Facebook and Google in Day of Action over "Battle for the Net" July 12

[engine]

Net neutrality takes center stage on July 12 with Amazon, Facebook, Google and Mozilla, amongst others. None of the companies involved are saying what action they will be taking, but, be ready for something to gain your attention over "Battle for the Net."

[thenextweb.com...]

[keyplyr]

Google told Inverse it would participate in the Day of Action, a movement to protest the FCC’s plans to abolish net neutrality. Other sites confirmed are Amazon, Reddit, Mozilla, Kickstarter, and P0RNhub

That should be an interesting march.

be ready for something to gain your attention

I'm ready :)

The list of major players is pretty impressive: [battleforthenet.com...]

[engine]

I wonder if there's going to be a complete change from white to black.
Throttling, as was suggested in some sectors, will just annoy people as, often, they just don't care. I doubt Google will do any throttling, although they could with YouTube. Imagine all the people wondering what's going on with a slow loading YouTube video.

[Kufu]

Net neutrality is not as simple as allowing all traffic to be equal. There may be legitimate reasons for giving some traffic priority over others; one such example that I have heard mentioned (by John C. Dvorak) is the need for priority access for remote robotic surgical procedures which will have to have as little delay as possible.

This is a more complex question to answer, and none of the answers by the major players address actual quandaries, but rather each entity's self-interest.

[JS_Harris]

Kufu, look at how each of these companies has stepped away from their core business to effect influence on people, particularly politically, and you have reason to worry that it's about more than throttling. Much more.

[keyplyr]

What time does the march start? I've got my cooler loaded and wearing my Webmaster World T-shirt.

[TechNoob]

I've been waiting for it to hit too. I'm expecting a flurry of calls from clients.

[engine]

Here's what Google and Twitter have to say. Honestly, i haven't seen much, but then, i haven't chased it down.

[blog.google...]

[blog.twitter.com...]

[JS_Harris]

The twitter feed for today's event is full of "save kittens" and "this panda is crying, make him happy" tweets. Maybe it would be more constructive to actually explain to people specifically which part of the FCCs stance is a problem and why? People aren't as stupid, in general, as mainstream media believes judging by the approach.

[Harry]

@kufu @JS_HArris, the value argument is always been used to defend some "worthwhile" and "justifiable" data that "should" get priority over others. The problem is who makes this value judgment? In theory, it's always for the greater good but in actuality, it usually turns out to be how much money will this make. The robotic surgery example used is a red herring. The data and traffic produced even by hundreds of such surgery per day is easily handled with the packet switching technology the Internet rests on. The Internet was designed to be malleable and able to handle such cases in its very architecture. There is no need for priority packet switching. All the calls are political and business -based calls.

The architects are never asked about what they think the capability of the network is. It is usually bean crunchers and politicians who think that the Internet cannot handle specific cases. And then they pull out the tear-jerking cases of robotic surgery as if it miraculously had some authority over all over traffic. Robotic surgery only has "authority" over other traffic because someone made this value judgment call. It draws on the saving life argument, ignoring that local surgery is the preferred and most effective surgical practice by almost all accounts. Flying a surgeon to another place is probably more effective too...

And about the cats and pandas, who are you to judge what is appropriate use of people's time or not? That's not your call. Some kid could be having fun right now and learning socializing skills while creating memes of cats. Who do you think you are to know better what is people's best use of the Internet and to decide that cats and panda memes are less valuable or non-priority? These are value judgments and who makes these calls are usually not the people who are told they will benefit from this. It usually benefits an elite minority. No one else.

There is a lot of academic literature on net neutrality and the politics of the discourse used to sway opinions. Something to check into before regurgitating old arguments that have been seriously criticized by scholars for decades.

[tangor]

I slept through this, I think. Today looks like yesterday so I guess nothing earth-shattering occurred.