censor whatever they want because they would be unregulated like google, facebook, twitter, amazon etc currently enjoy. If you don't strengthen the laws I mentions then IMO net neutrality should really be expanded to also cover the giant platforms using the ISPs.

and yet Trump, Pai, and the GOP are the ones passing it now.

HMMMMM