Similar to how signing Civil Rights legislation finally made Southern Racists abandon the Democratic party (which they had stuck with due to Civil War bitterness) and make the leap to the GOP, it feels like gutting the Internet is the kind of issue that could make a significant number of people abandon the GOP. They probably wouldn’t join the Democrats but they might just exit politics or try and form a third party. It feels like it is that big a mistake.
I doubt it.
I can’t imagine the ISPs will interfere with anyone’s use of really popular, profitable stuff like Disney cartoons or porn.
I would expect the reverse. If the tiny number of ISPs control the content the rest of us see, they will push their agenda, and likely win the propaganda war.
Kekistani Trumplican internet trolls coming to the realization that this admin will remove freedoms from them too and not just the feminazis, cucks (liberals), Muslims, and kangs (Afr-Ams)? No way in hell.
My studies have shown me that a kek is an ignoble beast, impervious to logic, and consists solely on a diet of out-group displays of internet aggression.
It seems like the issue has awoken a large number of younger people, who tend to lean Democrat. They usually don’t vote though. Maybe this will encourage them to vote.
Republicans have no problem with corporate welfare, despite the damage it does to them personally. I’ve never understood it. I’m sure they will applaud this latest predation.
I doubt Net Neutrality being lost will be seismic and sudden in effect. The corps that pushed for this will gradually over 5-10 years screw up the Internet so it is not such a big shock that causes legislation to be put back in place.
The net neutrality issue will play out primarily as contractual battles and litigation among such players as Verizon, Comcast, and Netflix, which will not galvanize any particular political momentum, IMO.
Changes that appear politically-motivated will be called out in public discourse, the way advertisers on controversial programs are, or the way the right wing consistently attacks Twitter. Many such changes will be backed off from due to this sort of pressure.
Losing net neutrality has potential to be horrible, but it won’t be right away, which is long enough for the GOP to act like the whole thing was a tempest in a teapot.
My hope is based more on just how it can be undone at any branch of government, so if any branch changes allegiances, it can be fixed. There are the obvious with having Congress pass a law or having the Administration hire someone else. But there’s also apparently a legal argument that they’ve failed to follow procedure.
I read one article on Net Neutrality today, on a liberal site, and there were already several people in the comments defending it. Plenty of people who stop at “regulation is bad, Obama regulation is super bad, I don’t see the problem.”
I can see the internet providers putting the screws to services like YouTube. Throttle their speeds unless they cough up money.
YouTube of course will then end free access and go to a subscription plan.
Then that opens the door for even more copyright lawsuits because YouTube is charging for content.
It’s a big box worms.
I had hoped Net Neutrality would be secure for awhile. I guess there’s nothing the Republicans won’t ruin.
Sturgeon’s Law says that 90% of everything is shit.
So 90% of the internet-using public is shit. So is 90% of the content being produced and distributed over the internet.
Therefore, there’s an 81% convergence of shit content delivered to shit consumers, and this is exactly what opponents of net neutrality want to focus on. If you’re part of the 10% non-shit in either category, tough shit. When come back, bring enough money to matter.
If millions of voters supported conservative efforts to take away their health care, I have a hard time believing they’ll be moved by conservative efforts to restrict their online access.
Y’all are talking as if there is no statistically significant number of people who oppose net “neutrality.” A fair number of voters see it as no more than over-regulation by the government of something that is best left to the free market. Most of you may not see it that way, but many do.
Polls (and my facebook feed) consistently show net neutrality to be a non-partisan issue, with both Democratic and Republican voters supporting it (excluding push polling). No cite because this is MPSIMS, and you can google as well as I can.
The current activity by the FCC is just step one. The second step is to get a “net neutrality law” (in scare quotes) passed by Congress. This law will be advertised as protecting consumers and business, but will be written entirely by Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc. and will supersede state and local net neutrality laws, block municipal broadband, and put up enough regulations to make the market impossible to enter by even well funded startups, like Google.
I think the congressional step is vulnerable to bipartisan public influence. Something like the SOPA revolt might occur, leaving lawmakers in a situation where support is impossible, despite the lobbying of Comcast, etc. I also think the lobbyists are smart enough to know this, and will be much more tuned into exploiting partisan divides and straight up lying in order to get it passed.
Moving this to Elections.
Nope. Most republican voters are not going to care about policy nuance like that.
One way I could see it happening: if it causes companies affected negatively to donate more money and do more lobbying against the GOP.
Try2B Comprehensive has added an exceedingly relevant post (# 16) to the discussion of mass shootings. [QV=Try2B Comprehensive;20606995]
It applies beautifully to this discussion but it’s his content so I won’t try to cross-post it here.
My point is that control-of-knowledge has been going on for centuries, if not millenia, and the Internet is just the latest battlefront; corporations the latest champions. But, of course, you know this. TV preceded the Internet, which superceded Radio and Movies. The battles played out amongst newspapers before that, publishers even earlier. And, of course, suggesting those battles are relegated to history is misleading; the antagonism between Fox News & Breitbart versus Media Matters for America is hardly secret; The New York Times spins every story the opposite way from the Washington Post. Nor is the conservative domination of schoolbook publishing in Texas accepted with a simple shrug.
And it’s somewhat ironic that the current president got into power by selling the same recycled promises that failed twenty years ago. Back then, Bob Dole’s team said, “We’re building a bridge to the past!” in an attempt to appeal to the aged and conservative voters. But the Democratic team seized on that and said, “Yes, indeed! And WE are building a bridge to the future!”
But President Rump got into office by saying, “Let’s roll the clock back to the 1950’s – back before these newfangled media technologies got out of control.”
And our middle- and southern state voters, who had grown angry and incensed by the radical changes made over the last eight years, eagerly bought that promise and voted against any more of that disgusting progress shit. They didn’t understand it, didn’t want to understand it, they just knew it disrupted their comfortable lives and traditional mores & values.
And the most blatant disruptions came, almost by definition, via communications – the Internet. It’s not that they understand how or why it works (computer technology standards have made most devices plug-and-play) but they know that they don’t like what they see made available through it. The issues of intellectual property, information bias, and knowledge filtering are just way to abstract for them to consider. So, just like TV had too much sex and violence, Rock/Disco/Punk/Rap/Grunge/Pop/Whatever had too much violence and/or sex, movies had too much violence and sex, and comic books had too much violence and sex, today’s oldsters are only too happy to see somebody – anybody – take control of that Internet thing and hopefully there will be a promise of clamping down on all that sex and violence, as well.
–G!
Yes, ‘mores’ is a word. Think ‘morals’ but not restricted to religious connotations. Pronounce like the eel: Morays
Short answer: No.
This. And if the GOP doesn’t become a long-term minority party before the effects of repealing net neutrality are felt, it’s hard to imagine that this will be the thing that puts them over the edge.
One gets the feeling that most Republican voters think “nuance” is a miracle anti-aging cream that they got a sample of in the mail that one time.