Am I the only one who has started to feel like a useful idiot defending the big 5's riches? What we have now isn't a neutral net. We're complaining about traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we read, what we can download, and who we mingle with.
>If Net Neutrality goes away wouldn't it actually strengthen the position of the current dominant players?
Would it? I'm under the impression, many of the companies big enough to muster some form of competition against the Big 5 are the ISPs who would be negatively impacted by Title 2 rules.
>They are the ones who can more easily afford to pay for preferred delivery no?
I suppose the ISP could cut them off and offer their own versions of the services. It wouldn't be very much different than how Apple dictates what you can and can't do on their mobile devices.
>"I'm under the impression, many of the companies big enough to muster some form of competition against the Big 5 are the ISPs"
So you believe that those ISPs that are mostly local monopolies(maybe part of a duopoly at best)are going to provide competition? How as has that been working out so far?
The average American now pays $103.00 a month for crap cable service and crap equipment[1]. And that price is only increasing[2]. In fact cable TV price increases have outpaced inflation every year for the last 20 years[3].
Also it's not just video and music streaming bits that could be de-prioritized in the absence of Net Neutrality, its all bits.
The last time I checked none of these ISPs operated all the other things I use the internet for like reading news, shopping, checking email and making travel arrangements. Do you imagine they will offer competition there too as soon as they aren't bound by Title II?
Look at any Cable provider's on-screen interface for the channel guide or the plastic remote that hasn't changed in 20 years that you need to use to navigate it. Do these give you the impression these are innovative companies capable of building good software and competing?
Lastly there are other ISPs besides the eye ball/last mile networks(Comcast/Time Warner/Charter etc.) There are also the Tier 1 ISPs[4] that internet companies buy transit from in order to deliver their service to end users.
If Net Neutrality goes away those Tier 1 ISPs that own national backbones and are upstream from all the eye ball/last mile networks are free to "play games" with delivering bits as well.
> We're complaining about traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we read, what we can download, and who we mingle with.
What companies are you including in your "big 5"? I don't think any of the typical big tech companies have monopolies in the same way that I only have 1 and only 1 ISP from which to chose.
>What companies are you including in your "big 5"?
Google/Amazon/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple.
>I don't think any of the typical big tech companies have monopolies in the same way
If you buy a Google Home, you're basically fighting an uphill battle to use something other than Google Play music, right? If you have Comcast, then they make using Netflix a battle vs Comcast's own on demand video, how is that different?
>I only have 1 and only 1 ISP from which to chose.
You don't consider AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint an ISP? Those four are pretty universally available in the US, and for a lot of people, mobile carriers are their primary ISP.
> If you buy a Google Home, you're basically fighting an uphill battle to use something other than Google Play music, right? If you have Comcast, then they make using Netflix a battle vs Comcast's own on demand video, how is that different?
It's different both because I can easily live without a Google Home in modern society, but not without the internet, and because there is actual competition in the Home assistant/automation market, where there is none in the ISP market in much of the US.
The necessity of the underlying service being controlled is significantly different, to the point many see the Internet as a utility, and the actual ability of a consumer to make a decision is wildly different.
>there is actual competition in the Home assistant/automation market, where there is none in the ISP market in much of the US.
What is your definition of an ISP? A cable company?
Dish is an ISP, the four major mobile operators are ISPs, Verizon even has fiber service in some areas. In most of the US, you have about as many choices in ISPs as you have in Google Home/Alexa/iWhatevers.
>We're complaining about traffic shaping by ISPs, while big 5 are shaping it already, deciding what we read, what we can download, and who we mingle with.
What? I'm not sure I understand your position, but removing all FCC rules on Net Neutrality are not going to make any of that stuff better.
The monopolist ISPs that are regularly voted by far the most hated companies in the country are making plenty of money and doing just fine.
If you want to talk about antitrust action against the big 5, I'm absolutely with you -- they are monopolists and they need to be broken up. But your solution is to redistribute ultimate power back to the most hated monopolists in the country? Who have a physical monopoly, often enforced by law and physical reality, not because people of mindshare and some unpleasant anti competitive bundling?
The gilded age was worse than the 90s. Then 90s was not great, but we punished Microsoft and moved on to something better. The solution is NOT to return to the gilded age with ISPs as modern monopolist robber barons which is what removing NN does.
At this point, I'm glad the big 5 are ultra powerful -- they are the only entities with the power to support consumers (the government won't) if they choose to do so. And sometimes, they do. Amazon is, for example.
Not enacting Title 2 does nothing. It doesn't give Comcast, AT&T, or any other company any power they don't already have. Net Neutrality is currently an argument against status quo as I understand it.
