Trump FCC Pick Nathan Simington Wants You To Think Net Neutrality Is A Secret Cabal By Big Tech To ‘Censor Conservatives’
The modern authoritarian GOP knows its radical policies are widely unpopular, which is why it increasingly needs to rely on propaganda. That’s also why the party pretends that absolutely any effort to moderate online political propaganda is “censorship.” With young voters turning away from the GOP in record numbers, propaganda, gerrymandering, and race-baiting anti-democratic bullshit is all the party has.
It’s an argument that bleeds into pretty much everything these days, even net neutrality.
After the Biden FCC last week announced it would be restoring net neutrality, Trump FCC pick Nathan Simington came out with a rambling missive claiming that efforts to keep Comcast from screwing you over is, you guessed it, somehow an attempt to censor conservatives. Net neutrality is, Simington claims, secretly a way to help “big tech” censor poor, unheard right wingers:
“The leaders of Big Tech companies have anointed themselves the arbiters of which ideas are allowed to be expressed and which are not. These companies are, without a doubt, the biggest threat against freedom of speech that our country has faced in decades.”
So one, you’ll notice that Simington is incapable of talking honestly about telecom monopoly power and his party’s 40 year track record of coddling it. But his core thesis, that this is all secretly a favor to “big tech,” simply isn’t true. Why not? Because “big tech” companies documentably stopped caring about net neutrality a long time ago.
While Google used to care about net neutrality, it stopped somewhere around 2010. Once Netflix became successful, it too vocally stopped caring about net neutrality somewhere around 2017. While these companies originally supported net neutrality, once they became big and powerful they simply stopped caring. Facebook never cared, and long actively opposed net neutrality.
The GOP knows this, they just think (or hope) that you’re stupid.
Simington also tries to argue that because the internet didn’t explode into a rainbow of bright colors after the 2017 repeal of net neutrality (which required the use of fake and dead people to pretend the repeal had public support), that the consumer protection rules must not have mattered:
“It has now been nearly six years since we repealed the net neutrality rules, and as far as I know, no one has died yet, nor have any other of the solemnly predicted catastrophes come to pass.”
Folks opposed to basic consumer protection love to make this claim, but they’re actively ignoring that big telecom didn’t behave worse post repeal because numerous states rushed in to pass state level laws. Companies like Comcast didn’t want to implement major anti-competitive practices on their network, because they now risk running afoul of state net neutrality laws all along the west coast.
This gets conflated into “gosh, our removal of federal guidelines must not have mattered,” which is misleading bullshit. The FCC repeal of net neutrality didn’t just kill net neutrality rules, it gutted much of the FCC’s consumer protection authority. The GOP’s repeal even tried to ban states from protecting broadband consumers entirely, an effort the courts have subsequently shot down.
Focus on what matters: Net neutrality rules were imperfect, stopgap efforts to keep giant telecom monopolies from using their power over internet access to harm consumers and competitors. If you don’t support net neutrality, what’s your solution for concentrated telecom monopoly power? The GOP actively supports concentrated telecom monopoly power. There are 40 years of documentable evidence.
From Simington’s missive, do you gather he cares one fleeting shit about the problems created by telecom monopoly power? The high costs? They slow speeds? The patchy access in rural markets? The comically terrible customer service? The refusal of ISPs to upgrade poor, minority neighborhoods?
Simington can’t even be bothered to actually discuss the actual issue he’s trying to counter. Because what the modern GOP cares about is protecting its own power, and, at the moment, that requires propping up the delusion that anything the GOP doesn’t like is somehow “big tech censorship.” Even some basic, popular consumer protections designed to protect the public from big telecom.
thanks
Whoops, thank you. I had conflated the union background with People's Choice (which is engaged in a similar mission) in my head. Corrected, thank you (and please keep up the good work).
the data is super clear on this, yep. Cooperatives, utilities (many city owned), and municipalities provide better, cheaper, faster broadband. AND it's locally owned by people who have a direct responsibility to the markets they serve. It's not some magical panacea, and there's certainly a huge role for private ISPs, but the path forward here is pretty clear. Tons of community-owned open access fiber networks, leased to multiple competitors.
yes, most analysis also doesn't include the hidden fees buried below the line. That just technically doesn't exist, and that's where cable and telecom giants make huge chunks of their profits.
"Push it onto the large ISPs: make them give details of speed availability throughout the territory they’re operating in (or looking to expand into), have an intern overlay it onto a map, and hold the companies to it." One, giant telecom monopolies lie about coverage, constantly. Two, they have spent twenty years lobbying government to ensure telecom regulators are too feckless, feeble, understaffed, and underfunded to hold them accountable for anything. Your proposal basically involves throwing untold billions at a big ambiguous mountain of predatory monopolies and just hoping it all works out Without reform and taking aim at state and federal corruption, none of this works out particularly efficiently, which is kind of explained in the post you responded to.
RTFA
So the FCC's first effort on this front made adhering to it voluntary, which was pointless. The Infrastructure bill required that they implement it permanently with mandatory requirements. But it still needs review and getting it implemented and enforced would require an FCC voting majority, which they don't have because the telecom lobby is currently ratfucking the appointment of a third Democratic commissioner to the FCC. And even with its full voting majority I'm not really sure the FCC would have the backbone to consistently enforce this much.
whoops, yes. brain fart. apologies.
it's so funny because even the Democratic Commissioners heralded as being pro-consumer can't candidly acknowledge in public comments that telecom monopolies exist and cause harm. there's just zero political courage to challenge them in any meaningful way, even if it's just rhetorically.
there used to be these kinds of requirements embedded in many local franchise agreements, but those were largely killed off in a big vilification push when phone companies lobbied to ready the field for their entry into the TV sector.
they're still basing a lot of this on "advertised" speeds. Hopefully this gets corrected courtesy of challenges, but I'm hearing a lot of skepticism on the challenge process actually working.
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They don't serve my neck of the woods in South Seattle, unfortunately. There's conduit everywhere yet Comcast remains the only competitor here in much of "Silicon Valley North"
right on. "don't do the thing they incentivize you to do and punish you for not doing" is not a solution. And as I note to others, I also don't like laggy GUIs, tying the GUI to basic HDMI port switching, which still happens if you're offline.
I settled on the LG C1 this last purchase round and love the quality, but I still think the OS and GUI is shitty. And it STILL has the same problem where they tether the GUI (which gets slower as the TV hardware ages in relation to software bloat) to HDMI switching, so doing the basic act of switching ports is way more cumbersome and annoying than it should be (even if you operate the TV without connecting it to the internet).
Sceptre is arguably the dodgiest TV brand you can find and he linked to a dated LED TV. He literally didn't read the post, did a 30 second google search, and concluded the issue solved.
You make caring about competition sound like some kind of venereal disease.
I got a page not found when I went to examine their North American offerings. When I do find a high quality OLED with smart internals it was usually at an absurd and unreasonable premium.
the people who tell you "just don't connect it to the internet!" don't understand how any of this works. Manufacturers are increasingly making it more and more difficult to do this without losing key functionality. And also, I keep having to repeat this, but when you tether the HDMI switching to a laggy smart TV GUI that takes forever to load (and gets worse as the hardware ages in relation to software bloat), it DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU KEEP IT OFFLINE.
security improvements, performance improvements.
I included this in the piece above but I guess I should elaborate: Keeping it offline: –keeps you from getting firmware updates –increasingly will lock you out of key features by design as a way to mandate you participate in the walled garden ad and data collection party. –often doesn’t matter anyway because just switching HDMI ports is tied to the terrible smart TV GUI, which lags on load and makes even basic things like switching ports more annoying than they should be
Yeah I get that a lot. Addressed some of that in the piece. THe problem: Keeping it offline: --keeps you from getting firmware updates --often locks you out of key features --often doesn't matter anyway because just switching HDMI ports is tied to the terrible TV GUI, which lags on load and makes even basic things like switching ports more annoying than they should be