Anna Gomez confirmation means “FCC can act swiftly to restore net neutrality.”
“If confirmed, she would give the Democrats a majority at the FCC that would enable them to impose a radical left-wing agenda, including investment-killing and job-killing so-called net neutrality rules, otherwise known as Obamacare for the Internet” Cruz said.
What
It’s just right-wing buzzword scrabble with that guy. No need to even speak in complete sentences, just say a bunch of words that your voters want to demonize, and take home the money.
“Radical” “Obamacare” “Left-wing” Triple word score!
I was honestly nodding my head in agreement until I got the the word investment-killing. Then I realized it was meant to sound bad lol
God damn, Cruz will molest talking points into a sentence by any means necessary. It’s like he rolls dice each morning to decide which random words he has to slap together.
Drag shows are literally banning gas stoves through an Antifa deep state Obamacare abortion.
Political madlibs except you can’t call them that because it has libs in it
Reminds me of the dolphins from South Park who write tv episodes. We already know all the lines and ideas, they just shuffle them now and then to break up the monotony (but will never help small businesses by breaking up a monopoly)
HOLUP You’re saying these drag shows are going to force abortions onto everyone in the United States and they plan on INCREASING TAXES!? Thanks Obama.
His constituents love Obamacare as long as you call it, “The Affordable Care Act” lol what a nutsack
Anything that comes out of his mouth is BS at best.
I don’t even know if he actually believes it but rather just wants easily fooled people to believe it.
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Ted Cruz reminds me of a lot of people, but I hate him more than any of them.
No worries, the Democrats will do what the party does best with a majority - pretty much nothing.
Enough to say “see? We’re better than the other guys”, but not enough to even nudge the status quo.
I genuinely don’t give a fuck about these petty little ontological bullshit games the DNC has grown fond of in the last two election cycles. I don’t give the first fuck if they’re “better than the other guys” if the status quo, if the material conditions aren’t changing a jot. For misleaders who claim to be better than the cultists, I see a whole lot of fucking nothing changing for the progressive.
Until we have democrats that are serious about ending carceral slavery, ending(and fully disarming) the militarization of police, ending our mosquito-like suckling of crude oil and natural gas, ending the domestic espionage programs like PRISM, FIVE-EYES and their ilk, closing the genocide camps at the border, and making actual good on our climate catastrophe, I genuinely don’t give a damn what they say; I’d rather the country fell than humor these career criminals.
I wish it was going to be radical left wing. Gimme that socialized internet!
I hate Ted Cruz so much.
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He said “buttery males”
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That sounds… hawt. Republicans make Democrats sound cool.
Now let’s get back to net neutrality and rules on social media.
I’m not holding my breath.
We’ll probably see them lobbying to give ISPs additional taxpayer funds to ‘expand’ broadband access while redefining broadband to be anything above 150Kbps.
What rules
Rules for social media lol. What do you expect the government to do? How would they even enforce these rules? Social media sites would simply host in other countries outside of the USA to bypass regulations.
Instead of trying to regulate websites, how about we create better privacy protections for our citizens, eh?
Privacy protection sounds a lot like rules for social media to me…
I don’t think you put much thought into this, friend. Many social media companies are incorporated in the US to make use of US ad revenue sources. Where the servers are hosted doesn’t matter. The legal corporate entity is the important bit.
And as mentioned in the other comment, privacy protections would operate the same way, seeing as they are literally rules for social media, among other sites.
But yes, privacy protections would be great. Let’s do that
Even if that’s true I wouldn’t put it past the companies to find ways to circumvent regulations, and I think trying to advocate for regulating them sets a precedent against the free and open internet that websites are under government control, which shouldn’t be the case. Imagine if government started requiring government ID’s to access all websites (including Lemmy, which is a social network).
It’s true that companies will probably try to find ways to circumvent any rules placed on them, but I don’t think that’s a good reason to not make the legislation.
If regulating social media is an infringement on the free and open internet, does that same logic apply to everything else we regulate? Government mandated ID checking would certainly be bad, but is it a terrible infringement on the internet to say, for instance, “hey, you can’t advertise to children in these ways”?
They have zero interests in providing privacy protections. KOSA is a prime example, bi partisan internet censorship
I hope they clap the cheeks of the lobbies and finalize net neutrality rules with no take-backsies. Then focus on actually improving the internet after that. Just…please get shit done. Quickly.
What took so long?
Republicans
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Biden tried again in May with the nomination of Gomez, a State Department digital policy official who was previously deputy assistant secretary at the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) from 2009 to 2023.
“If confirmed, she would give the Democrats a majority at the FCC that would enable them to impose a radical left-wing agenda, including investment-killing and job-killing so-called net neutrality rules, otherwise known as Obamacare for the Internet,” Cruz said.
The Republican yes votes came from Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, and Todd Young of Indiana.
Annoyed at how many vote no on a candidate as qualified and non-controversial as this," commented Harold Feld, senior VP and consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge.
Media advocacy group Free Press said the “unprecedented 32-month delay” that deadlocked the FCC "was the result of concerted efforts by the phone, cable, and broadcast lobbies to hamstring the agency that oversees their businesses.
Gomez’s confirmation restores the agency’s full complement of commissioners and provides a tie-breaking vote on issues related to diversifying media ownership, promoting broadband affordability and protecting the rights of Internet users."
The original article contains 556 words, the summary contains 196 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
God Cruz is such a pos
I cannot even make sense of the Obamacare comparison… do people really fall for this word vomit? Sad.
Looks up the poll numbers for Approval of “Obamacare” and approval of “ACA” during the time. That should answer your question.
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otherwise known as Obamacare for the Internet
No one calls it that.
It needs to be dumbed down for his audience
That’s what they tried dubbing it a few years ago on fox.
NET NEUTRALITY NOW
I hope they don’t fuck this up. It’d be really easy for these incompetent bastards to do something stupid like “all internet traffic must be given the same priority.”
Traffic shaping is important. Certain packets, like those for real time transmission, have to be given priority (think packets for game movement or phone calls or video conferencing) whereas things that can be downloaded or buffered into larger packets (streaming video, file downloads) the packets can be transmitted with lower priority.
The important part of this is the shaping doesn’t happen on a per origin basis, but shaping for purpose is critical. I’m hoping any regulation isn’t the nonsense that was spelled out previously, it’d be a disaster because it’s like the dumb asses didn’t bother to consult actual network engineers before drafting the proposals.
I hope they do it right if they’re gonna do it.
It’s never gonna happen, lmao. It’ll be just like Obama’s ‘priorities’ with the Freedom of Choice act. A hundred days’ll pass from the dems having initiative in the FCC, and suddenly, Net Neutrality will ‘no longer be a priority’ for that body.
I wish either side would actually follow through on one of their good promises instead of just the shitty ones.
I am not American but does this mean that the Ali guy will be gone?
Do you mean Ajit Pai?
A shit pie.
I mean would you be kind in a world that cursed you with one of the world’s most punchable faces?
Ted Cruz’s face exists!
Yeah that’s the one. Thanks.
He’s been gone a while. Congress just never approved his replacement.
Republicans just never approved his replacement.
Dems have the majority? Time for a recess.
God damn it. We need balance of power to keep everyone sain
Here’s a contrarian hot take. The net neutrality fight is one of those uniquely American issues that simply should not matter, like school shooter drills, complicated tax filings, and tipping. The Wikipedia page on net neutrality in the United States is about as long as War and Peace, yet in most other countries “net neutrality” is not even enshrined as a distinct legal concept and they do just fine.
In the US, net neutrality has not been a general requirement for ISPs since the issue first surfaced over a decade ago, and efforts to enshrine net neutrality into federal law have failed. The dystopia of a balkanized Internet floated by net neutrality campaigners (e.g. ISPs charging people extra to access Netflix) has not come to pass. Yet it’s a live issue because (i) Americans are paranoid about corporations screwing them over, (ii) American corporations have a long history of screwing them over, and (iii) Americans of all camps love waging long and complicated legal battles against each other.
What’s really needed is not net neutrality, but a more competitive ISP market. What the net neutrality fears are really about is ISPs having power over consumers. If only one ISP serves your area, they can screw you over by forcing you to shell out more money to access Netflix or whatever. But government efforts are ultimately better spent increasing market competitiveness, such as setting up “shared fiber” requirements. If there are a bunch of ISPs all competing against each other, “net neutrality” will fall naturally into place simply because none of them want to piss off their customers.
The dystopia of a balkanized Internet floated by net neutrality campaigners (e.g. ISPs charging people extra to access Netflix) has not come to pass.
You may be unaware, but that dystopia already exists today: Mobile service providers (= ISPs for their customers) are selling e.g. WhatsApp traffic quotas separately from other internet traffic. You’ll buy a package, and you’ll get X GB traffic, but Y GB WhatsApp traffic separately, with Y sometimes even being > X.
Meaning in effect that people have to pay more to access the non WhatsApp-Internet, which means “ISP charging people extra to access Netflix” (among other services). It encourages people who have little money to stay in their WhatsApp filter bubble.
In a competitive market, bundling/unbundling is good, not bad. It’s a way for consumers to get a better deal. For example, if a tiny minority of users take up a huge chunk of internet traffic through their use of WhatsApp, bundling WhatsApp separately allows the majority of non-power-users to pay less. If you don’t like it, just jump to the other providers.
It’s under conditions of market power that bundling/unbundling becomes problematic. When your ISP is a monopoly, they can impose bundles on you not because it’s a good way to offer consumer choice, but because it’s a way to stealthily increase prices.
All data is data. Charge by the byte with a 2% profit (not even sure hot to fogure that), or just leave it as unlimited, as it should be.
Food is food, so why doesn’t McDonald’s charge you by the Happy Meal, instead of allowing you to buy burgers, fries, and drinks separately?
I think you missed my point, being that the absence of net neutrality by legislation has brought us exactly what those promoting such legislation have warned about.
When your ISP is a monopoly
Well look at that, they all are. Next.
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This is like when Europeans or people in other countries say, “racism isn’t a problem here, it’s a ‘uniquely American’ problem.” Not because racism doesn’t exist in these other countries, but because these other countries aren’t actually talking about racism and often don’t care about it.
It’s more like saying European schools are not well prepared for school shootings. Indeed they aren’t, and this is in principle a problem, but they’ve settled the issue at a deeper level.
That’s not really true. Emerging internet markets are right to be worried about this too. For example India codified net neutrality just a few years ago.
While more competition in ISPs would prevent this being needed, having the backing of a law is a good fallback.
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Net Neutrality only applies to ISPs. Endpoints can do whatever they want.
