

The Data From Comments to the FCC About Net Neutrality - minimaxir
http://minimaxir.com/2014/08/comments-about-comments/

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sagichmal
I'm confused. The article claims

    
    
        "“net neutrality,” allows internet service providers 
        (ISPs) to discriminate between different types of internet 
        traffic (a “fast lane” for video and social media, for 
        example) in an attempt to help further competition and 
        promote innovation"
    

and in so doing appears to conflate the FCC's new rule proposals with the
abstract principle of net neutrality, which the rules would explicitly
contravene.

Is some clarification possible here?

~~~
minimaxir
I took that directly from the first paragraph on the FCC's Open Internet
brief: [http://www.fcc.gov/openinternet](http://www.fcc.gov/openinternet)

~~~
LukeB_UK
The first paragraph on the FCC's Open Internet brief and what you wrote are
very different. You claim that net neutrality allows discrimination. The FCC's
first paragraph says it doesn't.

~~~
minimaxir
You're right. Working on an edit now.

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evanb
It seems as though the author has mixed up pro- and anti-net neutrality (or
rather, the meaning of net neutrality itself). Otherwise, the data analysis is
pretty nice (though some of the maps seem to be falling to the
[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/) mistake).

~~~
minimaxir
The first one does the population mistake, which I acknowledge. (but is
necessary for context)

The other maps are normalized by % of comments sent, which mitigates the
population impact.

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kfcm
This can't be right:

    
    
       "Looking at the data behind these comments, it’s 
       clear to see that the entire country is passionate 
       against net neutrality."
    

So the entire country wants "pay lanes" and "pay-per-site-access"?

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minimaxir
Fixed.

This is a reminder why I should never blog while sleep deprived.

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ChrisAntaki
> That means over about ¼th of the comments in the dataset, and atleast 1/10th
> of all comments submitted, used this website’s submission form.

Nice write up, _minimaxir_. I was lucky enough to be involved with _Battle for
the Net_. We ended up successfully submitting ~135 thousand comments to the
FCC.

I highly recommend people reach out to their favorite nonprofits. The projects
are really fun.

~~~
ChrisAntaki
Note: 136,398 successful sends and counting. People are still sending in
comments, which rocks. Unfortunately, there were additional comments which
couldn't be sent. Part of the reason being the FCC form doesn't allow military
zip codes, or certain valid emails.

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minimaxir
Wait, I submitted this yesterday and _now_ it's on the front page of Hacker
News?

The Hacker News ranking system always surprises me.

~~~
mafuyu
Identical link submissions count as votes for the original post instead. It's
likely that as your post gained traction elsewhere, other users submitted the
same link to HN.

~~~
minimaxir
I've been monitoring analytics and there's zero significant traffic coming
from outside of HN.

