Senate confirms Biden FCC nominee, finally giving Democrats a 3-2 majority
Senate confirms Biden FCC nominee, finally giving Democrats a 3-2 majority
Anna Gomez confirmation means "FCC can act swiftly to restore net neutrality."
Anna Gomez confirmation means "FCC can act swiftly to restore net neutrality."
"If confirmed, she would give the Democrats a majority at the FCC that would enable them to impose a radical left-wing agenda, including investment-killing and job-killing so-called net neutrality rules, otherwise known as Obamacare for the Internet" Cruz said.
What
249It's just right-wing buzzword scrabble with that guy. No need to even speak in complete sentences, just say a bunch of words that your voters want to demonize, and take home the money.
"Radical" "Obamacare" "Left-wing" Triple word score!
127I was honestly nodding my head in agreement until I got the the word investment-killing. Then I realized it was meant to sound bad lol
32
God damn, Cruz will molest talking points into a sentence by any means necessary. It's like he rolls dice each morning to decide which random words he has to slap together.
Drag shows are literally banning gas stoves through an Antifa deep state Obamacare abortion.
58His constituents love Obamacare as long as you call it, “The Affordable Care Act” lol what a nutsack
42It's just saying a bunch of bullshit and hoping that one of the things you say resonates with everyone.
If you don't get them by the first 3 lies, saying 'Obamacare' is guaranteed to rile them up.
36As a Canadian I think it's hilarious that anyone thinks Joe Biden is the radical left.
16Ted Cruz reminds me of a lot of people, but I hate him more than any of them.
12No worries, the Democrats will do what the party does best with a majority - pretty much nothing.
Enough to say “see? We’re better than the other guys”, but not enough to even nudge the status quo.
11I wish it was going to be radical left wing. Gimme that socialized internet!
3I genuinely don't give a fuck about these petty little ontological bullshit games the DNC has grown fond of in the last two election cycles. I don't give the first fuck if they're "better than the other guys" if the status quo, if the material conditions aren't changing a jot. For misleaders who claim to be better than the cultists, I see a whole lot of fucking nothing changing for the progressive.
Until we have democrats that are serious about ending carceral slavery, ending(and fully disarming) the militarization of police, ending our mosquito-like suckling of crude oil and natural gas, ending the domestic espionage programs like PRISM, FIVE-EYES and their ilk, closing the genocide camps at the border, and making actual good on our climate catastrophe, I genuinely don't give a damn what they say; I'd rather the country fell than humor these career criminals.
3
I hate Ted Cruz so much.
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5He said "buttery males"
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1That sounds... hawt. Republicans make Democrats sound cool.
-3
Now let's get back to net neutrality and rules on social media.
186What rules
2Rules for social media lol. What do you expect the government to do? How would they even enforce these rules? Social media sites would simply host in other countries outside of the USA to bypass regulations.
Instead of trying to regulate websites, how about we create better privacy protections for our citizens, eh?
-5Privacy protection sounds a lot like rules for social media to me...
11I don't think you put much thought into this, friend. Many social media companies are incorporated in the US to make use of US ad revenue sources. Where the servers are hosted doesn't matter. The legal corporate entity is the important bit.
And as mentioned in the other comment, privacy protections would operate the same way, seeing as they are literally rules for social media, among other sites.
But yes, privacy protections would be great. Let's do that
3They have zero interests in providing privacy protections. KOSA is a prime example, bi partisan internet censorship
-2
Oh boy, I can't wait for nothing of any measurable significance to happen as a result of this.
108They'll do nothing until there's a new GOP threat, and then they'll do nothing and blame it on the GOP. Rinse and repeat. We were never at war with Oceania.
30Ding! Ding! Ding! You’re both winners! We all lose
0
"Nothing will fundamentally change."
9I hate the cynical nihilism around here so much. It plays into the Republican and big business hands so well it might as well be propaganda.
We had net neutrality before under the Democrats. The Republicans got rid of it when they took power.
Bothsidesism is juvenile bullshit.
6Republicans may be greedy and evil but Democrats are fucking useless, and this might surprise you but they're all getting paid by lobbyists to keep the status quo just like republicans are.
It's not "bothsidesism" to acknowledge that democrats never actually accomplish what they claim they're going to, that's just reality. I'll vote for them because fuck conservatism, but I don't have any delusions about them caring about the little guy. They're just more old money politicians.
2"Bothsidesism" is the feeble howl of the malfeasant in the face of their entitlement getting shoved back in their faces. Your guy, your segregationist, rich donor-loving, weirdo rapist is not entitled to my support; regardless of who he squares up against.
1We had net neutrality before under the Democrats
We literally didn't. The rules never took effect.
0
BoTh SiDeS aRe ThE sAmE
1Want people to stop saying it, start making changes
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
3Tired of this reductionist room temp IQ bullshit.
They both have problems and identifying those issues isn't claiming they have the same ones or that the issues are equal/pan out.
Republicans are trash because they're authoritarian, and Democrats are trash because they never follow through with anything or accomplish any kind of actual change.
No one here is trying to say they're equally bad or bad in the same way, but ignoring the fact that democrats don't make any attempts at actual change is just being willfully ignorant of their uselessness.
2Yep, two sides of the same coin.
1
I'm sure you voting for Republicans will stop any measurable progress! Maybe you should stop voting so the government can actually help Americans for once.
1Yeah, democrats and republicans are just looking out for different rich people.
If any of the ruling class feel threatened, they just spend a bit 🤏 more to sway public opinion in their favor.
It's all calculated at this point. Buying the government is just another business expense.
-4It's just the cost of 'doing business' for them.
1
I hope they clap the cheeks of the lobbies and finalize net neutrality rules with no take-backsies. Then focus on actually improving the internet after that. Just....please get shit done. Quickly.
39This is the best summary I could come up with:
Biden tried again in May with the nomination of Gomez, a State Department digital policy official who was previously deputy assistant secretary at the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) from 2009 to 2023.
"If confirmed, she would give the Democrats a majority at the FCC that would enable them to impose a radical left-wing agenda, including investment-killing and job-killing so-called net neutrality rules, otherwise known as Obamacare for the Internet," Cruz said.
The Republican yes votes came from Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, and Todd Young of Indiana.
Annoyed at how many vote no on a candidate as qualified and non-controversial as this," commented Harold Feld, senior VP and consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge.
Media advocacy group Free Press said the "unprecedented 32-month delay" that deadlocked the FCC "was the result of concerted efforts by the phone, cable, and broadcast lobbies to hamstring the agency that oversees their businesses.
Gomez's confirmation restores the agency's full complement of commissioners and provides a tie-breaking vote on issues related to diversifying media ownership, promoting broadband affordability and protecting the rights of Internet users."
The original article contains 556 words, the summary contains 196 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
29otherwise known as Obamacare for the Internet
No one calls it that.
34These radical leftist policies that hate money are Obamacare, abortions, jobkillers, Marxist, communist, Leninist, atheist, Jews, Muslims, French, gay and trans agendas, grooming, protesting, unions, paper cuts, workers rights, pronouns, bathrooms, diversity, work from home, and liberal college elites all rolled into one. And it’s coming out of your tv, taking your guns, and making you use an electric range in a coastal city.
It’s like they aren’t even trying anymore, just sprinkling emotional buzzwords around regardless of the topic.
12It needs to be dumbed down for his audience
3That's what they tried dubbing it a few years ago on fox.
2
What took so long?
23Republicans
8
NET NEUTRALITY NOW
8I hope they don't fuck this up. It'd be really easy for these incompetent bastards to do something stupid like "all internet traffic must be given the same priority."
Traffic shaping is important. Certain packets, like those for real time transmission, have to be given priority (think packets for game movement or phone calls or video conferencing) whereas things that can be downloaded or buffered into larger packets (streaming video, file downloads) the packets can be transmitted with lower priority.
The important part of this is the shaping doesn't happen on a per origin basis, but shaping for purpose is critical. I'm hoping any regulation isn't the nonsense that was spelled out previously, it'd be a disaster because it's like the dumb asses didn't bother to consult actual network engineers before drafting the proposals.
I hope they do it right if they're gonna do it.
7Is Rosenworcel still commissioner? I feel like she's the only one in recent memory to do something useful with the 'power' of the FCC
5
2It's never gonna happen, lmao. It'll be just like Obama's 'priorities' with the Freedom of Choice act. A hundred days'll pass from the dems having initiative in the FCC, and suddenly, Net Neutrality will 'no longer be a priority' for that body.
0I wish either side would actually follow through on one of their good promises instead of just the shitty ones.
2
God damn it. We need balance of power to keep everyone sain
-4Dems have the majority? Time for a recess.
-4Here's a contrarian hot take. The net neutrality fight is one of those uniquely American issues that simply should not matter, like school shooter drills, complicated tax filings, and tipping. The Wikipedia page on net neutrality in the United States is about as long as War and Peace, yet in most other countries "net neutrality" is not even enshrined as a distinct legal concept and they do just fine.
In the US, net neutrality has not been a general requirement for ISPs since the issue first surfaced over a decade ago, and efforts to enshrine net neutrality into federal law have failed. The dystopia of a balkanized Internet floated by net neutrality campaigners (e.g. ISPs charging people extra to access Netflix) has not come to pass. Yet it's a live issue because (i) Americans are paranoid about corporations screwing them over, (ii) American corporations have a long history of screwing them over, and (iii) Americans of all camps love waging long and complicated legal battles against each other.
What's really needed is not net neutrality, but a more competitive ISP market. What the net neutrality fears are really about is ISPs having power over consumers. If only one ISP serves your area, they can screw you over by forcing you to shell out more money to access Netflix or whatever. But government efforts are ultimately better spent increasing market competitiveness, such as setting up "shared fiber" requirements. If there are a bunch of ISPs all competing against each other, "net neutrality" will fall naturally into place simply because none of them want to piss off their customers.
-14The dystopia of a balkanized Internet floated by net neutrality campaigners (e.g. ISPs charging people extra to access Netflix) has not come to pass.
You may be unaware, but that dystopia already exists today: Mobile service providers (= ISPs for their customers) are selling e.g. WhatsApp traffic quotas separately from other internet traffic. You'll buy a package, and you'll get X GB traffic, but Y GB WhatsApp traffic separately, with Y sometimes even being > X.
Meaning in effect that people have to pay more to access the non WhatsApp-Internet, which means "ISP charging people extra to access Netflix" (among other services). It encourages people who have little money to stay in their WhatsApp filter bubble.
20In a competitive market, bundling/unbundling is good, not bad. It's a way for consumers to get a better deal. For example, if a tiny minority of users take up a huge chunk of internet traffic through their use of WhatsApp, bundling WhatsApp separately allows the majority of non-power-users to pay less. If you don't like it, just jump to the other providers.
It's under conditions of market power that bundling/unbundling becomes problematic. When your ISP is a monopoly, they can impose bundles on you not because it's a good way to offer consumer choice, but because it's a way to stealthily increase prices.
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13This is like when Europeans or people in other countries say, "racism isn't a problem here, it's a 'uniquely American' problem." Not because racism doesn't exist in these other countries, but because these other countries aren't actually talking about racism and often don't care about it.
6It's more like saying European schools are not well prepared for school shootings. Indeed they aren't, and this is in principle a problem, but they've settled the issue at a deeper level.
3
That's not really true. Emerging internet markets are right to be worried about this too. For example India codified net neutrality just a few years ago.
While more competition in ISPs would prevent this being needed, having the backing of a law is a good fallback.
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-57Net Neutrality only applies to ISPs. Endpoints can do whatever they want.
48non progressive ideas
Yeah, let's censor anyone who isn't on my team!
Sounds an awful lot like fascism to me.
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12"Anything that doesn't support my right wing bullshit is facism".
Save your troll Republican bullshit. No one wants to hear it.
1