
72% of Consumers Don't Know What Net Neutrality Is - artsandsci
http://exstreamist.com/72-of-consumers-dont-know-what-net-neutrality-is/
======
Maakuth
This brings to my mind some Sony Music executive defending their malware-
enabling CD DRM - - "Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why
should they care?"

~~~
oneplane
That brings to mind a (probably unimplementable) thought I had around the same
time: disallow people that do not understand what things are to make choices
about it that affect everyone.

~~~
snewk
but what would congress do?

------
sharkweek
Doesn't surprise me at all - the level of energy in the most recent protests
around the repeal was optically quite a bit lower than previous efforts.

We were basically warned this would happen too, that Net Neutrality opponents
just keep beating the drum until the general population got tired of
resisting.

~~~
twblalock
> We were basically warned this would happen too, that Net Neutrality
> opponents just keep beating the drum until the general population got tired
> of resisting.

The general population never resisted, because they were never really
participants in the conversation.

Most of the net neutrality activism happened within the bubble of people who
work in or care deeply about tech. I don't know very many people in the
general public who had heard the term "net neutrality" before I mentioned it
to them, and I live in Silicon Valley, so I would expect the general public
here to be a bit more technology-inclined than in the rest of the country.

This should be a wake up call to proponents of net neutrality -- better
marketing and communication with the general public is going to be needed.

~~~
seanp2k2
It's hard to fight with lawyers who have the full-time job of doing things
like repealing net neutrality. This is even more true when they don't care
about public opinion, have strong industry ties, and literally run the FCC.

------
SolarNet
Cracked even ran a commentary video [0] where all the hosts misunderstood how
the internet works entirely (Netflix pays millions of dollars to Tier 1
providers (pre-Comcast deal even) every year, they don't use the networks for
free, and Comcast didn't build them (nor own the companies that did) they only
build the last mile - which is supposed to be maintained by their subscribers,
not be used as a monopoly to be greedy with - they also pay Teir 1 providers
to provide connectivity and maintain the internet).

[0]
[https://youtu.be/EfAAHLTlhmU?t=35m30s](https://youtu.be/EfAAHLTlhmU?t=35m30s)

------
dieterrams
Survey methodology and all that, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if
most of the affected population didn't know.

Net Equality would have likely perked up more interest.

~~~
leeoniya
> Net Equality would have likely perked up more interest.

yeah, marketing is nuanced like that and i think this distinction would have
made a good difference.

net-favorism, anti-throttling, anti-discrimination, equal-access would have
also done better, i think.

~~~
losteric
I can't think of a hot name, but net neutrality is fundamentally about
preserving a free market of information.

~~~
Spivak
You have to be careful about that, because there's nothing in net neutrality
that prevents restricted data silos, censorship, takedowns; it's really only
about forbidding a specific network management practice that allows ISPs to
impose a time cost on sites and services they disapprove of.

~~~
jacksnipe
While accurate, it's a little misleading to phrase it like this.

Imposing a significant time cost makes certain types of applications unusable.

------
fallmonkey
28% know what it is? That's more surprising to me actually.

~~~
WillPostForFood
22% (6% answered not sure). But to be clear, 22% SAY they know what it is. I
guarantee that if asked to explain what it actually is, some chunk of that 22%
would get it wrong. Anecdotally, most people I talk to IRL believe it will
either lower their cable bill or remove their bandwidth cap.

~~~
dkla1120
Or it's just more Government regulation that is trying to control the internet
and prevent free market competition.

~~~
WillPostForFood
I think the counter one liner to that is something like: Net Neutrality keeps
big companies from controlling what you can access on the internet. But not
totally comfortable with that because "access" is overstating.

~~~
CaptSpify
I would also counter with: The ISPs are where they are _because_ they in the
opposite of a free market.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Good point, I think this is important to highlight, and might appeal to people
reluctant to support net neutrality.

If one supports competition and free markets, recognize that the ISP business
is not free and open to competition, and used regulation to gain monopoly or
duopoly status. We need some regulation to either try and create competition,
or at least prevent abuse of their current monopoly/duopoly status.

------
protomyth
It would probably help if more advocates agreed on what they mean by net
neutrality. Having listened to advocates on various news networks, I'm pretty
confused what they actually mean.

I would also like to see an actual bill with an actual legal definition. Given
how regulations work, I would hope the authors of said bill put the actual
regulations in it. I still want to see one of these advocacy groups put out a
proposed bill.

~~~
mastax
I think the existing Open Internet Order does a pretty good job:

[https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-201A1.p...](https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-201A1.pdf)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_Open_Internet_Order_2010](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_Open_Internet_Order_2010)

~~~
protomyth
Now, someone just has to find a house rep to introduce the legislation.

------
almiron10
Can someone point to the best ELI5 article, or tell me the best metaphor? I
think I don't do a great job trying to explain net neutrality to family
members.

~~~
jandrese
Do you know how you have to pay extra to your ISP to watch Netflix or Youtube?
You don't because of Net Neutrality.

If they are old enough you can use this metaphor:

Anti-Net Neutrality is for turning the Information Superhighway into toll
roads.

If they need further explanation, go with the highway analogy. Imagine if all
of the roads in the country were privately owned, but still free to use. You
pay your tax and the money is distributed among the companies. Now the company
that services your neighborhood decides that they want more money, so they
erect tollbooths at the entrance to the neighborhood but tell companies that
they'll wave the toll if you're going to a certain company. So Wal*Mart might
pay the fee and get you free access, while Mom&Pop shops can't afford it so
you have to pay a toll to visit them. They claim it is necessary because the
Mom&Pop shop gets too much traffic and they aren't helping to pay for the
roads in your neighborhood, even though the shop is in the next town over and
the extra traffic doesn't really cost the road company anything.

~~~
WillPostForFood
_Do you know how you have to pay extra to your ISP to watch Netflix or
Youtube? You don 't because of Net Neutrality._

That's a good scare tactic, but isn't very informative (or necessarily true).
Net Neutrality only came into effect on June 12, 2015. I don't think people
will recall paying extra to watch Netflix or YouTube before that date (because
they weren't). And paying extra probably won't be the effect if net neutrality
is rolled back, so it will undermine the argument to reinstate it.

The problem is that we need net neutrality to help balance the power against
big vertically integrated Media/ISPs like Comcast and Time Warner. But it is
more about the future potential abuse, so people won't care until there is
some event that really affects a lot of people.

~~~
jandrese
Netflix did pay a ransom to Verizon and Comcast back in 2015.

You didn't see it directly, but that money came out of the same pot that would
have paid for more content on Netflix.

[http://time.com/80192/netflix-verizon-paid-peering-
agreement...](http://time.com/80192/netflix-verizon-paid-peering-agreement/)

~~~
WillPostForFood
Not even sure this would fall under the net neutrality umbrella. Comcast and
Verizon weren't specifically discriminating or shaping Netflix traffic.
Netflix was buying and over saturating the cheapest bandwidth they could. The
question became who pays to upgrade to accommodate it. Please correct me if
I'm wrong, but the current Net Neutrality rules don't address this situation.

~~~
jandrese
It's kind of like a business saying that it doesn't discriminate against a
minority, but when one of those people walk in the door they just never get
served. It's still discrimination even if it's not overt. It's the kind of
thing that Netflix could definitely argue as a Net Neutrality violation over
at the FCC, especially once they got a demand to pay up.

It's not like the consumers could switch to a less dickish provider, they're
often a local monopoly. You may also note that there were no repeats of this
problem after 2015, even though many high bandwidth services appeared and grew
in this time.

~~~
WillPostForFood
All Cogent traffic was being affected, not just Netflix, so the analogy
doesn't hold. Everyone at the restaurant was being served, equally slowly.

 _You may also note that there were no repeats of this problem after 2015_

Implicit in that statement is that there have been no paid peering agreements
(the Netflix/Comcast solution) since 2015, which I know for fact is not true.

 _many high bandwidth services appeared and grew in this time._

Examples? What high bandwidth companies appeared after 2015 that have even 1%
of Netflix traffic?

------
jeremyt
100% of the remaining people don't know what net neutrality is. Pick two of
them at random and their definitions will not line up.

It's just a blank slate for people to project their political biases on.

~~~
ouid
Zero collisions for a birthday problem? I don't think people waste that much
space on wrong definitions of net neutrality.

------
jarcoal
I would believe that 28% of people have heard of it, but there's no way that
many people know what it is.

------
PeterStuer
In my own experience I'd be surprised if that 22% that say they do would come
even close to realy knowing even the basics. In my own 'tech-savvy' circle, I
still find most people that once in a while utter the phrase 'net neutrality'
not making the connection when their mobile ISP rolls out 'zero rating' for
preferential apps.

------
Animats
That's not bad. Over half the US population doesn't know that over-the-air TV
still works.

~~~
Clubber
They miniaturize people and put them in the box like on Willy Wonka.. Duh..

~~~
Animats
No, not "how". Merely that it still works at all. A big fraction of the
population assumes you have to buy cable to get TV. Some think that selling TV
antennas is illegal. [1]

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/millennials-unearth-an-
amazing-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/millennials-unearth-an-amazing-hack-
to-get-free-tv-the-antenna-1501686958)

~~~
Clubber
I recently cut the cable and installed a digital antenna with a HomeRun for
the AppleTV. I wanted to make sure I get football games when the season comes
around. I couldn't be happier, the picture is as good as cable. We get around
42 channels, but a few duplicates.

I got Hulu which I'm not overly happy with. Playstation Vue was a lot better.

------
danschuller
I think net neutrality would do better if was rebranded as the "free market"
for the internet. Then it's got a cultural touch point that people already
understand.

~~~
whatshisface
That wouldn't be exactly accurate. A free internet market would probably be
the pairing of net neutrality repeal with the repeal of all local restrictions
on running cables under roads and into appartments.

------
ccrush
Maybe I would have cared to speak up more for net neutrality if I didn't
notice what an absolute joke it is to even worry about it at this point.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and all the news media services are heavily
biased, actively censoring, and abusing the trust we have placed in them. I'm
sorry I didn't have time to speak up, but what guarantee do I have that anyone
would have listened? We gave away all our privacy, rights to speech, and
everything else we had going in order to gain minor conveniences. The web has
turned into a disgusting social engineering tool that tells you what to buy,
think, and do at every step. Instead of fighting to keep our computing under
our control, our data in our hands, and our upstream a combination of the two,
we're all pretending net neutrality matters to anyone. What are you going to
upload? Who is this affecting? Oh, poor Netflix can't actively change reviews
and rating systems to lie to you about how favorably other users view their
content because big old Comcast is throttling them? Well, fuck Comcast and
fuck Netflix. I'm done with them. We need to reach Web 3.0. Whatever that
means.

------
Torai
Today I learned that US Citizens = Consumers

~~~
ThinkingGuy
Unless you live completely off the grid, and are totally self-sufficient,
growing your own food, making your own tools, etc. you're a consumer (in the
economic sense) in some way or another.

~~~
RugnirViking
But I can be a consumer without being a US citizen. The study wasn't done on
global consumers, it was conducted solely on US citizens.

It might seem petty, but its important to be specific when reporting
scientific results even for pop sci. This article chops and changes between
consumers and US citizens a lot which could cause confusion

------
ruffrey
Which is even more impressive when you consider how many FCC comments in favor
of net neutrality were received.

------
nsxwolf
The general public cares about net neutrality about as much as they care about
DNSSEC. I wonder how many people think their internet is already like a cable
package - that they paid for a package that includes Google and Facebook and
whatnot.

------
tchock23
My hypothesis is it has to do with the name chosen for it. If it had a more
'consumer-friendly' name it would be more widely known. Something like
'Internet Freedom' or 'Free Internet' would have more appeal...

~~~
xienze
That's actually probably a worse name. There are a lot of people who think it
has to do with regulating online content (in a political viewpoint sense).
"Internet Freedom" would only make that worse.

~~~
tchock23
I agree that it's technically a worse name. Net neutrality is technically not
a bad name - it just doesn't resonate and the stats on awareness (somewhat)
reflect that. My point was more that it needs to better resonate with
consumers. I'm not an expert in naming to come up with something actually
better, but I am an expert in consumer behavior and know a name that lacks
clarity when I see one...

------
thephyber
If you can't define it on a bumper sticker, most Americans won't "know what it
is".

As for the FCC, Ajit Pai, and Net Neutrality, I'm much more open-minded to the
current FCC policy after having listened to him on the latest Recode/Decode
podcast. His speaking patterns make him sound like he's an energetic jerk, but
I don't disagree with lots of the policy agenda he mentioned. I detest the
games they played with the citizen comment submission system and the
"cyberattack" they claimed happened, but that seems only tangentially related.

I'm not sure that the FCC is the right instrument to enact net neutrality -- I
feel like demolishing arbitration and allowing consumers to sue the crap out
of ISPs for unfair competition actions would go further. The FCC has only been
good at restricting speech, not protecting it.

~~~
MBCook
If the FCC isn't the right body why change the rules? Why not leave the
current status quo while Congress works on it (or until they do)?

~~~
hueving
Because the status quo is the wrong body setting rules. If you believe the FTC
is appropriate, then the only thing to do is stop the FCC from enforcing rules
and use the existing competition enforcement framework enforced by the FTC.

------
overcast
So basically the 80/20 rule, that applies to most everything. The internet is
still the Blue E. Is something happening to that E? Then nothing to worry
about.

------
dogruck
It's likely that many people who claim to "know what net neutrality is" don't
actually understand it. Perhaps the 72% is simply honest.

Is every packet equal?

------
Torai
Are ISPs really going to stop abiding by Net Neutrality rules?

Wouldn't that offer a big competitive opportunity for an ISP that supports Net
Neutrality?

~~~
sandov
But it would make too much sense to criticize the artificial monopolies
created by the state instead of complaining about ISPs!

~~~
IntelMiner
"artificial monopolies created by the state"

I'm sorry, what?

While I'm sure you're going to beat a drum about "regulation" and "free
markets" it might be worth stepping back and actually assessing the issue from
a practical, rather than ideological stance

Utilities naturally gravitate toward monopoly. Would you want to have multiple
sewer lines running to your house, because your upstairs bathroom costs more
money than downstairs with a different "provider"?

Stringing up competing sets of coax cable, telephone lines or fiber optic
cables is a losing proposition for the ISP's themselves

Why subject yourself to competition, when you can simply carve out your own
market and be "the" provider in an area? Comcast doesn't want to overlap with
Time Warner, because Time Warner is the incumbent provider. Even if Comcast
offered a faster internet service, they'd be building their market share from
zero

~~~
drdaeman
Actually, I really wonder why it doesn't work that way in the US.

I worked for an ISP company that grew from a tiny startup, connecting just a
few buildings, to a successful ISP that covered a significant part (almost
all, I believe) of small (200K) city in Russia.

I haven't really interacted much with our network builders department (worked
on software, and left the company some years ago, moving to another city), but
IIRC in overall it worked like this - people found our offers interesting and
signed up to get their buildings/apartments connected. We chose new addresses
we were able to physically reach, got the approval from the building owners
and the city, and laid down the wires, extending the network's frontiers.

We laid our own fiber (or, sometimes, copper) and used wireless bridges
whenever we weren't able to reach otherwise. We had also leased fiber from
other companies (there are companies here that have business just by providing
underlying infrastructure but not offering the Internet connectivity). It's
not like adding an extra fiber to an existing conduit is comparable to
installing a new sewer line.

In the end, having 4-5 actually different ISPs in a building - usually all
with their own lines - was (still is) a norm where I had lived. Competing
offerings drove prices down, and bad behavior (sans the state-mandated ones)
were mostly non-existent.

What's so different in the US, that even Google had failed?

~~~
seabird
The US has draconic pole attach rules in most places. Local governments and
regulations on when, where, and how you're able to run cable make it
borderline impossible to efficiently get it done, no matter how much or how
little money you have.

Things like this are not as much an issue in states like Texas that require
only one permit to run cable anywhere in the state. Whether or not people
would like to admit it, this is a case where we can see with our own eyes
regulations are seriously hurting the ability for people to start up and
compete, and is the only reason net neutrality is an issue in the first place.

------
stuaxo
Only 72% ? This seems quite low to me, as something that is quite esoteric to
non-techies.

~~~
vmarquet
I thought this was quite high, since the net neutrality issue had a lot of
coverage in the media, see for example the two John Oliver talks about it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vuuZt7wak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92vuuZt7wak)

------
nonconvergent
Senator Isakson gave a townhall Monday. One of the questions was a rambling
explainer that could be best summarized is "Net neutrality is about not
censoring the internet so do you support it?" to which of course responded "I
do not support censorship so we have to deregulate to ensure it."

The guy practiacally showed Isakson the door.

------
EADGBE
Another great opportunity to explain net neutrality without linking out to
another resource.

Man, so close.

------
vhjkfzhjk
They don't know, because they still have it (mostly). They will only know when
they lose it.

------
miguelrochefort
If you agree with net neutrality, you probably don't understand it.

~~~
vorotato
Okay comcast.

------
bensonn
I don't know what "Net Neutrality" is. I have looked and tried to find out. My
best guess is that Net Neutrailty is a badly named concept that emcompasses
lots of different things to different people. Maybe it means control of The
Internet, or equal speeds for all sites? Besides squishy feelings is there a
concrete meaning?

From what I can gather the FCC changed some things which might allow groups to
do things which may end up worse for end users, at least for a while. Before
the FCC "repealed" it, was there a single bill/rule/law called Net Neutrality?

No sarcasm in this question, just pure ignorance- what EXACTLY is Net
Neutrailty?

~~~
SolarNet
The idea that governs the phone systems the modern internet was born from.
That providers of network access must provide access to other networks
equally. That the networks are neutral to the content flowing across them.
This is about preventing monopolies of the physical lines.

------
__sha3d2
If you're here, you can likely set up a VPN on a VPS provider. Do yourself a
favor and spend the $5 / month for an instance. Get your hands on your
parent's, spouse's, friend's, sibling's phones and get it set up for them too.
Nobody needs to put up with this bullshit from ISPs or the Government.

There is a great and easy to follow tutorial from DigitalOcean here:
digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-an-openvpn-server-on-
ubuntu-16-04.

Edit: It seems as though this post is rubbing people the wrong way. I'm sorry
to anyone offended by this post, that was not my intent. In my mind, one can
simultaneously watch out for their own safety online and advocate for sensible
internet policy.

~~~
JTon
> Get your hands on your parent's, spouse's, friend's, sibling's phones and
> get it set up for them too. Nobody needs to put up with this bullshit from
> ISPs or the Government.

I... I don't do this anymore. I've found myself overburdened with support
calls when the tech I've configured invariable breaks. Whether it's weeks or
months later. Even if what I've configured isn't the culprit, I'm still on the
hook. This is actually one of the reasons why I recommend Apple products to
the least tech-saavy in my circles. Just so I can direct them to Apple Support
later on...

~~~
KGIII
When I retired, I moved to a new, very rural, area.

This led to what was probably one of the dumbest things I've ever done.

Wanting to be nice, I fixed a new neighbor's computer. I then fixed another,
and another, and it kept going. For an area with so little population, I was
shocked by the numbers.

The good news is that this drove me back to Linux. Now, I can truthfully tell
them that I don't use their OS and am not qualified to fix their problem.

Still, don't fix someone's computer. Certainly don't do it for free.

