
Mozilla Fights for Net Neutrality This May (and Always) - DiabloD3
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2018/05/09/mozilla-fights-for-net-neutrality-this-may-and-always/
======
acheron
I still find it amazing that everything has degraded from the independent
hacker culture of the 90s to continually begging for the government to control
and regulate the Internet. If you ever posted “what the Internet could really
use is for the US Congress to control it!” to Usenet or 1999 Slashdot you
would have gotten flamed to a crisp.

I mean, God knows I’m not going to use a Google product, so I’m sticking with
Firefox anyway, but Mozilla certainly doesn’t do themselves any favors.

~~~
Fnoord
What I find amazing is that there are still people on this planet who oppose
anything a government does, so they end up at the perils of corporations. I
guess, according to you, GDPR is also a Bad Thing (tm)? Hint: it is a response
to an industry which failed to regulate itself.

When corporations cannot manage themselves, the government must interact by
rule of law. An example of that is the sale of frequencies such as 4G. Or the
prohibition of usage of certain frequencies because the government uses them
for military purposes. You may agree or disagree with some of these, but they
serve a purpose which in the end can be deducted to being useful for the
people (ie. the military, in the end, serves the purpose to protect the
people).

If the government protects the interest of the [all] the people, equally,
which they do in the case of net neutrality then the government uses its vast
power to keep the corporations on a leash so that [all] the people can
benefit. That is not anarchism, true, because the government uses its
authority against very powerful monopolies/duopolies or other power vacuums
with commercial interests. It is akin to the old GPL vs BSDL debate. And if
you had _that_ debate on Usenet or Slashdot there was no consensus precisely
because there's the camp who believes in an authority and the anarchistic one.

~~~
ttoinou

      it is a response to an industry which failed to regulate itself
    

Pretty much everything websites do with your data are from voluntary exchange.
We decide to subscribe to a website a visit it regularly and give to it your
data. We decide to surf some website without ad blockers / web trackers
extensions, and we don't want to pay for social medias and some of us actually
like well targeted ads. I fail to see what the corps should have done to
regulate themselves

~~~
dizzystar
I opened a Facebook about one year ago. The information they had on me was
rather disturbing.

I never gave Facebook permission, directly or implied, to track my circle of
past friends or make assumptions about my personal interests.

~~~
ttoinou
Permission was implied when you sent your data to them. Website you visit send
you webpages that your browser parse and connect to every tracking widgets
present in the html. If you don't like it, configure better your browser.

~~~
Fnoord
"Implied"? That's not how opt-in works, sorry.

~~~
ttoinou
YOUR computer sends your data. YOU let it do that. If you don't want your
computer to do it, don't surf internet or configure your browser / install
extensions

~~~
Fnoord
That's not how opt-in or JavaScript works together with law. If a hostile
website serves hostile JavaScript code, it won't be "it was your computer who
ran it"; THEY served it.

The standard experience will need to adhere to privacy laws. GLHF with GDPR in
2 weeks :)

~~~
ttoinou
Your message makes me think that if there's a responsibility involved in
theses issues, websites that have tracker widgets obviously shares a part of
it

------
tokyodude
this is tangentially related but what are mozilla's plans for autoplay in
Firefox?

Chrome just effectively broke net neutrality in Chrome by whitelisting a bunch
of websites. They claim chrome will learn your preferences and auto-magically
whitelist others sites you run videos on but that hardly seems fair. Why did
the other sites not have to pass that hurdle? Worse, it only works if you're
logged in where as whitelisted sites work always. Use a public computer or an
incognito window and non-whitelisted sites stop autoplaying.

Consider youtubecompetitor.com trying to autoplay videos like youtube. Users
have a bad experience because the videos don't autoplay so they are unlikely
to ever do as well as youtube.

Isn't that exactly the kind of thing that net neutrality is trying to avoid,
picking winners and losers. I want to make youtubecompetitor.com do I now have
to pay off Chrome (and Firefox, and Safari, and Edge) to get them to whitelist
my site for autoplay? Why does youtube get a pass? Similarly if Firefox
doesn't use a whitelist then users will have a worse experience on may sites
vs chrome so there's certainly an incentive for Firefox to use the same or
similar whitelist to Google.

I don't know what the best solution would be. Off the top of my head I'd
prefer browser disallow autoplay by default and let me manually give sites
permission to autoplay via a butterbar or other prompt "Can this site
autoplay? Yes/No". One click and youtube gets whitelisted. One click and
youtubecompetitor gets whitelisted. That seems far more "neutral"

In any case I'm curious what Mozilla's response is to Chrome's whitelisting
winners.

~~~
daleharvey
I am one of a few people currently working on this feature and while a
whitelist was on the table, very much trying to push against it, especially
after seeing the reaction to chromes implementation landing.

I think comparisons to net neutrality are fair, I have made the same argument
however it is worth mentioning it isnt equivalent, obviously we wouldnt be
crippling peoples experience unless they paid us money

------
marricks
It's amazing how "politicized" net neutrality has become in the last 6 months.
A year ago I couldn't find anyone honestly arguing to repeal it. Reddit, HN,
everywhere I looked people (and companies) besides ISPs said repealing net
neutrality was bad.

In comes Trump and Ajit Pia, and suddenly there is another side, the "against
government regulation". It's a talking point anyone who watches Fox News or
reads the Wall Street journal can proudly stand behind. Now we have a side,
Net Neutrality is a "liberal thing" and ISPs determining what content we can
get at what speed is up for debate.

Linked in is a horrible platform to get news on, and especially to read
comments on, but the top comments for a NN article were all PRO-REPEAL, what a
reversal! And looking at comments on HN & Reddit you can actually see people
who fell for the bait and took it as a "government encroachment" argument.

It's truly sad, this particular debate was beautiful for a bit because of the
the political spectrum united behind it, that has crumbled to the perennial
partisan debate of left vs right.

~~~
matte_black
The worst thing that ever happened was liberals wrapping their arms around Net
Neutrality and claiming it as “their” issue. This immediately caused a knee
jerk reaction in conservatives who will oppose anything liberals will support
and thus the coalition to repeal Net Neutrality was born and ultimately
triumphed.

~~~
devwastaken
I think that's a very partisan way of looking at a complex issue. 'liberals
wrapping their arms around net neutrality' is not why net neutrality is being
repealed, and not why the coalition to repeal Net Neutrailty was created. You
can look towards the significant amount of _contributions_ to various
politicians and individuals in government that have come from ISP's and see
quite a clear picture of the source of NN being repealed.

~~~
tphan
I just want to raise a couple of points.

It's not necessarily always true that corporate donations are simply to bribe
politicians into doing their bidding (which is what I took away when I read
your commend). Companies will give money to politicians who are already
aligned with their interests.

I watched a video once which tried to address the idea that Ted Cruz was being
bribed by Comcast. Once of the arguments put forward was, sure, he may have
received donations from some Comcast employees. However we shouldn't conflate
that to mean Comcast was paying him money. Other politicians like Hillary and
Bernie also would have received donations from Comcast employees.

Also, opponents of Net Neutrality actually do make some good points against
the role of government in regulating the internet. Here's a debate where Nick
Gillespie (a libertarian) and Michael Katz argue against Mitchell Baker and
Tom Wheeler on whether NN is good. By the end of the debate, Nick and Michael
are able to convince more people to consider opposing NN than to support:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAJabAjoK08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAJabAjoK08)

~~~
devwastaken
[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xwknx/republican...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7xwknx/republican-
members-of-congress-fcc-letter)

The difference between giving money to change alignment, and 'already being
aligned', is appearances. It's still money being sent, and that absolutely
influences the individual being funded. It's a complete conflict of interest,
and especially in this case it's an absurd amount of money being sent to many
politicians, not just one.

I think there are some good points against NN. Such as the FTC's role in
investigating unfair practices. But the FTC is always playing catch-up when it
comes to the myriad of bad practices ISP's get up to. With the repeal of NN
there has been no real replacement to prevent the ISP monopolies from being
unfair, as they have done in the past. I generally side with libertarian
arguments and that markets can do a better job. But in the U.S, we have
monopalies. ISP's grew under non-NN rules, and there are significant anti-
competative practices to blame rather than the easy one of 'regulation'.

------
sintaxi
I expect Mozilla to do a much better job at educating the public on the pros
and cons on a complex topic like this. Seems like they're just blindly taking
a side. I expect Mozilla has a team of Lawyers who should all be able to speak
intelligently on the topic. So where are they?

Mozilla tell me...

\- Why does classifying internet as Title 2 make sense?

\- Why is the Sherman Act (1890) not adequate for preventing ISPs from picking
winners?

\- Why do we want ISP to have to apply for broadcasting licenses and thus
giving the government the power to shut down content without court order?

------
dilap
Has Mozilla said anything about FOSTA or fought against it in any way?

I feel like NN is basically just a diversion to deflect attention and energy
from things that are actually restricting freedom on the internet.

~~~
dingo_bat
If you want to understand Mozilla's actions, just treat them like a proxy for
Google. Things google cannot publicly speak about, Mozilla does it for them.

In this case, nn by design takes power away from infrastructure companies
(ISPs) and gives it to internet services companies (google, facebook, etc.).
So Mozilla is very actively supporting it.

~~~
boomboomsubban
In no way can Mozilla's actions be taken as a proxy for Google. Yes, most of
their revenue comes from Google now, but this is a recent change and there's
no reason to think that contract gave Google any control.

Next, Google has already voiced their support for net neutrality. They even
have a real "proxy," the Internet Association, pledging to support lawsuits
like the Mozilla one.

[https://www.google.com/takeaction/action/net-
neutrality/](https://www.google.com/takeaction/action/net-neutrality/)

~~~
dingo_bat
> but this is a recent change and there's no reason to think that contract
> gave Google any control.

You're not thinking hard enough then I guess. Mozilla gets 97% of its funding
from Google. That's implicit control right there. Google can fail to renew the
contract and Mozilla goes poof!

~~~
yoklov
Mozilla doesn’t get 97% of it’s funding from google, and until very recently
it didn’t get very much at all from them — it’s primary revenue source was
yahoo.

~~~
dingo_bat
> Mozilla doesn’t get 97% of it’s funding from google

They do. Look up Mozilla's latest annual report.

Edit: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/foundation/annualreport/2016/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/foundation/annualreport/2016/)

Royalties of $503k out of total revenue $520k. Almost 100% of the Royalties
are from thier search engine agreement with Google.

~~~
boomboomsubban
>Royalties of $503k out of total revenue $520k. Almost 100% of the Royalties
are from thier search engine agreement with Google.

That report is from 2016, when Yahoo had the search engine deal with Mozilla
in the US and paid most of the royalties. Now Google presumably pays the most,
I doubt that immediately turned Mozilla into their stooge.

Plus, Google is already publicly favoring net neutrality. Some backroom
conspiracy to hide things doesn't seem to benefit them.

------
wpdev_63
fightforthefuture.org

------
ghba66
I don't know why Mozilla thinks it's okay to politically align themselves.
Shouldn't they stay neutral if they want to make a browser for everybody and
all of that? Reminds me of the Tor project calling themselves a "human rights
project"

~~~
colejohnson66
While I agree with you on companies aligning themselves, net neutrality isn’t
a partisan issue. The only people who make it partisan are Congress

~~~
ghba66
I am not from the US so I don't know if it's a partisan issue, but I don't
agree with NN, so them implying everybody agrees on that because it's the
common good is completely bonkers.

~~~
Jonnax
A company is free to align themselves with any goal they wish to have.

They see that their strategy aligns with the majority of their users and the
user's they wish to attract.

You have the freedom to not use their product if you don't align with them.

If you're not from the US what country are you from that would have a benefit
from eliminating net neutrality?

What are your reasons for not supporting it?

The argument is whether net neutrality is for the common good or not.

Are you saying the only companies that can take a stance are ISPs? And they
can lobby governments but an independent company cannot?

~~~
ghba66
>A company is free to align themselves with any goal they wish to have. They
see that their strategy aligns with the majority of their users and the user's
they wish to attract. You have the freedom to not use their product if you
don't align with them.

They are just virtue signalling.

>If you're not from the US what country are you from that would have a benefit
from eliminating net neutrality? What are your reasons for not supporting it?

I am from a country in the EU. I don't support NN because I want to have
access to zero-rated services. As a consumer, they make my life easier and my
bill lower. I want to have the freedom of choosing whether I want NN in my
connection or not. I don't want the government to take that freedom away from
me.

>Are you saying the only companies that can take a stance are ISPs? And they
can lobby governments but an independent company cannot?

They surely can. I was just surprised because Mozilla pride themselves so much
in diversity and the common good. I suppose their diversity does not include
diversity of thought.

~~~
Jonnax
>They are just virtue signalling.

They've filed court cases against the FCC. They're activly trying to change
legislation.

If that's virtue signalling then it's a stupid phrase that means nothing.

>I am from a country in the EU. I don't support NN because I want to have
access to zero-rated services. As a consumer, they make my life easier and my
bill lower. I want to have the freedom of choosing whether I want NN in my
connection or not. I don't want the government to take that freedom away from
me.

An ISP zero rating facebook, Netflix or Spotify just entrenches a big player
in their dominant position.

That's bad for the market and shouldn't be encouraged. How can a new entrant
into a market compete when the ISP or mobile operator is giving the major
player preferential treatment.

As a consumer sure you don't care but these are exactly the scenarios that a
government should ensure a level playing field in.

Even in the sense of if a mobile operator is Zero rating a music provider then
the operator must allow a choice and all music vendors must be able to easily
join the programme.

Hacker news is quite focused on startups, creating barriers for market entry
isn't very startup friendly.

>I suppose their diversity does not include diversity of thought.

LOL. So a company can't stand for anything because they might upset someone?

Have a bit of self awareness. Having a persecution complex when you're on the
winning side is pathetic.

~~~
ghba66
>They've filed court cases against the FCC. They're activly trying to change
legislation.

Of course... they have to spend the donations on something. Anything but
improving Firefox or Thunderbird, lol

>An ISP zero rating facebook, Netflix or Spotify just entrenches a big player
in their dominant position.

No because in the EU by legislation ISPs are forced to zero-rate all services
in the same category. If they zero-rate Netflix they have to zero-rate YouTube
and everything in between.

>LOL. So a company can't stand for anything because they might upset someone?

Exactly. They should not alienate possible users or customers.

>Have a bit of self awareness. Having a persecution complex when you're on the
winning side is pathetic.

I, and all customers, are on the winning side by now. But we have to keep
fighting so evil doesn't win, :)

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> No because in the EU by legislation ISPs are forced to zero-rate all
> services in the same category. If they zero-rate Netflix they have to zero-
> rate YouTube and everything in between.

You know what the technical term for that kind of legislation is, right? Yeah,
you guessed it, that is net neutrality regulation!

So, I suppose you are against this type of legislation then, correct?

------
ryanpcmcquen
I am yet to hear anyone who is anti Net Neutrality arguing for electricity or
other utilities not to be regulated ...

~~~
nsomaru
Erm, this is not about whether the internet is regulated or not.

In fact, there might even be 'pro net neutrality' regulation.

Imagine you paid more for electricity when using your geyser.

~~~
dingo_bat
> Erm, this is not about whether the internet is regulated or not.

Then you are in the wrong place, this discussion is about applying the Title 2
regulations on ISPs. I'm not sure which "net neutrality" you are referring to
which is not about regulation.

------
lucb1e
How many months has it been? I'm quite sick of hearing about net neutrality.
Europe has it so if it's so necessary, vote with your feet (hosting and VPN
wise) and they'll get the message. And if they block vpns, I've heard great
success stories of community Internet which is supposedly faster _and_
cheaper. You might even be able to get net neutrality by just running your own
ISP rather than trying to get huge corps in line.

Can we stop repeating the same thing over and over again? We're all well aware
that it's something everyone wants except those who stand to make money off of
it.

~~~
brynjolf
That sounds like you given up. Don't let your brittle spirit deter others.

~~~
lucb1e
I haven't given up: we already won. That things are crap in freedom country
doesn't make me want to scroll past headlines about HELP US for months on end.

