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[TheBiggerFish]

Um...The whole point is that the FTC cannot, and Congress will not, put something together.

And the FCC is the Federal Communications Commission.  How is the FTC a better body for regulating a communications service?

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170328/09565737026/consumer-broadband-privacy-protections-are-dead.shtml

ISPs have consistently tried to argue that killing the FCC's rules is no big deal because the FTC will somehow magically pick up the slack. But as former FCC boss Tom Wheeler recently noted, the FTC lacks rule-making authority, and ISPs know that privacy issues are going to quickly fall through the cracks at the over-extended agency. There's also rumblings that the GOP wants to push additional bills that hamstring both the FCC and the FTC consumer protection authority. If that doesn't work, they can dodge FTC oversight via common carrier exemptions patiently carved out by AT&T lawyers looking to dodge accountability for fraud.

Emphasis mine, URL from source.

And who's calling anybody a troll?

[PTTG??]

Right, these regulations had not gone into effect nor were going to until December. All Republicans did was remove a new regulatory burden on ISPs that would further impede their ability to monetize data through targeted advertisements. The objection was that the FCC regulating the ISPs was unfair and that they should go through FTC regulations, just as Facebook and Google do. The FCC was overstepping its bounds.

Expect the FTC or Congress to put something together, and stop pretending you have to burst into outrage and call other people trolls for disagreeing. Virtue signaling is tiresome.

Denigrating people for what you call "virtue-signaling," is itself, virtue-signaling. It's like whining about whining. And there is a pretty significant difference between "laws that will go into effect in December," and "a hypothetical law that does not in any way exist now, nor seems likely to be written, and if written would not likely be approved."

[redwallzyl]

its so annoying how the republicans constantly harp about everything overstepping its authority yet consistently refuse to make a alternate proposal to deal with issues or even just F ing give them the supposed missing "authority!"

[Greiger]

E: In other discussions, @greiger, give this link a try. I'm not sure it'll actually work, but after rummaging around a bit I ran (most of) the stances (GMO wasn't on their list) you mentioned through the site's issues quiz with everything else neutral and that's what popped out. Might have more later, but nap didn't come and I'm starting to get foggy, heh. Pretty sure there's at least two or three other sites out there with similar features, though, which can be a good place to start if you're digging into actual statements and voting history to see what you match up with instead of leaning on overt news sources.

Thanks that is fairly enlightening.  Lists me as a moderate liberal.  Though pretty much moderate as the dot is close to the middle of that box.   A little worrying that it seems to have matched me with someone in the presidential thing that for all I've heard is a scam artist. And for the 2014 senate it correctly tells me I hated them both.

[Shazbot]

All aboard the high horses.

The authority exists in the legislature, and for decades now the legislature has shirked its actual responsibility to write these laws. Now if you take a look at the numbers, you'll see both House and Senate are very narrowly divided on this issue. Online privacy rights are a legitimate concern among the anti-government portion of the GOP base. Its not hard to get a law passed for it, if you don't demonize the majority party you'll need to pull votes from.

And Alway did.

[TheBiggerFish]

All aboard the high horses.

The authority exists in the legislature, and for decades now the legislature has shirked its actual responsibility to write these laws. Now if you take a look at the numbers, you'll see both House and Senate are very narrowly divided on this issue. Online privacy rights are a legitimate concern among the anti-government portion of the GOP base. Its not hard to get a law passed for it, if you don't demonize the majority party you'll need to pull votes from.

And Alway did.

PFFFFFFFFFT

One example does not a majority of support make.

And they're 'narrowly divided' on something with broad bipartisan support at ground level, have you noticed?  I don't think the Republican party in general would support net neutrality nor Internet privacy without first having the ISPs' hands forcibly amputated from their puppet-strings first.  Props to Alway for not being bought and paid for, but he's pretty much the exception.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Also, the Republicans didn't vote for it because people outside the party "demonized" them. They voted for it because they were paid to vote for it by ISPs. Because the ISPs want to use people's data as capital, and the Republican base isn't going to get upset by way of this "regulatory authority" story the right media push. It's a concerted effort to eliminate the rights of the American people for the sake of those dividend payouts.

[redwallzyl]

i despise the whole idea they seem to hold that companies have the right to make money and anything that impinges on it must be destroyed. the rights of citizens for example.

[smjjames]

When these conversations get really deep into the mess, I like to take a step back sometimes and ask, let's just pretend for a minute that the US legislative branch (federal and all states) was replaced with the Cintamani stone. Presuming that no negotiation can take place, and that the gem is limited to only working its miracles on legislature, which party platform would be best installed whole and instantaneously?

The Democrats, or the Republicans?

And I mean, of course, you have a better idea than either, but remember, we're talking about an infinitely powerful cosmic jewel. Even it can't add a third party to American politics.

As we've seen already, a pure Republican polity would have no environmental protection, would have no safety net, would have no privacy, have limited gun regulation, no minimum wage, no abortion, in fact no prenatal care at all to speak of.

Whereas a pure Democratic polity would have a functioning EPA, would have a strong safety net, would have net neutrality and privacy, would have gun regulations that are sometimes stupid, would have legal abortion, and a number of other things besides.

Of course in practice the Cintamani stone has more important things to do, so this is a hypothetical. But one has to ask, is it really worth buying the whole Republican swamp in order to have a marginal effect on the types of guns you can buy?

Or is Gun Control really just another "ban gay marriage" issue created by the Republicans?

I'd like to see that Eastern religion Philisopher's Stone hypothetical from the perspective of a conservative though. Like, how would they see the hypothetical, because that one is from the liberal/progressive perspective. Not going to mock it or anything, just would be more constructive to the discussion to have multiple perspectives.

[alway]

They're "just" selling semi-anonymised user data to ad bots.

And the NSA is "just" collecting metadata. What they *aren't* allowed to sell is PII data. (see also, notices on websites like this one, where you can buy such info, saying they can't sell PII: https://big.exchange/buyers )
Which as wikipedia explains, and which anybody who sees through the "just metadata" argument can see, is not actually sufficient to prevent a decent algorithm (or human) from reading between the lines.
Take for example the promotional video on the aforementioned user data exchange: https://youtu.be/PtxzefwQR2s?t=19s
Age. Purchasing history. Search history. And so on. It's a shell game. Limitations on how the data is used are largely self-policing/self-imposed, so stopping the generation of the data hoards is really the only mitigation that can work.

Also worth considering: ISPs are now looking more eager to use/sell this data they can collect than they were in the past.
http://www.adweek.com/digital/as-telecoms-buy-up-ad-tech-players-new-levels-of-data-targeting-seem-to-be-afoot/

And it's not just selling to "ad bots." One consumer of adtech generated data is Palantir, created by Trump buddy and notorious silicon valley bond villain Peter Thiel.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-bars-intelligence-agencies-from-using-analytics-service-1462751682
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how-peter-thiels-palantir-helped-the-nsa-spy-on-the-whole-world/
It feeds into the entire global surveillance apparatus, whether intended by the generators of such data or not.

[smjjames]

Crossposting between here and the NK thread (because Trump) :

Days before he meets with China, Trump sets an ultimatium saying 'if China doesn't help, we'll go it alone'. That is certainly going to rock the meeting later this week (the 6th I think?) and I wonder if 'going it alone' means with or without South Korea and Japan.....

Also, his response to being able to handle it alone: "Totally!".

I can totally see it going well if he tries to do it alone.... not.

BBC article with pretty much the same information. The orig source (Financial Times) is paywallled.

[Phmcw]

As a reminder, the problem with dealing with best Korea is that they have heavy artillery in range of Seoul, and that they will obliterate it in case of attack...

[PTTG??]

And the problem with "going it alone" against North Korea is that it will essentially constitute a war of aggression without international support and against the protectorate of a nuclear power.

I mean, I want North Koreans to be free, but we've already seen what happens when an unpopular Republican President tries to start a war with a nation that borders China: two decades of pointless grind and military waste with no clear end in sight, for which the Democrats take the blame.

[Jopax]

The amazing thing there is that it doesn't seem he's taking into account what SK wants. You can't go at it alone on the behalf of someone else who stands to lose much much more, regardless of the final outcome. He can posture and talk big all he wants, but if SK says fuck off there's no way in hell he can move against that. Unless he wants to push the entirety of the world further away and mark Americans as even bigger warmongering assholes.

[wierd]

Hilariously, I do not believe that the conflict with NK was ever officially resolved/concluded. It was just bandaged up with a semi-permanent ceasefire, intended to hold the peace until a permanent peaceful accord can be reached. No such such permanent peaceful accord has yet to date been reached with NK, and instead NK has been engaging in ever increasingly hostile displays and nuclear weapons tests.

While shaky, Trump could declare that Glorious Leader's nuclear dildo posturing constitutes an act of aggression, and violates the accord-- paving the way to resumption of open hostilities.

No declaration of war required-- the last war never officially ended.