
Verizon is killing Tumblr’s fight for net neutrality - allthebest
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/21/15816974/verizon-tumblr-net-neutrality-internet-politics-david-karp
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waterphone
They're also forcing all adult-oriented content on Tumblr (which isn't limited
to porn, although porn makes up the majority of their userbase) behind a
logged-in-users-only wall, blocking it from non-Tumblr users and in turn,
external search engine results.

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/20/tumblr-rolls-out-new-
conte...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/20/tumblr-rolls-out-new-content-
filtering-tools-with-launch-of-safe-mode/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Oi, I suppose archiving Tumblr is this weekend's project.

~~~
Veratyr
They currently have 150B posts
([https://www.tumblr.com/about](https://www.tumblr.com/about)) so I expect
that to be quite challenging. If you seriously make any progress though, it'd
be cool to see.

~~~
awalton
Maybe 1:100 of those (being _incredibly_ generous) are actually _unique_ posts
and not someone else reposting something from someone else, so maybe it's not
such a hard task...

~~~
tangent128
It's fairly common for commentary to be added to a reblog via tags rather than
after the quoted post, so even reblogs without commentary may need saving.

~~~
jandrese
This assumes there is commentary on _Tumblr_ worth saving.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I'm guessing you've bought into the meme that Tumblr is literally nothing but
left-wing politics.

~~~
lmm
Are you saying that meme is inaccurate?

~~~
breakingcups
Are you implying it's not?

~~~
lmm
Yes. The meme aligns with my own experience of tumblr, so I'm inclined to
believe it over contrary anecdotes (of course a more rigorous study would be a
different story)

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RangerScience
If you're a founder and looking to sell your company, is there anything you
can do to guard yourself against these kinds of situations?

I imagine it might be some particular part of a golden handcuff / golden
parachute deal, but making it work for everyone involved sounds super hard...

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sausman
This is my biggest qualm with building a company aimed to sell (either to
public markets or another company). You are binding yourself to pursue as much
profit as possible through whatever legal means possible. Even if those legal
means go against everything you stand for, you have to pursue them because you
have a fiduciary duty.

~~~
phil21
> Even if those legal means go against everything you stand for, you have to
> pursue them because you have a fiduciary duty.

This is not true, and never has been even a little bit true (in the US). It's
a commonly misquoted trope.

Assuming your company happens to be public (the only way this matters) - you
still can do whatever you like as controlling CEO short of outright fraud or
negligence. If you decide to switch your Fortune 500 company to it's sole goal
being charity - you could definitely do that without going to jail or being
liable for anything.

You might lose your job though.

If you own a private company you started yourself and own the equity? You can
do everything up to and including burning the building down.

~~~
sausman
> You might lose your job though.

That's what I was trying to get at. I didn't mean to make it sound like you'd
go to jail.

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pasbesoin
I realize that Verizon and Verizon Wireless are now separate businesses.
Nonetheless -- and also because of increasing suckage at Verizon Wireless --
once T-Mobile deploys on its newly acquired lower frequency spectrum and fills
in some rural holes I need, I'm going to drop Verizon Wireless like a hot
potato.

I wonder how much PR and good will damage/loss Verizon's behavior is
generating.

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jp_sc
tl;dr: Verizon owns Yahoo now, so it owns Tumblr too.

~~~
f4rker
Buying yahoo was a very dumb move for VZ unless they just want hold assets OR
completely overhaul yahoo. Yahoo has been a losing brand since circa 2000.
Soon as yahoo took over tumblr it started to suck more.

source : I work on other peoples tumblrs site all the time

~~~
skinnymuch
AOL does a lot of advertising. Yahoo has a ton of eyeballs. Verizon has data.
That already is a good match for all three. Yahoo is still close to a top 5
site. Definitely top 10. Yahoo also owns some advertising infrastructure like
Brightroll and Flurry. I have experience in Brightroll myself. It's not that
rare to run across people spending close to $100K a week on Brightroll.

It wasn't a bad move at all. They were also able to take off a few hundred
million from the price because of the hack. Made the deal even better.

Verizon will definitively be the 3rd biggest advertising platform after Google
and Facebook. Not a bad place to be when you already make billions in profit
from your Verizon Wireless oligopoly.

About Tumblr. Yahoo has already written off at least $700M of its original
purchase price. So Tumblr isn't a big factor when buying Yahoo.

Note: In no way do I like what Verizon will be doing. Using their vast amounts
of data on users via their internet/phones services and now all the web
properties they own for advertising and targeting is awful for privacy and
plain old decency. I just mean strictly business-wise, this is likely to be a
great deal for Verizon.

~~~
afpx
If Verizon can execute, it could even be bigger, given that they also have the
FCC in pocket, and they have both mobile carrier data and snooped home
internet data.

~~~
skinnymuch
Yeah def they can be a legitimate powerhouse with web properties and ads. It's
hard to guess how much revenue and profit Oath will be doing in 5 years. We
won't know anything too soon since first Yahoo needs to be fully acquired and
some time needed to adjust to Oath being the parent company.

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boogiepoppu
Net neutrality? Don't make me laugh. Yahoo was one of the biggest PRISM
benefactors.

~~~
ceejayoz
What does PRISM have to do with Net Neutrality?

~~~
nl
Not only is the OP wrong to try to link them (?) but they are wrong about
Yahoo being a beneficiary (??)

Yahoo fought hard against Prism and only gave up when threatened with a
$250,000/day fine.

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-
laws...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-lawsuit-
documents-fine-user-data-refusal)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/technology/secret-court-
ru...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/technology/secret-court-ruling-put-
tech-companies-in-data-bind.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&)

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yuhong
I strongly suspect that an economic collapse is going to come less than a year
after these sales (not just talking about Yahoo). That would be a good time
for Verizon to begin selling off its utilities. AOL and Time Warner was
another example that happened just before the bubble burst:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner#Merger_with_AOL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner#Merger_with_AOL)
I think this is partly because of how the economy is based on consumption and
debt.

------
fiatjaf
Net neutrality makes internet more expensive for everybody so Torrent and
Netflix users can be subsidized.

It looks right, but it is WRONG to "defend" it using law and force.

~~~
RangerScience
I want to downvote you because of how intensely I disagree with everything
you're saying, but you're saying it nicely so I won't.

Instead - The major concern about losing NN is that instead of just paying for
_volume_ of data, I'll also be required to pay based on type and/or source of
that data, and that the entities providing the data will also be required to
pay based on type and/or destination.

Do you think this concern is not valid? Why? Do you think this concern and
there is a better way to address it? What?

If defending it using law is wrong, what would be a right way to defend it?

And if "free market" is part of you answer, can you talk about the handling of
last-mile connections?

Finally, I just straight up don't understand what you mean by "defend it
using... force". Can you explain?

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fiatjaf
Thank you for not downvoting me. Free market would be part of my answer if I
had one.

I'm not well-informed enough to say much, but imagine you have a local link in
a small rural town that only support some absolute number of packets or
whatever: if you have one big consumer that is eating the major part of that
every day, making the others miserable, isn't it reasonable to limit that
consumer's bandwidth somehow?

Then if some law is enacted to prevent you from limiting that consumer, then
you'll either make the lives of the others miserable or you'll be forced to
spend more on your link and luckily pass the cost down to all your consumers.
Right?

Please correct me if I'm assuming things wrong (I'm likely doing it).

> The major concern about losing NN is that instead of just paying for volume
> of data, I'll also be required to pay based on type and/or source of that
> data, and that the entities providing the data will also be required to pay
> based on type and/or destination.

I don't understand what is the problem of that. In every other situation of
life you pay for the "type" of the thing you're consuming. When you go to a
restaurant you don't pay for volume of food, but for the types of food you're
asking. There are indeed restaurants where you pay for mass of food, but you
don't have all the expensive options available. I can see a world where you
would have to pay a little more for Netflix and a little less for sshing to
your VPS.

~~~
bsurmanski
I don't think your 'small rural town' metaphor is solved by removing net
neutrality. From the provider's point of view, who cares if someone is using
up 1000 packets of youtube or 1000 packets of nytimes? They cost the same from
the provider's stand point (unlike 1kg lobster vs 1kg of bread for a
restaurant). Filtering by content doesn't change anything, network providers
can already charge by amount of traffic. If they can't provide enough, they
can raise prices, free market style.

The issue with removing net neutrality is that it enables censorship and
removes 'the free market' of the internet. The internet provider doesn't like
your political blog? Well now they can wall it off under a addon package just
like cable TV. Facebook makes an exclusive deal with the internet provider?
Now Twitter is locked behind an addon package or completely unavailable.

You might say, "well people will just use a different internet provider!". The
problem with that is that many places in the USA only have one, maybe two
providers to chose from; So it's not like a restaurant where they can just go
somewhere else.

You might say, "well more internet providers will be created if no-one likes
the current ones!". But its very expensive to create a network of fiber optic
cables. Billions of dollars, maybe trillions. A start-up can't just
'interrupt' the market. And usually when a new internet provider is created,
they have to lease the big-company lines just work. And you can bet if they
make that deal with existing companies they'll have to accept big-company's
traffic policies.

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sverhagen
Right.

> A start-up can't just 'interrupt' the market

...like they can on the Internet. Unless... Even on the Internet... They have
to fight themselves into a preferable "package" as created as the result of no
net neutrality.

