This is already happening.
This thread started because SenorBeef claimed that the only thing getting rid of net neutrality would do is make connections worse. I gave Binge On as something that violated net neutrality but was an improved connection for customers. I cited the article merely to show it was considered a net neutrality violation, not as an endorsement of the arguments that it harms consumers 
More bizarrely, net neutrality prevents ISPs from developing technologies to increase safety for IoT devices. It would be relatively trivial for them to detect and drop packets from IoT devices not going to a known safe address. But that would be a net neutrality violation because they aren’t treating data equally.
True, but that article gave one guys opinion that it violated net neutrality. I find it difficult to understand how you can give credence to THAT opinion, but not his opinion that the violation of net neutrality harms consumers.
I think that you would find that this is NOT relatively trivial.
I do not see why.
DDoS traffic is not information requested by the consumer but rather a bot. The technology exists for ISPs to be able to distinguish that traffic from legitimate traffic.
If you have a nice IoT complement, the devices will be on your home network, which communicates with your ISP using a single IP address. Any botnet activity that your hijacked devices participate in looks like any other traffic going through your IP. Your ISP handles transactions through your router, which is fundamentally opaque with respect to your ISP (it only sees traffic relative to your IP address, not what home network client/device is involved with that traffic).
To distinguish legitimate traffic, your ISP must perform deep packet inspection, which adds many microseconds to every transaction. For and ISP with thousands of clients, this adds up to real delays. And DDoS attacks do not necessarily rely on return data: they mere swamp the target server with requests (which have been in the hundreds of GB/s in some cases).
Moreover, the botnet is not relying on your zombie to flood the target, it is relying on tens or hundreds of thousands of zombies all over the world to do the flooding. This means that your local ISP will not observe anomalous traffic.
Once the target is identified, it might be able to broadcast a plea for help. But this will mean that all traffic to the server will be blocked or throttled – which accomplishes exactly the intent of the attack. I do not believe that even deep packet inspection would be enough to detect what is or is not legitimate traffic.
Parties angered by the effects of aggressive traffic management will be inclined to hire botnets in order to deny service to sites and servers that they perceive to be unjustly favored by internet traffic managers. I believe that this will happen with increasing frequency, making net neutrality look like the preferable option, as everyone’s service suffers.
It is not incumbent on ISPs and backbone operators to address this problem (by further degrading service). The problem lies in the designers and manufacturers of IoT devices. There is no reason that they should be so vulnerable as to create fertile soil in which botnets may thrive. As will be the case with non-neutrally managed traffic, the IoT concept has so far been a failure in the concept of the free market model and calls for serious regulation.
ISPs have been doing this for a decade:
Include the first part of that paragraph:
The FCC has required the capability. I seriously doubt it is routinely employed.
*To be super clear: You absolutely should never bring up “fallacies” when debating someone. *
If there’s any expert in the world on proper debating techniques, I guess it must be the less-funny cousin of MAD Magazine that has since rebranded itself.
An identity stealing bot is flooding the FCC’s website with fake anti-net neutrality comments.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver 7 May 2017: Net Neutrality 2
He helpfully includes instructions (and online help) for how to tell the FCC that you support Net Neutrality and Title 2.
Well, we have the answer to OP’s question: yes.
It gets worse. One Roslyn Layton of AEI advocates for “Free Basics” to poor folks who have no internet, facilitated by “zero-rating” and supported by advertising – because, you know, advertisers ache to reach out to people with no disposable income.
And, of course, we ever so want to see the extent of the internet defined by business, which will charge us more to be able to see all of it. Or even a most of it. Your average blog or personal web pages would be consigned to the literal boondocks, inaccessible to people who have not paid for the premium package.
Big business wants this to become the new normal. A notion that runs counter to the basic ethos of the internet. It sounds like a suck idea to me.
Do you suppose it is impossible to craft a rule that allows for steps to protect users’ security while barring ISPs from throttling traffic from sources that haven’t paid for favored treatment?
We could just have a rule that refrigerators and security cams and automobiles must be designed so that they cannot be hacked. It really should not be that difficult.
Anything connected to the Internet can be hacked.
I remember the Telecom Act of 1996, which promised better rates and more consumer choice as a result of deregulation. As any cable-satellite subscriber knows, rates have gone up and most ‘choices’ are bad ones. I remember paying like $40 per month as a broke college student for cable and the selection was okay for the price. I think I paid $60 for internet and cable that offers virtually none of the programming I want, which is why we cut the cord. And we have no ‘choice’ in this market.
That’s where internet is going now. We’ll probably all have access to high-traffic websites like Google, Amazon, E-bay, and Facebook, but the real loser is start-up businesses and e-commerce. I could also see telecom companies - who will know everything about you - wanting a piece of your e-business action, too. I don’t see how any Trump/GOP fanboy actually believes this is a good thing – probably because like most things they support in theory, they haven’t had to deal with the consequences of it in reality.
You have it backwards. Your free and competitive market arose from anti-monopoly legislation. "Freedom"created monopolies, and it was state action that broke them up.