[HN Gopher] Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband ...
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Republicans in Congress try to kill FCC's broadband discrimination
rules
Author : rntn
Score : 31 points
Date : 2024-02-03 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| As they should - the rules are nonsense. From the article:
|
| A US law required the FCC to issue rules "preventing digital
| discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity,
| color, religion, or national origin," and gave the FCC some
| leeway in how to implement them. The resulting FCC rules let
| consumers file complaints about alleged discrimination and define
| the elements the FCC would examine when investigating whether an
| Internet service provider should be punished for discrimination.
|
| The FCC defined digital discrimination of access as "policies or
| practices, not justified by genuine issues of technical or
| economic feasibility, that differentially impact consumers'
| access to broadband Internet access service based on their income
| level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin or
| are intended to have such differential impact."
|
| I very much doubt ISPs are in the habit to turn down expansion in
| any area (and therefore more money/maintain their regional
| monopoly) because of the race of people living there. It seems
| like a way to force them to build out in non-white neighborhoods
| over other places even if it doesn't make economic sense.
|
| For one, that's racism against white people by another name. We
| see that a lot now but that doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it.
|
| For two, it's just an incredible waste of resources at the FCC.
| There are better ways to guarantee good internet for _everyone_
| instead.
| goodSteveramos wrote:
| "Anti-discrimination" laws are a modern patronage system.
| Instead of government jobs being given out based on political
| favors, private companies are forced into giving out the jobs,
| and if they refuse, (like Elon Musk) they get hit with spurious
| lawsuits until they comply.
| tremon wrote:
| _I very much doubt ISPs are in the habit to turn down expansion
| in any area..._
|
| That's like climate denialism. There is a documented 30-year
| history of ISPs not expanding their network while claiming
| subsidies for exactly that:
| https://newnetworks.com/bookofbrokenpromises.htm .
|
| _...even if it doesn't make economic sense_
|
| You're conveniently ignoring the "not justified by genuine
| issues of technical or economic feasibility" in your own
| goddamn quote.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > There is a documented 30-year history of ISPs not expanding
| their network while claiming subsidies for exactly
|
| You are conflating two things.
|
| I haven't read the book but does the data show they did it in
| a discriminatory manner, that is they didn't expand to
| minority areas even when it made business sense?
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| > There is a documented 30-year history of ISPs not expanding
| their network
|
| Yeah, which has nothing to do with race at all, and
| everything to do with population density. ISP's don't want to
| invest to expand to rural areas with few customers for
| obvious reasons, none of which have anything to do with
| discrimination of any kind.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| Kinda ironic that you call this "racism against white" by
| subtly saying that non economically profitable neighbourhoods
| are non white.
|
| Those proposed changes are not racist, they are simply and
| blindly anti-poor.
| leereeves wrote:
| GP isn't saying "non economically profitable neighbourhoods
| are non white."
|
| GP is saying that white non-economically-profitable
| neighbourhoods get no protection from that rule.
| spookybones wrote:
| Doesn't preventing discrimination based on income level
| cover that?
| leereeves wrote:
| Not always. For example, not when rural areas are
| excluded.
|
| Also not if, for example, an ISP decides to expand to a
| minority area instead of a white area because of DEI
| policies.
|
| In theory that should also be forbidden by the rule
| against racial discrimination, but in practice it's often
| not enforced that way.
| vacuity wrote:
| Would that people could be trusted to not discriminate in
| any way...maybe some subconscious personal bias, but then
| surely a group could even out the biases.
| klyrs wrote:
| Only they do, if you disallow discrimination on the basis
| of race. This is just more specious bullshit flogging the
| reverse racism trope.
| leereeves wrote:
| Which should we do? Disallow discrimination against white
| people on the basis of race? Or dismiss discussion of
| such discrimination as "specious bullshit flogging the
| reverse racism trope"?
|
| I ask because those are diametrically opposed positions,
| and your second sentence illustrates why the first
| sometimes doesn't happen.
| text0404 wrote:
| what are you talking about? this is about discriminating
| based on race, which includes the white race. your
| implicit assumption here is that anti-discrimination
| measures for minorities is discriminatory against white
| people. which is, uh, not a great take.
| leereeves wrote:
| Will you stop trying to claim people said things they
| didn't say? Making up a strawman you can easily attack is
| not a great take.
| text0404 wrote:
| "being against discrimination is anti-white, actually." telling
| on yourself there, bud.
| 303uru wrote:
| ISPs: "You can't tell us how to spend money ensuring equitable
| deployment of critical infrastructure!"
|
| Also ISPs: "Ooh! Hey! Can we have some of that money in the jar
| labeled 'federal money for ensuring equitable deployment of
| critical infrastructure' ?"
|
| How about this. Take it all back. Public utilities with equal
| access and reliability for all.
|
| I'm not even going to try and address the other top level comment
| crying "reverse racism" just WTAF.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Or just remove subsidies and enforce anti-trust laws to make
| sure there is real competition.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Go live in Texas and see how that has worked out with their
| power grid.
| Dig1t wrote:
| The power goes out just as often in California and Oregon,
| but news outlets cover the Texas outages for political
| reasons.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| California and Oregon grids integrate with the rest of
| the country. Texas' grid does not, for very political
| reasons.
|
| The two are qualitatively different, it has nothing to do
| with news coverage.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Do you think the Texas grid is not regulated?
|
| California has more outages than Texas.
|
| There is a difference between regulation and subsidies.
|
| Texas has much cheaper electricy than California:
|
| https://quickelectricity.com/texas-and-california-energy-
| sid...
|
| > Texas is the top producer of renewable electricity in the
| US, followed by California. Both states are rich in
| renewable sources and actively working to expand their
| generation capacity.
|
| Edit: Texas is not a free market! It has subsidies &
| regulations.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _Do you think the Texas grid is not regulated?_
|
| It is regulated to make long term reliability and
| capacity planning economically unviable.
|
| _California has more outages than Texas._
|
| Mainly due to wild fires which are beyond anyone's
| control. The outages in Texas are mostly the direct
| result of political ideology and incompetence.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > The outages in Texas are mostly the direct result of
| political ideology and incompetence
|
| Do you have any metric that validates what you say?
| Becuase, a reasonable person can calmly make the opposite
| argument.
|
| You can protect the grid against wildfires. OTOH,
| California's utilities also cause wildfires due to
| incompetence [1]. Texas had a record-low winter storm
| that caused a major outage.
|
| Also, California's electricity is more than twice as
| costly as that of Texas.
|
| https://quickelectricity.com/texas-and-california-energy-
| sid...
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/pge-to-
| pay-55-million-fo...
|
| > Pacific Gas & Electric has agreed to pay more than $55
| million to avoid criminal prosecution for two major
| wildfires started by aging Northern California power
| lines belonging to the nation's largest utility,
| prosecutors announced Monday
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _Texas had a record-low winter storm that caused a major
| outage._
|
| Followed by record high summer heat that caused outages
| too. Texas power grid operates on the verge of collapse
| --- because of bassackwards "free market" ideology. You
| don't have to take my word for it, several studies have
| said the same.
|
| _Also, California 's electricity is more than twice as
| costly as that of Texas._
|
| Texas uses tax payer money to subsidize their grid's
| inadequacy. They pay selected large enterprises to
| shutdown and stop consuming when their grid starts to
| fail.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitcoin-mining-
| cryptocurrency-r...
|
| This is the prevailing "free market" ideology in Texas
| --- instead of making it economically viable for
| providers to add more capacity.
| blowsand wrote:
| That's false. PG&E is the largest provider in the state
| and their outages are caused by poor quality controls,
| lack of line and pole maintenance, vegetation overgrowth,
| poor resilience to weather conditions, and carelessness,
| primarily. This -results- in fires at times, and they are
| in constant litigation. They have a dysfunctional-by-
| design relation with the cpuc.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Racism against white people exists, there's nothing "reverse"
| about it. You can discriminate and exclude based on any skin
| color.
|
| Competition is what we need, look at cities where Google fiber
| is available, internet for everyone is faster and cheaper than
| anywhere in the country and there are of course no data caps in
| those cities.
|
| It's why internet is way better in Kansas City than Silicon
| Valley. Kansas City has actual competition in their marketplace
| and common people provably benefit.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Systemic racism does not exist against whites in the US.
| worksonmine wrote:
| There are politicians agitating against white people in the
| US. Doesn't get more systemic than that. Let's not even get
| into the think tanks, or the media explaining how whites
| becoming a minority is a good thing.
|
| And all this is okay, in the name of diversity. It's crazy,
| racism is racism and this rhetoric is only antagonizing.
| Nothing good will come of it.
|
| We have similar issues in my country but not to the extent
| I see in the US.
| frob wrote:
| Could you please give an example of a major politician
| agitating against white people? To be specific, I do not
| mean someone pointing out that our system has been built
| to privlidge white people at the behest of white people,
| but a politician specifically agitating against white
| people.
|
| Because I can find endless pages of the head of the
| Republican party agitating against Mexicans (they're
| sending rapists), Latinos, Black people (shithole
| countries), Muslims (literally banned them after musing
| about how great it would be to kill them with bullets
| dipped in pig's blood), and Asians (Wuhan flu and China
| virus, over and over and over).
| worksonmine wrote:
| Biden for one:
|
| > An unrelenting stream of immigration, nonstop, nonstop.
| Folks like me who were Caucasian, of European descent for
| the first time in 2017 will be in an absolute minority in
| the United States of America, absolute minority. Fewer
| than 50 percent of the people in America from then and on
| will be White European stock. That's not a bad thing.
| That's a source of our strength.
|
| And that's a very innocent one, but terrifying
| nonetheless. Imagine the same wording but about how a
| reduction in blacks would be a strength, all hell would
| break lose.
| klyrs wrote:
| Failing to panic about the Great Replacement is racism
| now? Cuuuute.
| vacuity wrote:
| It doesn't seem to me that Biden is calling for culling
| of white people or whatever. The US has long been
| regarded as a melting pot of cultures, and Biden just
| seems quite enthusiastic that there'll be more of that.
| White people have, as a group, (not every single white
| person, of course) been overrepresented in some ways. It
| would be alarming if people talked about a reduction in
| the black population because they've historically been
| oppressed and disadvantaged, and they don't make a huge
| portion of the population.
| mbfg wrote:
| I missed the part in the constitution where it said
| America should be made up of mostly whites. If you want
| more whites in america, i guess you should have more
| children.
| bradley_taunt wrote:
| Isn't racism just racism? Racism is garbage regardless of
| "history" attached to it. No place for any of it.
|
| Maybe my view is over simplistic, but it seems the most
| obvious.
| ThisIsMyAltAcct wrote:
| Sure it does: college admissions and air traffic controller
| hiring are two recent examples.
|
| https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-
| scandal-...
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