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[Max™]

If you're uninformed about something today, you either grew up before the answer to any question you might ask was available by poking at your fondleslab (or straight up asking your house a question, 'ok google, can you say "hey alexa, would you say 'hello siri' for me?" for me?') and either didn't want to or didn't have much luck at catching up to tail end of the tech curve there...

...or, you chose to be ignorant of certain things--though possibly that choice may have been foisted on you by all-too-clever marketing/advertising/propaganda/memetic/media departments--and there's a good chance you either think this is a good thing yourself, or feel that it is a positive signal in your peer group, either of which would negatively reinforce seeking to patch up that gap in your knowledge.

Note that the act of choosing ignorance is by no means exclusive to any particular party, but I would be flat out shocked if the number of people doing so was less than the number of people who try to take part in politics but come by their ignorance honestly, simply because there is a natural culling function for that group: gaining more information.

The willfully ignorant stances are not something you can just illuminate someone about and expect them to have a moment of realization before adjusting their positions according to this new information.

How much do you know about people in the farthest corner of your state from where you are?

How about the next state over?

What might you or they consider critical which the other would disagree about?

Have you made an effort to learn about this sort of thing beyond a cursory level of familiarity sufficient to argue against points based on or in it?

I certainly haven't tracked down all the ideas which people I disagree with hold as important, some things I have, but others I simply don't care to learn any more about. I've noticed the closer you get to the edges of a big clump of rejected information, the quicker conversations devolve into arguments which devolve into fights without any desire to seek some sort of common ground.

I don't have a problem with someone because they voted one way or the other, but I have a major problem with the people who noticed they could cram a stick up against one of those rejected info clumps and begin levering someone towards a goal which suits their own purposes; regardless of how harmful it might be to the person carrying around that mind you're stuffing a crowbar into.

Hopefully Trump goes off like a nuclear boobytrap in their faces, and drops a big load of fallout on the folks who thought pushing Hillary again was a good idea before they can go for another try.

Ignorance is not a good power source, because it can fall over into a positive feedback runaway and suddenly here we are watching a dottering old moron proclaim to Israelis that he "just got back from the middle east" and casually dropping whatever possibly damaging bit of information pops into that hollow thing holding his hair up.

[sluissa]

One of the problems with allowing for the net neutrality to fall back is that isps had gotten good at providing carrots to make it seem good. Zero rating is their big carrot at the moment. They let people use certain popular services for free. People get used to that for a while and suddenly net neutrality threatens to rip that away.

Granted, this comes AFTER they ripped away unlimited data usage options for most people. So their carrots are really only effective on the youngest group or those with very short memories.

[Gizogin]

I just read Ajit Pai's statement on the Net Neutrality thing. It's painfully clear that he doesn't understand why regulations exist in the first place.

In addition to proposing to reverse the Title II classification, we are also proposing to eliminate
the so-called “Internet conduct standard.” This standard gives the FCC a roving mandate to review
business models and prohibit service plans that benefit consumers. With this expansive authority, the
FCC could investigate any provider for offering the public virtually any service that the agency might find problematic.

[nenjin]

and prohibit service plans that benefit consumers.

Damn you government, all we want to do is benefit consumers! Why do you hate your consumers so much! This isn't about the money, our money! No, it's about them!

This is as transparent and flimsy as when politicians invoke "the childrens."

[Frumple]

Pretty sure I said it somewhere before, but it makes perfect sense if you consider him to be talking about the ISPs when he says consumer. Presumably whatever the bastard's getting kickbacks and bribes from is the business(es) that they're buying from.

[Gizogin]

Pretty sure I said it somewhere before, but it makes perfect sense if you consider him to be talking about the ISPs when he says consumer. Presumably whatever the bastard's getting kickbacks and bribes from is the business(es) that they're buying from.

The rest of that linked document makes it pretty clear Ajit is thinking of ISPs, not people, as consumers.

Consider for a minute why these statements are important. These are 150 small ISPs, most of
which Americans have not heard of. These are the very companies that are critical to injecting
competition into the broadband marketplace. These are the very companies that are critical to closing the
digital divide by building out in lower-income rural and urban areas—areas that too often don’t see
investment or are the first to see investment dry up. And again, these are the very companies that are
telling us that Title II makes it harder to connect Americans with digital opportunity. It puts consumers
last, not first, to push these companies out of the marketplace and stifle competition.

Among our nation’s 12 largest Internet service providers, domestic broadband capital
expenditures decreased by 5.6% percent, or $3.6 billion, between 2014 and 2016, the first two years of the Title II era.
 This decline is extremely unusual. It is the first time that such investment has declined
outside of a recession in the Internet era. To be sure, a study released by a pro-Title II special interest this
week claimed that there had been no such decline. But that report makes basic mistakes, like counting
network investment in Mexico as network investment in the United States.

There is a reference to this site, which is definitely a respectable and independent source.

Although his consulting experience spans several industries, Dr. Singer has particular expertise in the media industry. He recently advised the Canadian Competition Bureau on a large vertical merger in the cable television industry. He has served as consultant or testifying expert for several media companies, including Apple, AT&T, Bell Canada, Google, Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, NFL Network, Tennis Channel, and Verizon.

[Frumple]

Barely even noticed the doc, though .pdfs and this computer are annoying enough to work with I also dun wanna' read it, heh, particularly with a headache trying to form. Still, the quoted bit is actually the opposite; it's pretty clearly trying to claim that stifling smaller companies is hurting the ground level consumer.

... that said, from that second quoted bit, I can't help but find your second one to be incredibly telling. The measure of a title II failure is capital expenditures among the big 12. Not quality of networks or access, not actual effectiveness of investment, not ground level customer costs or infrastructure saturation.

And nevermind that first bit, now it's bothered me to actually read the statement and jesus hell fuck that guy. I mean, that was my previous assessment as well, but this just hammers that shit in. His measure is capital expenditure shit for the big businesses (and note, apparently even that was part bullshit; casual checking shows the amount quoted was drops from only eight of the 12, with the other third not seeing the effect, and it looks pretty likely at least a good chunk of it is easily attributable to things that aren't title 2) and "letters" from 150 mostly unnamed small businesses, and specifically from their CEOs and chairmen and whatnot for what names are mentioned, with not a single goddamn thing said about anything else or any other figures, save one mention of potentially counting investment amounts incorrectly as a blanket dismissal of findings contrary to the bullshit he's spewing. From that he's pulling junk out of his ass about that being something like a bloody end of the market for ground level consumers, and crap along those lines.

I still haven't gotten around to looking into who owns Ajit Pai's ass, but that is a man who is bought and paid for by something, and it damn sure ain't something whose interests are aligned with the general public... and quite possibly not aligned with a lot of the 'net related business, either.

---

... all that said, a little checking into singer shows that independent that guy ain't. He has significant business connections with all sorts of high level members of the industry, and apparently (and unsurprisingly, given some of the clients he works with) is someone commonly called up to support an anti-neutrality position, among other things. Little blurb you had actually says that a fair bit, now that I read it closer. That's not an independent source, it's one of the upper ends of the industry's pocketed experts.

[Gizogin]

I hope it was clear that, when I referred to Dr. Singer as an independent and respectable source, I was speaking with as much irony as it is possible to fit into a single sentence. That reference that was linked to in Ajit's statement consists of, at present, about three paragraphs explaining how the good doctor excludes certain data which don't fit the narrative he is trying to push.

[alway]

Dude's just enacting what has been Republican policy for years now. No need to get personal about what he's doing, it's exactly what the Republican party was elected to do. If people didn't want this, they shouldn't have voted Republican.

[Frumple]

The majority of those of us that voted in the applicable election didn't vote republican, and otherwise wouldn't be dealing with this head of the FCC. Plenty of reason to get personal, methinks.

I hope it was clear that, when I referred to Dr. Singer as an independent and respectable source, I was speaking with as much irony as it is possible to fit into a single sentence. That reference that was linked to in Ajit's statement consists of, at present, about three paragraphs explaining how the good doctor excludes certain data which don't fit the narrative he is trying to push.

Ah. Nah, wasn't terribly clear, but I wasn't following all the links, either, so it's probably more on my end than yours. Still, now it's more explicit, I guess :V

[Hanslanda]

Yeah, the people actually kinda DIDN'T vote for this. The electoral college did. So. It IS personal.

[alway]

Yeah, but the dude was put in by Republicans, who have shown they can't do anything apolitically. Pretending it's some personal failing of his, that he's some sort of aberration, is completely ignoring the room full of elephants that intentionally put someone like him in power at the FCC. He's as replaceable as a fast food worker, and if he didn't believe the malarkey he does, it would merely be some other name with all of us in precisely the same place. This is the Republican agenda implemented; point that out and campain on that, so that in the future there is some hope of these decisions being reversed and things actually get fixed.

[gogs2]

Then it's time to change that funny voting system.

Yeah, the people actually kinda DIDN'T vote for this. The electoral college did. So. It IS personal.

[Gizogin]

The other two documents here are also worth reading. One is a relatively brief statement from Commissioner Michael O'Rielly, broadly stating the intent of the FCC to reverse the 2015 order that classes ISPs as a utility. What's more interesting to me is the statement that:

To help bring order and rigor to the debate to come, the Notice proposes to conduct an actual cost
benefit analysis. This is a critical improvement. Instead of operating in an “economics free zone” where
the benefits of rules are assumed to outweigh any costs, commenters will need to provide evidence to
support their arguments that rules are, or are not, needed. It will enable the Commission to ground its
decision in facts rather than hypotheticals.

You may recall that the FCC opened the proposal to end utility-style regulation of ISPs to public comment, receiving over a million comments, an overwhelming majority of which supported continued regulation. O'Rielly actually closes his opening paragraph with the telling statement:

Thankfully, our
rulemaking process is not decided like a Dancing with the Stars contest, since counts of comments
submitted have only so much value.

It sounds awfully like O'Rielly, seeing the comments pour in, is now deciding that they don't count because they don't have economic analysis attached.

The last document is a dissenting opinion from Commissioner Mignon L. Clyburn, who doesn't have the strongest opening to his statement, relying a bit too much on emotional appeals and anecdotal accounts for my taste, but he does eventually make some salient points.

Today’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, more appropriately known as the Destroying Internet
Freedom NPRM, deeply damages the ability of the FCC to be a champion of consumers and competition
in the 21st century. It contains a hollow theory of trickle-down internet economics, suggesting that if we
just remove enough regulations from your broadband provider, they will automatically improve your
service, pass along discounts from those speculative savings, deploy more infrastructure with haste, and
treat edge providers fairly. It contains ideological interpretive whiplash, boldly proposing to gut the very
same consumer and competition protections that have been twice-upheld by the courts. And it contains an
approach to broadband that will throw universal service money to broaden its reach, but abandon users,
when something goes wrong, particularly if they are faced with anti-competitive or anti-consumer
practices. It jeopardizes the ability of the open internet to function tomorrow as it does today. But if you
unequivocally trust that your broadband provider will always put the public interest over their self-interest
or the interest of their stockholders, then the Destroying Internet Freedom NPRM is for you.

[Strife26]

Yeah, the people actually kinda DIDN'T vote for this. The electoral college did. So. It IS personal.

Bastard political system giving the exact results that the rules of the election system are supposed to give. *shakes fist*