
Comcast 'blocks' encrypted email service: Reminder of why net neutrality matters - tonyztan
http://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/comcast-customers-blocked-encrypted-email-service-net-neutrality-repeal/
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oconnor663
> According to a spokesperson, engineers investigated the apparent outage but
> found there was no evidence of a connection breakage between Comcast and
> Tutanota. The company keeps records of issues that trigger incidents -- but
> found nothing to suggest an issue. The spokesperson did not want to
> speculate further.

Net neutrality doesn't stop ISPs or admins from making weird mistakes. Is
there any evidence that anything more interesting than that happened?

~~~
jpmoyn
It's just a pseudo-story, clickbait. The nerdy version of a buzzfeed article
about cheese.

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Aloha
Everyone wants a reason to beat up on Comcast - for reasons real or imagined.

Like, its not as if we have a shortage of real reasons to beat up on Comcast -
but if our side makes up falsities, or presumes lack of good faith without any
evidence - we just lost the moral high ground in the argument.

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romanr
What a clickbait.

Intermittent DNS issue. Happens with any provider from time to time.

And what a great promo piece opportunity for that email service used by
“hundreds”!

~~~
GunlogAlm
Hundreds of _Comcast users_ , to be clear. And that's just the article's
random number, I doubt there's anything backing it up.

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ryanlol
So, Comcast almost certainly didn’t block tutanota. This looks like a regular
DNS fuckup.

As you’d expect from zdnet, the writing is fascinatingly bad:

>But it's troubling, just a few months after the net neutrality rules were
repealed, to see internet providers with arbitrary control over what customers
can see and access

 _Truly shocking_ that internet providers are technically able to limit what
their customers can access.

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dsr_
Riddle me this:

How can you tell the difference between the government asking Comcast to block
a certain site for a few days, and Comcast's normal level of service?

Without more evidence, you can't.

~~~
zaphar
Occam's razor proves useful here. A more common and likely scenario is a
glitch not malicious intent. Until evidence of such intent is brought to light
there is very little reason to assume it exists.

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Cyclone_
I don't know why Comcast would do this, it doesn't seem like it would be in
their best interest to block an email service. Yes I know they have their own
email service, but they also don't block other competitors, like hulu. My
guess is they had a request to do so from the government and may have a gag
order.

~~~
fnovd
Comcast owns 30% of Hulu through NBCUniversal:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulu)

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Aloha
Hanlons Razor seems apropos here.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Also, DNS does weird things sometimes.

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theseatoms
or why ISP competition matters

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bb88
It's not the internet if they don't deliver you the internet.

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drrob
There's an old saying: in any headline that asks a question, if any of the
words are in quotation marks then the answer to the question is "No".

