I’ve already commented on one post, but I can’t with a clean conscience sit by without making my own.
I see so many posts about Net Neutrality, and while I think it’s tremendous how many of you are emailing the FCC, some of those emails aren’t going to change minds.
Some of you are emailing the chairman himself. Ajit Pai was a former Verison employee. It doesn’t matter how many emails you send to him. You could literally tell him that you depend on the Internet’s resources to live, and he would not bat an eye.
Many of you are putting in your emails that hospitals and schools will see troubles. I appreciate the effort, but when these men are the very same men who have already taken SO MUCH from hospitals and schools, will they?
What you NEED to do, is speak their language. That language is dollar signs. Make your voice sound like MONEY THEY WILL BE LOSING.
We live in a nation where restaurants are failing because no one can afford a $20 meal anymore. What makes the FCC think we can afford more than $60 Internet? E-commerce is essential to the US economy. If users are forced to go through paywall after paywall, they will STOP purchasing anything off the Internet. The nosedive in stocks will be the likes of nothing you’ve ever seen.
Without the freedom to choose which websites we visit, the internet, for many of you on Tumblr like me, will become virtually meaningless. Make THAT the message you spread to these two “Yes votes.” Tell them that if the Internet becomes just like cable TV, which none of us are able to afford, they will LOSE the few dollars we have.
They’ll be interested in hearing that.
These are the emails of the two FCC members voting “yes” on the repeal of NN. If anyone’s mind is going to be changed. It has to be one of these guys. And it has to be before December 14th.
Brendan.Carr@fcc.gov
Mike.O’Rielly@fcc.gov
If we speak their language, there may still be hope. Good luck, everyone.
This is an interesting proposition.
So, if the FCC gets rid of Net Neutrality, and the telecom companies start raising prices, you’ll stop buying their internet?
Gee, that sounds so similar to the conservative point of view.
This is literally capitalism.
The next step after getting rid of Net Neutrality (which was non-existent up until two years ago, and the internet was doing relatively fine up until then) we just need to start getting rid of area monopolies so that companies are forced to compete directly with each other for out dollars rather than legislate for our dollars… and we can get Google Fiber, Verizon Fios, and other high-speed network infrastructure into more places faster… and cheaper!
Assuming you drank the koolaid, which it totally sounds like you did!!! (Or you’re bought and paid for, but I’m not going into conspiracy. I’m just gonna assume you don’t understand.)
You want to avoid monopolies? Don’t LET A FUCKING COMPANY HAVE CONTROL OF WHAT PARTS OF THE INTERNET YOU SEE. THAT IS LITERALLY OWNING THE KEYS TO THE ENTIRE INTERNET AND HANDING THEM OUT TO YOUR RICH BUDDIES ONLY. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK DO YOU CONSIDER A MONOPOLY?
A monopoly is when one group controls all of a thing. So I consider Net Neutrality a monopoly.
So you’d like Trump’s government to control what you see? Same difference, except with private corporations, you can pay with your wallet, as this post is suggesting we threaten the FCC and the corporations with. Whereas with a government monopoly, (in this case run by the FCC, a government group consisting of members that we have never actually voted for, by the way) the government will do whatever it pleases with the rules… and the corporations have a direct line into the FCC, by the way (for example, Ajit Pai, the chairman, used to be with Verizon. I cannot imagine Verizon not using that connection no matter which way the vote moves)
Going to your metaphor, I’d rather the keys to the internet be spread around to many holders (the various corporations) rather than only one single key be held by one group (Trump’s government).
great, but net neutrality is not a group. it’s a principle protected by a law. the fcc already has authority, the point here is to get them to keep the law in place.
^^^ Thank you! It’s like, this argument is so bizzare because the CIA, FBI, and NSA don’t magically go away if this gets repealed. If the government really wanted to block content from us, they could law or no law.
Repealing Net Neutrailty would just be giving greedy corporations the option to regulate even more than what’s being regulated right now.
Ok I’m gonna say it. There are leftists who fetishize the third world in a really racist way. And every time they say something it’s just dripping with white guilt politics. It just collapses and reduces non western politics in such a way that we would never do with politics in the so called west.
I care about net neutrality a lot, yet I haven’t reblogged any posts about it yet. You may be wondering why and simply put, the misinformation on this site is pissing me off.
Many of you may have seen posts going around with pictures like these:
They’re very scary and compelling. They illustrate a dystopian future where websites are sold like cable packages.
The problem is they have jack shit to do with net neutrality and what the FCC is trying to do, and frankly it makes those of us trying to protect net neutrality look completely ignorant.
So, what’s actually going on? Sorry, but it’s not as interesting as the pictures convey. If you don’t read between the lines it’s going to seem like boring shit. Sorry, guys, but the way that scary as fuck legislation gets passed in this country is by hiding it in a mundane, boring package that no one cares about or pays attention to.
So, what is the net neutrality that’s in jeopardy? Back in 2015, broadband providers became reclassified as common carriers under Title II. The FCC actually pushed for this Title II reclassification at the time so they could come up with stronger Net Neutrality rules. Basically, the FCC has legal authority to keep companies like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon from interfering with web traffic in any way under Title II.
So what’s happening now? Trump’s FCC chairman and Verizon’s bitch, Ajit Pai, wants to reclassify broadband providers as Title I, and let the internet providers, companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, do whatever they want to control web traffic. This includes slowing down service by means of bandwidth throttling.
What does this mean for the internet and how we use it?
1. Companies will have to pay extra money to the internet providers, so their web traffic isn’t interfered with. This will seriously harm up and coming websites. If Google was invented post net neutrality they never would have been able to flourish in the way they have. They likely never would have gotten off the ground which is why even big companies like Google and Facebook support net neutrality.
2. The internet could turn into an oligopoly with only the big companies like Google able to pay enough to keep web traffic flowing. If broadband providers are able to interfere with web traffic to smaller sites there will be no competition on the internet as a marketplace. Oh, you’d love a version of Amazon that doesn’t treat it’s workers like shit and actually cares about mitigating its environmental impact. Too bad, the website is slow as shit if it even loads at all.
3. Any websites the internet providers disagree with will have their web traffic interfered with. This includes important social justice movements like BLM, LGBTQ pride websites, antifa and so on.
Please stop spreading misinformation about net neutrality. These are the facts. Visit savetheinternet.com for more.
🔥 With your help, we passed Title II net neutrality protections. Now we need to defend it.🔥
On December 14 the FCC will vote on Commissioner Pai’s plan to repeal Title II rules. This week he tried to justify that decision with a “myth busting” explainer where he makes a lot of sweeping claims he doesn’t think you’ll fact check.
So let’s go through his big points:
❌ Mr. Pai claims ISPs won’t block access or throttle content
These are the real facts. Before Title II, the internet was so “free and open” that…
AT&T blocked Skype from iPhones (Fortune) and, later, wanted FaceTime users to pay for a more expensive plan (Freepress).
MetroPCS blocked all streaming video except YouTube (Wired).
In today’s media market where the same huge companies make and deliver content, Commissioner Pai wants us to trust that corporations won’t use their dominance to bury competitive content or services.
❌ Mr. Pai claims Title II keeps ISPs from building new networks
Here’s another claim Commissioner Pai doesn’t want you to fact check, but:
AT&T’s own CEO told investors that the company would deploy more fiber optic networks in 2016 than 2015 when the FCC passed Title II protections (Investor call transcript).
Charter’s CEO said “Title II, it didn’t really hurt us; it hasn’t hurt us” (Ars Technica).
And Comcast actually increased investment in their network by 10% in Q1 of this year (Ars).
❌ Mr. Pai claims repealing Title II won’t hurt competition
As we mentioned above, ISPs tried to interfere with the services their customers could access and courts had to step in to stop them.
The FCC tried to craft net neutrality rules in 2010 called the Open Internet Order but the ISPs sued and won. The courts told the FCC that the only way to guarantee a free and open internet was using their Title II authority. Without those protections, any of these things would be legal:
Your ISP launches a streaming video service and starts throttling other streaming services until they’re unusable.
Your phone company cuts a deal with a popular music streaming service so it doesn’t count towards your data cap but lowers your overall data limit. If a better service comes along (or your favorite artist releases new tracks somewhere else) you can’t use it without incurring huge data fees.
A billionaire buys your ISP and blocks access to news sites that challenge their ideology.
Repealing Title II would be like letting a car company own the roads and banning a competitor from the highways.
❌ Mr. Pai claims there won’t be fast lanes and slow lanes
Let’s break this down: We won’t have fast lanes and slow lanes, we’ll have “priority access” and…non-priority access? Well gosh.
🚨 Please help us protect Title II one more time! 🚨
This week we co-signed a letter with more than 300 other companies—businesses Mr. Pai gleefully ignores—urging the FCC to retain the Title II internet protections. Now we need you.
Go to 👉 Battle For The Net 👈 to start a call with your representatives in Congress. Tell them to publicly support Title II protections.
The FCC votes on December 14.
We’re only powerful when we work together.
Oh, also: that post about automatically unfollowing the #net neutrality tag—it’s not true. It’s really not. That’s not who we are. Whatever happened, we haven’t been able to reproduce it. We tried. A lot.
But if it were true—which it’s not, we feel compelled to say again—THAT’S EXACTLY WHY YOU SHOULD CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES and demand a free, open, and neutral internet.
We can do this one more time, guys! ❤️
The interesting thing here is that TUMBLR STAFF made the original post – tumblr is owned by Atlaba – an investment company that is basically Verizon – one of the chief pushers of getting rid of the title II designation. Which is amusing since they are ALSO one of the companies that pushed FOR it in the first plae because it absolves them of responsibility for the content they serve – if they go back to being title I then they need to censor EVERY SINGLE ITEM that goes through their system or become complicit in any criminal activity that occurs. It was one of the big reasons for being “common carriers” – ISPs didn’t want to have to be responsible for the poop people do on the Internet and at the time did not have the tools to filter out the poop that could get them in trouble. Now they think they have the tools to filter the poop and profit from doing so.
I see this very differently than the professor who wrote this. She wants to pay her back about how she acted with a disabled student, but I’ve been in the student’s position more times than I would have liked to. Here’s what most likely happened.
The student takes this letter to the professor and asks to meet with her privately. She does it privately because other students have made a big deal about her accommodations before and it’s embarrassing.
The professor seems friendly, so she disclosed exactly what she needs. Then the professor sits the letter aside and questions her about how often this actually happens, and tells her how big a problem it would be if it happened in this course. This is a threat. The professor is now making her uncomfortable asking for help when she needs it. In my experience, when you have a professor act like this, they’ll often shoot you down when you do ask for help later. The student has probably experienced just this.
After the professor blows off her needs, the student sits in the back of the class and never speaks to the professor again. She obviously no longer trusts the professor anymore. She never used her accommodation that semester. That could be because she never had a panic attack, but more likely, she had several and felt threatened that she’d be kept from graduating if she showed any weakness and asked for help. She may have done well in the course, but it was likely at a huge cost to her health in some way.
Because this student felt so alienated, the professor thinks they did a good job. I’ve lived through this dozens of times. The professor failed this student. She had to work much harder than other students without disabilities to go the same distance. It’s not fucking fair.
It sickens me to see a professor acting like this and thinking they’re the hero of all disabled students. I really wish I could say it’s unique, but it’s fucking not. Not even close.
Yeah the tone of this is very much she seems to think most people don’t need as many accomedation as they are given, even though I generally hear a lot more of people getting nowhere near enough help.
Honestly it also kind of stands out she is a psychology professor I bet that’s part of why she is so entitled and egocentric. Despite having no context for the student’s problems she feels qualified to give unsolicited medical advice, which I am willing to bet was probably like, breathing exercises and shit that you could get out of a random woman’s health magazine, and then she goes home feeling like she saved someone with her shitty generic tips and refusal to help.
Also the second student it seems like she and some other teacher randomly decided a student was a mental health risk, with no evidence of any diagnosis or anything even, and people put them on watch over this despite from what I can tell the student NEVER ACTUALLY DOING ANYTHING?
And then she pats herself on the back for butting into someone’s buisness on an unproven hunch which never actually was shown to be nessassary like????
Like she apparently has decided that she knows what is better for random strangers then they or their own doctors do and is enforcing it and acting like it makes her a hero somehow but, what it really makes her is that obnoxious sitcom psychologist that shows up in one episode giving unsolicited life advice while psychoanalysing their behavior that at the end ofbthe episode gets told to never come back and everyone hates them
To quote the opening of the article: “The student, let’s call her “Lee,” arrived at my office at the appointed time, took the chair I indicated, pulled a form from her backpack, and shot me a look. Not confrontational, but not exactly friendly, either — a demeanor underscored by the old black motorcycle jacket and punk haircut she sported. She was in a large lecture course I was teaching, and had asked to see me in this first week of term. As soon as I glimpsed the form, I knew she was here to tell me which accommodations the accessibility office had deemed her eligible to receive.” The author is telling us right from the start that they make judgements based on appearance and prejudice about disabled people. Nothing they say after that matters. If you start out with those attitudes you CANNOT make unbiased decisions. The author admits to being an ableist bigot without knowing they did it because in their world “looking punk” is so bad that it’s acceptable to be rude to people who do. The author can’t understand why a person who has been referred to them for accomodations might not be a model of conformity in presentation or attitude. Like, Dude, this kid has been through hell because the system has failed them because they are not “normal” and you want them to act like a model employee at a job interview? You failed your number one job requirement – doing your best to help THE STUDENT (not your own idea of what a student should be).
Suicide prevention campaigns will continuously fail as long as they continue to dehumanize the suicidal through police intervention & coercive medical practices, as well as by failing to address that many reasons for ideation stem from an inability to adapt to a society that is, for all intents and purposes, seemingly deadset on converting the planet into a living hell.
I see this very differently than the professor who wrote this. She wants to pay her back about how she acted with a disabled student, but I’ve been in the student’s position more times than I would have liked to. Here’s what most likely happened.
The student takes this letter to the professor and asks to meet with her privately. She does it privately because other students have made a big deal about her accommodations before and it’s embarrassing.
The professor seems friendly, so she disclosed exactly what she needs. Then the professor sits the letter aside and questions her about how often this actually happens, and tells her how big a problem it would be if it happened in this course. This is a threat. The professor is now making her uncomfortable asking for help when she needs it. In my experience, when you have a professor act like this, they’ll often shoot you down when you do ask for help later. The student has probably experienced just this.
After the professor blows off her needs, the student sits in the back of the class and never speaks to the professor again. She obviously no longer trusts the professor anymore. She never used her accommodation that semester. That could be because she never had a panic attack, but more likely, she had several and felt threatened that she’d be kept from graduating if she showed any weakness and asked for help. She may have done well in the course, but it was likely at a huge cost to her health in some way.
Because this student felt so alienated, the professor thinks they did a good job. I’ve lived through this dozens of times. The professor failed this student. She had to work much harder than other students without disabilities to go the same distance. It’s not fucking fair.
It sickens me to see a professor acting like this and thinking they’re the hero of all disabled students. I really wish I could say it’s unique, but it’s fucking not. Not even close.
Yeah the tone of this is very much she seems to think most people don’t need as many accomedation as they are given, even though I generally hear a lot more of people getting nowhere near enough help.
Honestly it also kind of stands out she is a psychology professor I bet that’s part of why she is so entitled and egocentric. Despite having no context for the student’s problems she feels qualified to give unsolicited medical advice, which I am willing to bet was probably like, breathing exercises and shit that you could get out of a random woman’s health magazine, and then she goes home feeling like she saved someone with her shitty generic tips and refusal to help.
Also the second student it seems like she and some other teacher randomly decided a student was a mental health risk, with no evidence of any diagnosis or anything even, and people put them on watch over this despite from what I can tell the student NEVER ACTUALLY DOING ANYTHING?
And then she pats herself on the back for butting into someone’s buisness on an unproven hunch which never actually was shown to be nessassary like????
Like she apparently has decided that she knows what is better for random strangers then they or their own doctors do and is enforcing it and acting like it makes her a hero somehow but, what it really makes her is that obnoxious sitcom psychologist that shows up in one episode giving unsolicited life advice while psychoanalysing their behavior that at the end ofbthe episode gets told to never come back and everyone hates them
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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