Latest / Blocked and Reported / Episode 294: What Ever Happened To Net Neutrality? Part 2

Transcript

Episode 294: What Ever Happened To Net Neutrality? Part 2 · Blocked and Reported

0:12
SPEAKER_03: Jessie,
0:12
SPEAKER_03: so by the time people listen to this episode,
0:15
we're going to know who won the first ever blocked and reported
0:18
Super Bowl.
0:20
SPEAKER_03: Who are you for?
0:21
Someone pointed this out to me that I had not even thought of
0:23
this because the idea
0:25
of you watching a football game is like the idea of you
0:29
treating me kindly.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't go with Katie.
0:32
SPEAKER_03: I am way more likely to watch a football game than to be nice to you.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's Seattle, New England.
0:37
SPEAKER_01: I am actually an ardent New England Patriots fan.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: I have been for decades.
0:40
SPEAKER_01: You are?
0:41
SPEAKER_01: Not my fault.
0:41
SPEAKER_03: Really?
0:42
SPEAKER_01: You knew this.
0:43
SPEAKER_03: I have no idea.
0:45
You've never watched a Seahawks game and you don't care about
0:46
the Seahawks.
0:47
SPEAKER_03: Not in person.
0:48
SPEAKER_03: I have watched many a football game,
0:50
or at least in part because I am related to men and boys and
0:56
also a few women who
0:57
SPEAKER_03: watch football.
0:59
SPEAKER_03: So I did watch the last game.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: NFC Championship.
1:02
SPEAKER_03: Won the playoffs.
1:04
SPEAKER_03: I did watch the one with the blue and yellow team.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: The Rams.
1:09
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
1:09
SPEAKER_03: And I was very disappointed when the Seahawks won because,
1:13
SPEAKER_03: one,
1:13
SPEAKER_03: I hate their colors,
1:15
SPEAKER_03: and two,
1:16
SPEAKER_03: I hate Seattle.
1:17
SPEAKER_03: So I'm for the Pats.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: Really?
1:18
SPEAKER_01: Just like that?
1:19
SPEAKER_03: Well,
1:20
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
1:20
SPEAKER_03: it's like I'm really torn on this because it's like on the one hand,
1:23
SPEAKER_03: I want you to be unhappy,
1:24
SPEAKER_03: but on the other hand,
1:24
SPEAKER_03: I want all of Seattle to be unhappy.
1:26
SPEAKER_03: So for me, it's a lose-lose either way.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: But Seattle is going to be unhappy no matter what happens.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: It's Seattle.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: Although for that matter, so is New England.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: That's a good point.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: Not two particularly happy regions.
1:37
SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
1:37
SPEAKER_01: That's why I'm a Chiefs fan.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: Well,
1:40
SPEAKER_01: again,
1:41
SPEAKER_01: we don't really know what to say here because the outcome,
1:43
SPEAKER_01: by the time you hear our voice,
1:46
SPEAKER_01: New England will have prevailed.
1:47
Drake may have thrown for 500 yards,
1:48
but I guess good luck to both teams or something.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, whatever.
1:52
Before we get into part two,
1:55
that's the part we're on of the net neutrality thing.
1:57
SPEAKER_03: That's right.
1:57
SPEAKER_03: Two of two.
1:58
SPEAKER_03: This is the final one.
1:59
SPEAKER_03: People are finally going to find out what happened with net neutrality.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: Don't Google it.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: No spoilers.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: Before we get to that,
2:07
SPEAKER_01: I have a very rare and weird thing,
2:09
SPEAKER_01: which is I was involved in a missed connection.
2:12
SPEAKER_03: No.
2:12
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
2:13
SPEAKER_03: Can you believe that me?
2:14
SPEAKER_03: Let me guess.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: Little old me?
2:16
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: You set the scene, what you think it is.
2:18
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
2:18
SPEAKER_03: You were at a pizza shop.
2:20
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
2:21
Grease dripping down your face,
2:23
beard covered in sauce,
2:25
and somebody saw you.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: Sauce if we're lucky.
2:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
2:27
SPEAKER_03: And somebody saw you and was like, why is that disabled man?
2:31
SPEAKER_03: Dang.
2:33
SPEAKER_03: I'm not saying it.
2:34
SPEAKER_03: Why is that disabled man allowed into this piece?
2:37
SPEAKER_03: Somebody find his mother.
2:38
SPEAKER_03: Somebody find his helper.
2:40
SPEAKER_03: Was that it?
2:40
SPEAKER_01: Wait, where's the misconnection?
2:42
It was the person trying to...
2:43
It was more like an Amber Alert than a misconnection.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm not sure you know what a misconnection is.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay, this was actually at the Bar Pod Gathering in LA on January 31st.
2:55
SPEAKER_03: Oh, wait, wait, wait.
2:56
SPEAKER_03: Before you do this, it's more important.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:58
SPEAKER_01: How was the sandwich?
2:59
SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: It's so good.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: It was so good.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: I tried to get it again.
3:03
SPEAKER_01: The timing didn't work out.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: But the first thing I did when I got to L.A.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: is I went to Dune.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: I was staying in Atwater Village.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: I went to Dune.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: And listeners already know this because,
3:11
SPEAKER_01: as I've said before,
3:12
SPEAKER_01: this was the most excited I've ever been about anything –
3:15
SPEAKER_01: Pickled beet sandwich from Dune with the Bulgarian,
3:18
SPEAKER_01: Katie,
3:19
SPEAKER_01: don't fuck this up,
3:20
SPEAKER_01: the Bulgarian sheep's milk feta and whatever else.
3:24
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
3:24
SPEAKER_03: Thank God it was Bulgarian.
3:26
SPEAKER_03: I thought maybe it was Greek.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: It was like Macedonia, but just slap it out of their hand.
3:29
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
3:30
SPEAKER_03: Back to you.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: So the event was great.
3:32
We were at a place called the Hermosillo in Highland Park on
3:36
Saturday,
3:37
January 31st.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: And so I go – I greet everyone in the back.
3:40
I go to the bar to get a drink and this woman comes up to me
3:44
and she sort of leans
3:45
SPEAKER_01: into me in this way I'm not used to.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: I don't get like hit on aggressively in public usually.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: And she points to a projector that's sitting there.
3:53
It's like an overhead projector you'd use in a school setting
3:56
that the bar has as
3:56
SPEAKER_01: part of its decor.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: And she asked me about it.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sort of like taking a back.
4:00
SPEAKER_03: Because she saw you and she was like, you are the tech guy.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: She was the bartender.
4:06
SPEAKER_01: She's like, can you fix this?
4:08
And she like sort of leans into me and she's like awkward,
4:12
but she's like tall and pretty.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like a little bit taken aback.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: And I assume,
4:17
because why else would anybody come up and talk to me that
4:19
she's with the bar pod
4:20
SPEAKER_01: group?
4:21
SPEAKER_01: Right.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: And I don't fully engage because I'm trying to order my drink.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to juggle stuff.
4:25
I'm like,
4:25
when I go to the back of my drink,
4:27
I'll talk to this woman,
4:28
this tall woman.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: I never see her again.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: She just disappears.
4:32
SPEAKER_03: So not with a crew.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: Not with a crew.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: And that's the whole story.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: So I need someone to find the woman.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: Oh, wait.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: That's it?
4:39
SPEAKER_01: Hold on.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: Hold on.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: This is not what I thought at all.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: Saturday.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: I'm only doing this.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: First of all,
4:46
SPEAKER_01: also,
4:46
this could just be a drunk and or spectrum-y person with no
4:49
sense of personal
4:50
SPEAKER_01: boundaries.
4:50
SPEAKER_03: Likely.
4:51
But if you know a tall woman who talked to me on January 31st
4:58
at the Hermosillo in
4:59
SPEAKER_01: Highland Park,
5:00
SPEAKER_01: send her my way.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: I have no real further description of her because I can't picture faces.
5:04
SPEAKER_03: Okay,
5:05
SPEAKER_03: so you said,
5:06
SPEAKER_03: to set this up,
5:07
SPEAKER_03: you said you were a part of a misconnection,
5:09
SPEAKER_03: which made me think that someone left a misconnection for you somewhere.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: No, oh, no, no.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: This woman has no idea.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: There is no way this woman has any memory of this event either.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:21
SPEAKER_03: Well, okay.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: It was just, I don't know, man.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: You can understand how I assume she was with the bar pod group.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: Oh, if she was talking to you.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: The bar pod group, however, was lovely.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: And we had some very good conversations about various things.
5:31
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
5:31
SPEAKER_03: So if anyone knows any tall women in LA.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: Tall women.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: If you know any tall woman in LA, I think she had dirty blonde hair.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: This will narrow it down.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: Tall LA, dirty blonde hair, attractive.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: Possibly blind.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: That's probably like only five or 10 women.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: Probably blind or otherwise disabled.
5:51
SPEAKER_03: I didn't see a wheelchair, but... It was a tall one.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
5:54
SPEAKER_03: Well, good luck, Jesse.
5:56
SPEAKER_03: Good luck.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: On to the arguably more important subject of net neutrality, part two.
6:01
SPEAKER_03: So yes, this is part two of our series on net neutrality.
6:04
SPEAKER_03: And yes,
6:05
SPEAKER_03: we know there is a lot else going on in the world,
6:08
but I think it's more important to explain the nuances of this
6:11
decade-old policy
6:13
SPEAKER_03: story than to talk about,
6:14
SPEAKER_03: like,
6:14
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, but...
6:16
SPEAKER_01: You say there's other stuff going on in the world.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: My internet tubes got clogged up by big tech,
6:20
SPEAKER_01: so I can't even download video of it because there's no net neutrality.
6:23
SPEAKER_03: Yes, I'm sure that happened, yes.
6:24
This is why the misconnection isn't going to work for you is
6:27
because there's no net neutrality.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: Her tubes are clogged.
6:31
So people might be expecting us to talk about Jeff Epstein and
6:34
his emails or the
6:36
SPEAKER_03: latest developments.
6:38
in the race to replace ourselves with AI bots or whatever's
6:40
happening with Will Stancil.
6:42
SPEAKER_03: Not here.
6:43
If you do want to hear us talk about those things,
6:44
you can check out our latest Prima episode.
6:45
SPEAKER_03: But today we are going back to net neutrality.
6:48
SPEAKER_03: Before we get to the new stuff, I do have a few corrections.
6:50
SPEAKER_03: Fewer than I thought.
6:51
I thought there would be the whole show is going to be
6:53
corrections on this one just
6:54
SPEAKER_03: because it's so complex.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: I think the Vegas over under on number of corrections,
6:59
SPEAKER_01: no offense,
7:00
SPEAKER_01: but you doing a tech heavy story was like nine and a half.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: Is it under nine and a half?
7:04
SPEAKER_03: It's three.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: Damn it.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: I had the over.
7:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
7:06
SPEAKER_03: I think it's pretty good.
7:07
SPEAKER_03: And they're small.
7:08
SPEAKER_03: So yeah,
7:09
I figured I thought I was going to get flooded with emails
7:11
about how I like flubbed
7:12
SPEAKER_03: the explanation of peering,
7:14
SPEAKER_03: whatever that is.
7:15
The only real corrections I got were A,
7:18
one,
7:19
Tim was at Columbia,
7:20
not Harvard.
7:21
SPEAKER_03: AT&T was a de facto monopoly by 1913.
7:23
SPEAKER_03: I think I said the 1930s.
7:26
SPEAKER_03: And John Oliver is apparently not short.
7:30
SPEAKER_03: Huge shock there.
7:32
SPEAKER_03: Jeff Maurer says that he's six feet,
7:34
which I do have a hard time believing because he is British and
7:37
John Oliver.
7:38
SPEAKER_03: But it does explain a bit more about how he got the pretty wife.
7:42
One of the first things one of the listeners said to me in the
7:45
backyard at the
7:46
SPEAKER_01: Hermosillo was,
7:48
SPEAKER_01: you're skinnier than I thought you would be.
7:50
SPEAKER_03: You do sound like a short, fat man.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: No, I sound like a short, fat woman.
7:53
Other people have said they were surprised I was a man when
7:56
they met me with
7:57
SPEAKER_01: testosterone issues.
7:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:58
SPEAKER_03: So apologies to Tim Wu, AT&T, and John Oliver.
8:03
SPEAKER_03: We stand corrected.
8:04
There was some good discussion about the episode on our Substack
8:07
page.
8:07
SPEAKER_03: It turns out that a number of our listeners know a lot about this issue,
8:11
and some of them even worked on policy or in big cable when
8:16
this was happening.
8:17
SPEAKER_03: So there were some interesting insights there.
8:19
SPEAKER_03: One guy in particular, he says he worked in telecom.
8:22
SPEAKER_03: I'm just going to take his word for it.
8:24
SPEAKER_03: He said that net neutrality sounds good in theory,
8:27
SPEAKER_03: but if ISPs weren't able to manage and prioritize some traffic,
8:31
SPEAKER_03: basically throttle some people and not other,
8:33
then Netflix would start glitching out on Friday nights when
8:36
millions of teenagers
8:37
SPEAKER_03: are busy checking out Pornhub's latest offerings.
8:40
So he was basically saying that customers would actually hate
8:43
true net neutrality if
8:44
SPEAKER_03: if ISPs weren't allowed to manage traffic at all.
8:46
SPEAKER_03: So good discussion on the Substack page.
8:48
SPEAKER_03: This is always a good place for people who want to discuss the episodes.
8:51
SPEAKER_03: That's a perk for our primos, by the way.
8:54
And speaking of primos,
8:55
reminder to everyone,
8:57
personals are due by February 10th.
9:00
You can look at our Substack page to get the link to submit your
9:02
personal.
9:03
And we also have a special treat this year for our bonus
9:06
Valentine's episode.
9:07
SPEAKER_03: It's a surprise.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: It's a good surprise.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: I can vouch for that.
9:10
SPEAKER_03: Yes, this is going to be fun.
9:12
SPEAKER_03: All right, Jesse, let's get to part two.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: Wait,
9:14
SPEAKER_01: one thing though,
9:14
SPEAKER_01: someone at the meetup said that I had said,
9:18
SPEAKER_01: where did we put the thing to submit your personals?
9:22
It's on the subs,
9:23
it's blocked and reported.org and it's pinned to the page.
9:25
SPEAKER_03: And then there's a Google form within that.
9:28
SPEAKER_01: Plus personals are back, baby.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: That's where they want to click.
9:31
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: Submit your personal idea.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay, cool.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's get to it.
9:34
SPEAKER_03: It's been a week.
9:36
SPEAKER_03: I would like you to sum up part one.
9:38
SPEAKER_03: Do not use notes.
9:39
SPEAKER_01: OK,
9:39
SPEAKER_01: so this concerned,
9:42
SPEAKER_01: you know,
9:42
just the question of whether the big players would be able to
9:45
control the Internet
9:46
and offer greater speeds than the upstarts and the ma and pop
9:50
Internet content
9:52
SPEAKER_01: providers.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: So in the 90s,
9:53
legislators had decided to not treat Internet service providers
9:59
as common carriers.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: Common carriers are that's what phone companies are, right?
10:03
SPEAKER_03: Yep, it's a utility.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: It's a utility.
10:05
SPEAKER_03: And these are heavily regulated.
10:07
SPEAKER_03: So in the 90s,
10:08
SPEAKER_03: Bill Clinton in Congress was like,
10:09
SPEAKER_03: light touch regulation,
10:11
SPEAKER_03: the internet will flourish without the heavy hand of the government.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: And in the early 2000s,
10:16
SPEAKER_01: Tim Wu,
10:17
SPEAKER_01: this internet scholar who wrote a very good book about attention,
10:21
wrote – he coined the term net neutrality and he argued that
10:26
ISP shouldn't be
10:26
SPEAKER_01: allowed to discriminate,
10:28
SPEAKER_01: that we should have a fully open internet.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: And the FCC agreed to like –
10:35
have voluntarily have isps voluntarily comply with that so net
10:40
neutrality was sort
10:41
of the norm but not via regulation right yeah yeah basically
10:46
okay and then a few
10:46
years later comcast throttles bit torrent which was this
10:51
service used to download
10:52
like movies and games totally i'm sure none of those were
10:55
instances of piracy or
10:57
copyright infringement if memory serves that was what woo had
11:00
warned against to
11:01
Because,
11:02
you know,
11:03
Comcast is throttling one particular type of internet traffic.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: That was exactly what Wu had warned against,
11:07
because Comcast is discriminating and throttling one particular
11:10
type of internet
11:12
SPEAKER_01: content.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: I think that's what it's called.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: In the early 2010s,
11:15
we had the Arab Spring activists realized they could harness
11:20
the internet to change
11:21
SPEAKER_01: public policy.
11:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
11:23
SPEAKER_03: So in addition to the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street,
11:26
SPEAKER_03: there were fights against SOPA and PIPA,
11:29
which were these twin pieces of legislation that were pushed by
11:33
the recording
11:33
SPEAKER_03: industry,
11:34
SPEAKER_03: the motion picture industry,
11:35
SPEAKER_03: basically enhanced copyright laws.
11:38
And internet activists very successfully made these sort of the
11:41
cause du jour.
11:43
SPEAKER_03: And these tech companies...
11:45
SPEAKER_03: Companies like Wikipedia,
11:46
SPEAKER_03: Reddit,
11:47
they actually blacked out for a day in 2012 to encourage their
11:51
users to contact
11:53
SPEAKER_03: their congresspeople and make their voices heard.
11:55
So they really effectively were sort of harnessing the power of
11:59
the internet to get
12:00
SPEAKER_03: people motivated.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: And John Oliver played a role in this as well, right?
12:03
SPEAKER_03: Yes, John Oliver played a very big role in this.
12:06
SPEAKER_03: He did an episode in 2014 about net neutrality.
12:10
SPEAKER_03: Unfortunately, got a few things wrong.
12:12
SPEAKER_03: Just a few little things.
12:13
SPEAKER_03: As we explained last week,
12:14
the question at the FCC at the time was not if the FCC should
12:19
end net neutrality.
12:20
SPEAKER_03: It was whether they should codify it.
12:21
SPEAKER_03: John Oliver got that wrong.
12:23
SPEAKER_03: That little mistake aside, his segment went extremely viral.
12:27
SPEAKER_03: And this was in part thanks to the media.
12:29
SPEAKER_03: So this was the very beginning of last week tonight.
12:31
SPEAKER_03: This was their first really big hit.
12:34
SPEAKER_03: But for many years after this,
12:36
SPEAKER_03: Every time John Oliver would do a show on Monday morning,
12:39
content slop writers would watch last week tonight clips on
12:43
YouTube because they
12:44
SPEAKER_03: couldn't afford HBO or the entire show.
12:46
They would put the whole show on YouTube and then write short
12:49
blog posts about how
12:51
John Oliver destroyed the FCC or destroyed transphobe or
12:54
destroyed Donald Trump and
12:56
SPEAKER_03: shit like that.
12:57
SPEAKER_03: And I wrote many of those posts myself.
12:59
SPEAKER_03: Did you were you ever in those particular content minds?
13:01
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm sure at some point I wrote something along those lines.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:04
SPEAKER_03: It was very cheap and easy content and it played to the...
13:06
SPEAKER_03: Well,
13:06
SPEAKER_01: just because like they're idiots.
13:08
SPEAKER_01: Like they're out there.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: You mean the writers?
13:09
SPEAKER_01: There's other people in the country.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: No.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: I was.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: It's true.
13:12
America is full of dumb idiots and we needed John Oliver to
13:16
explain how they were
13:17
SPEAKER_01: idiots and we needed to help spread the word that they were so dumb.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: The people.
13:20
SPEAKER_03: Do you think it's the accent?
13:22
Do you think it would have worked if he had just like a New
13:25
Jersey accent?
13:26
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
13:27
SPEAKER_03: So that content,
13:28
SPEAKER_03: you know,
13:28
it played to the audience's preferences and posts like that
13:32
would sometimes go
13:33
SPEAKER_03: viral or at least get lots of likes on Facebook.
13:36
And the fact that Last Week Tonight put entire segments on
13:39
YouTube was really smart
13:40
SPEAKER_03: because,
13:41
SPEAKER_03: yes,
13:41
SPEAKER_03: people got their content for free,
13:43
SPEAKER_03: but it spread like wildfire.
13:45
SPEAKER_03: So within two days of that net neutrality episode airing in 2014,
13:48
the segment had 800,000 views on YouTube and the FCC was
13:52
flooded with comments from
13:53
SPEAKER_03: outraged viewers and
13:55
SPEAKER_03: The FCC's online commenting system got nearly 45,000 comments.
13:59
SPEAKER_03: It actually crashed.
14:01
SPEAKER_03: That led to even more headlines and more comments.
14:03
SPEAKER_03: But the funny thing is,
14:03
SPEAKER_03: so friend of the pod,
14:04
SPEAKER_03: Jeff Maurer,
14:05
SPEAKER_03: he was actually,
14:06
SPEAKER_03: he was a writer last week tonight.
14:07
SPEAKER_03: He's been on this show before.
14:08
SPEAKER_03: He was there at the time.
14:10
And he told me that they later found out that the FCC website
14:13
was just really
14:14
SPEAKER_03: shitty and it crashed all the time.
14:16
SPEAKER_03: Right.
14:16
SPEAKER_03: So it might not have had anything to do with these comments.
14:19
SPEAKER_03: But still, even more attention.
14:21
SPEAKER_03: And everyone hated Big Cable for good reason.
14:23
SPEAKER_03: They did suck.
14:24
SPEAKER_03: They do suck.
14:25
SPEAKER_03: And everyone wanted open internet.
14:26
SPEAKER_03: So this was an obvious cause to get behind.
14:29
SPEAKER_03: And all you had to do was email the FCC, send them a form letter.
14:31
So it's much easier than coming up with a clever slogan for
14:34
your protest sign.
14:35
And net neutrality is specifically difficult to make a clever
14:38
protest sign.
14:39
SPEAKER_03: I mean, what the fuck rhymes with it?
14:41
And did Jeff realize like that there were some perhaps factual
14:45
issues with the way
14:46
SPEAKER_01: they covered net neutrality?
14:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
14:48
SPEAKER_03: So I asked him that.
14:49
SPEAKER_03: And he said at the time, this is what he said in an email.
14:52
SPEAKER_03: Oh, God, no.
14:52
SPEAKER_03: People really kissed our asses at the time.
14:55
SPEAKER_03: Said we were doing essential and important work in the years since,
14:58
especially because the net neutrality switch has been flipped
15:01
on and off and back
15:01
SPEAKER_03: on again.
15:02
SPEAKER_03: And it didn't seem to make much difference.
15:04
SPEAKER_03: It's clear that we didn't portray things accurately.
15:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
15:07
SPEAKER_03: The thing is,
15:08
very few reporters or critics were knowledgeable about this
15:12
issue to see what were
15:14
SPEAKER_03: the problems with Oliver's segment.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: Wait,
15:17
so you're saying this was a situation where John Oliver did a
15:21
long segment on a
15:22
SPEAKER_01: complex issue and he got stuff wrong,
15:25
but there weren't a lot of journalists who were in a position
15:27
to be able to tell
15:27
SPEAKER_01: how he got them wrong?
15:28
SPEAKER_03: That's what I'm saying, Jesse.
15:29
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: Huh.
15:30
It seems like that probably could have only happened like once,
15:32
not multiple.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
15:34
SPEAKER_03: So there was one journalist who did understand the issue.
15:37
SPEAKER_03: His name is John Healy.
15:38
SPEAKER_03: He was at the LA Times.
15:40
He wrote a piece called John Oliver finds humor and net
15:42
neutrality,
15:43
but loses the facts.
15:44
SPEAKER_03: Let me read you a bit of that.
15:45
SPEAKER_03: There was a grain of truth to his narrative,
15:48
SPEAKER_03: but Oliver misled his audience badly on a couple of key points.
15:51
SPEAKER_03: And then he explained the actual FCC proposal at hand,
15:54
SPEAKER_03: you know,
15:54
SPEAKER_03: reclassifying broadband as a common carrier and
15:58
SPEAKER_03: And Healy writes, details, details, details.
16:01
What you think about net neutrality and the FCC's proposed rule
16:04
depends in large
16:04
SPEAKER_03: measure on how hard you want to stick it to the cable companies.
16:07
SPEAKER_03: And hey, who doesn't despise them and their abysmal customer service?
16:10
One sure way to get people interested in a mind-numbingly
16:13
complex public policy
16:15
SPEAKER_03: issue is to characterize it as a favor to the evil cable guys.
16:18
SPEAKER_03: So that's how Oliver played it.
16:20
SPEAKER_03: Of course, this article did not go viral.
16:23
It's lucky he wrote that before Blue Sky existed because he
16:25
would be probably dead now.
16:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
16:27
SPEAKER_03: John Oliver destroys John Healy.
16:30
SPEAKER_03: So after the Oliver episode aired,
16:33
internet advocacy groups like Fight for the Future and Free
16:35
Press seized the
16:36
SPEAKER_03: moment.
16:37
SPEAKER_03: They organized an internet slowdown day.
16:39
SPEAKER_03: It was to be held in September 2014.
16:41
SPEAKER_03: They had a coalition named Battle for the Net.
16:45
SPEAKER_03: And this was basically a redo of the SOPA PIPA blackout of 2012.
16:48
SPEAKER_03: We talked about that in the last episode.
16:50
This was when parts of the internet went dark in protest
16:53
against those two bills.
16:54
SPEAKER_03: So for internet slowdown day,
16:56
SPEAKER_03: participating sites displayed the loading symbol,
16:59
SPEAKER_03: so that spinning wheel of death,
17:00
SPEAKER_03: they put that on their homepage,
17:02
SPEAKER_03: and they asked users to send comments to the FCC,
17:05
SPEAKER_03: to Congress,
17:06
SPEAKER_03: to the White House.
17:07
SPEAKER_03: And throughout the summer and into the fall of 2014, that coalition grew.
17:11
SPEAKER_03: So Netflix, Vimeo, Imgur, Tumblr, Dig, Reddit, they all took the lead.
17:16
SPEAKER_03: Colleges and libraries got involved in the fight,
17:18
which is sort of funny because many colleges and libraries
17:22
explicitly block
17:23
SPEAKER_03: torrents and specific websites on their networks,
17:26
SPEAKER_03: so they were fighting for an open internet for the but not for me.
17:30
But all this attention generated even more public comments
17:33
directed to the FCC,
17:34
SPEAKER_03: and by the time the public comment period ended,
17:37
SPEAKER_03: they had received nearly 3.7 million comments from the public,
17:41
SPEAKER_03: more than they ever had on any other issue.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: And I'm guessing these were mostly pro net neutrality.
17:46
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
17:46
So the Sunlight Foundation conducted an analysis of the first
17:49
batch of 800,000 comments.
17:52
SPEAKER_03: Those were released by the FCC.
17:53
And they found that 99% of those comments were in favor of net
17:56
neutrality.
17:57
They also found that at least 60% of those 800,000 comments
18:01
were from form letters
18:02
SPEAKER_03: written by organized campaigns.
18:04
SPEAKER_03: So that report was released in September 2014.
18:07
And then three months later,
18:08
the Sunlight Foundation released another report.
18:11
SPEAKER_03: And this one looked at the next batch of comments.
18:13
SPEAKER_03: This was around 1.6 million.
18:15
SPEAKER_03: And they found something very surprising.
18:16
SPEAKER_03: So first batch, 99% in favor of net neutrality.
18:20
SPEAKER_03: And the second batch, 40% were in favor of net neutrality.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: What changed in the interim?
18:26
SPEAKER_03: Conservatives got involved.
18:28
SPEAKER_03: So there was a group called- Well, that's not legitimate.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: They're not allowed to organize.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: If conservative groups organize to get people to write,
18:36
SPEAKER_01: send in form letters,
18:37
SPEAKER_01: that's not legitimate.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: That's a conspiracy.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
18:39
SPEAKER_03: So there was a group called American Commitment.
18:41
Okay,
18:42
that does sound either made up or like the name of a romantic
18:45
dramedy.
18:46
SPEAKER_03: So they started their own campaign against net neutrality.
18:49
SPEAKER_03: Here's how the Sunlight Foundation put it.
18:50
SPEAKER_03: Quote,
18:51
A letter-writing campaign that appears to have been organized
18:54
by a shadowy
18:55
organization with ties to the Koch brothers inundated the
18:58
Federal Communications
18:59
SPEAKER_03: Commission with missives opposed to net neutrality.
19:02
SPEAKER_03: An analysis of the Sunlight Foundation reveals.
19:04
SPEAKER_03: This is so funny to me because the Sunlight Foundation,
19:06
SPEAKER_03: they did not apparently have any issues with letter-writing campaigns,
19:10
SPEAKER_03: organized letter-writing campaigns,
19:12
SPEAKER_03: when they were coming from the pro-net neutrality side.
19:15
SPEAKER_03: But now it was an issue.
19:16
SPEAKER_01: Well, now it's shadowy.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess they would say that, like... It's shadowy.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: If people get – yeah,
19:22
I don't – I mean this is – this tendency I think has gotten
19:27
worse to like pretend –
19:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to steelman it.
19:31
If John Oliver like in the guise of a consumer activist gets
19:34
people riled up about
19:35
SPEAKER_01: that,
19:35
SPEAKER_01: that is a little bit different from like AstroTurf stuff from –
19:39
SPEAKER_01: But like there were liberal advocacy groups involved in this, too.
19:43
SPEAKER_01: So it's not clear exactly what the difference is.
19:44
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
19:45
a huge percentage of these letters were form letters organized
19:49
by net neutrality
19:51
SPEAKER_03: campaigns.
19:52
SPEAKER_03: That was true in the first batch.
19:53
SPEAKER_03: That was true in the second batch.
19:56
SPEAKER_03: And this ties to the Koch brothers.
19:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
20:00
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
20:00
SPEAKER_03: I don't know that you see this as much anymore,
20:02
SPEAKER_03: maybe because one of the Koch brothers is dead.
20:04
SPEAKER_03: But in this period, this was very common in progressive media.
20:08
I am sure I am just as guilty as using Koch brothers as a slur
20:13
as any other outlet
20:15
SPEAKER_03: when I worked at places like Grist.
20:17
SPEAKER_03: The Koch brothers were a symbol of evil.
20:19
SPEAKER_03: It was like the Soros Foundation is a symbol of evil on the right.
20:24
SPEAKER_03: If you are Koch brothers affiliated, you must be bad.
20:26
SPEAKER_03: And I always find that amusing now because,
20:29
SPEAKER_03: yes,
20:29
SPEAKER_03: the Koch brothers or brother now,
20:31
SPEAKER_03: they fund a lot of conservative and libertarian groups.
20:33
SPEAKER_03: They are unabashedly capitalist,
20:35
SPEAKER_03: but they also fund Lincoln Center,
20:37
SPEAKER_03: the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
20:38
SPEAKER_03: David Koch gave millions of dollars to PBS,
20:41
SPEAKER_03: but you don't really hear PBS referred to as Koch funded.
20:45
SPEAKER_03: It's only invoked if you want to discredit the cause itself.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
20:48
SPEAKER_01: and I think most notably,
20:49
I think they do a lot of sort of anti-drug war stuff that a lot
20:53
of leftists would
20:54
SPEAKER_01: be in favor of.
20:55
SPEAKER_03: Anyway,
20:56
so American Commitment was one of a handful of groups that
20:59
didn't want ISPs
21:01
SPEAKER_03: reclassified.
21:02
SPEAKER_03: Now, obviously, the ISPs themselves were opposed to reclassification.
21:06
SPEAKER_03: The National Cable and Telecommunications Association,
21:09
SPEAKER_03: they were donors to American Commitment,
21:11
SPEAKER_03: and their members included companies like Comcast,
21:14
SPEAKER_03: Charter,
21:14
SPEAKER_03: Cox,
21:15
SPEAKER_03: other internet providers.
21:16
SPEAKER_03: Cox, by the way, this is the family of Fergie Chambers.
21:18
SPEAKER_03: That's where he gets his allowance.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
21:20
SPEAKER_03: So this is to be expected, right?
21:22
SPEAKER_03: Corporate interests.
21:23
SPEAKER_03: But the coalition was actually broader than you might imagine.
21:26
SPEAKER_03: So on the last episode, I mentioned Danny Kimball.
21:29
He wrote a book called Net Neutrality in the Battle for the
21:31
Open Internet.
21:32
Then he wrote that other groups that opposed the net neutrality
21:34
effort included the
21:35
SPEAKER_03: NAACP,
21:36
SPEAKER_03: the National Urban League,
21:38
SPEAKER_03: League of United Latin American Citizens,
21:40
SPEAKER_03: the Rainbow Push Coalition,
21:42
and most of the Congressional Black Caucus and the
21:44
Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
21:46
SPEAKER_03: They all lobbied against broadband being reclassified.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: Why were these groups opposed to such regulation?
21:54
SPEAKER_03: I want you to guess, Jesse.
21:56
SPEAKER_01: Jesse Jackson wanted to start... His own cable company?
22:03
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so it was money.
22:05
SPEAKER_03: Kimball writes that some of these groups received,
22:07
SPEAKER_03: quote,
22:07
millions of dollars from broadband providers during the net
22:10
neutrality fight in the
22:11
SPEAKER_03: form of donations,
22:12
SPEAKER_03: contributions,
22:13
SPEAKER_03: sponsorships,
22:14
SPEAKER_03: and funding for community initiatives.
22:16
SPEAKER_03: Civil rights groups were really split on this.
22:18
SPEAKER_03: So the more grassroots group tended to be pro-net neutrality.
22:21
They viewed internet service providers as gatekeepers without
22:25
net neutrality.
22:26
They might block or throttle content from activist
22:28
organizations,
22:29
independent media,
22:30
et cetera.
22:31
SPEAKER_03: The older,
22:32
more established groups tended to be against it because they
22:35
argued that regulation
22:36
SPEAKER_03: could discourage broadband investment in underserved communities.
22:40
SPEAKER_03: Now, was this a genuine concern or a pretext?
22:42
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
22:43
SPEAKER_03: But telecom companies were giving these groups a lot of money.
22:46
Did the flood of comments the FCC got,
22:49
did that affect their decision making at all?
22:52
SPEAKER_03: So not officially.
22:53
SPEAKER_03: Federal agencies aren't required to take public comment into account.
22:57
SPEAKER_03: And remember,
22:58
SPEAKER_03: Comments were split thanks to this conservative letter writing campaign.
23:01
But in November 2014,
23:03
someone else did weigh in,
23:05
then President Barack Obama.
23:07
SPEAKER_03: And this was very unexpected.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: Why was it unexpected?
23:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I would imagine he was prone to neutrality.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: So why is it unexpected for him to weigh in?
23:13
So it's not illegal for presidents to weigh in on FCC
23:17
proposals,
23:18
but it's very rare.
23:20
So the commissioners are appointed by the president,
23:23
but the FCC is an independent agency.
23:26
And unlike other agencies,
23:28
commissioners do not serve at the pleasure of the president.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: OK.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: I can explain the rest of this.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: So you know how back in the day Obama wearing a tan suit was a scandal?
23:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: Because it was unbecoming of the office?
23:39
So you're pointing back to a much quainer time when people took
23:42
things like the
23:44
SPEAKER_01: independence of the FCC seriously.
23:45
So people – versus the era of Brandon Carr where the FCC is a
23:49
branch of Mar-a-Lago basically.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: So at the time,
23:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure a lot of conservatives were outraged that President,
23:58
SPEAKER_01: conservatives who now support Trump,
23:59
SPEAKER_01: were outraged that Obama overstepped boundaries by weighing in on this.
24:04
SPEAKER_03: I mean, not even just conservatives.
24:06
SPEAKER_03: Democrats were also very surprised by this because it was so rare.
24:10
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people catching the vapors on faking couches.
24:13
And so the Wall Street Journal did some reporting on this later
24:16
and explained what happened.
24:17
SPEAKER_03: And basically,
24:18
SPEAKER_03: the story is that Obama aides were meeting with companies like Etsy,
24:21
SPEAKER_03: Kickstarter,
24:21
SPEAKER_03: Tumblr.
24:22
SPEAKER_03: So companies that at one time were startups,
24:25
and they were able to convince the president himself to get
24:27
behind the net
24:28
SPEAKER_03: neutrality effort.
24:29
SPEAKER_03: So around that time, Obama released this video.
24:32
SPEAKER_02: Hi, everybody.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: Ever since the Internet was created,
24:36
SPEAKER_02: it's been organized around basic principles of openness,
24:39
SPEAKER_02: fairness,
24:40
SPEAKER_02: and freedom.
24:41
SPEAKER_02: There are no gatekeepers deciding which sites you get to access.
24:45
SPEAKER_02: There are no toll roads on the information superhighway.
24:49
SPEAKER_02: This set of principles,
24:50
SPEAKER_02: the idea of net neutrality,
24:52
has unleashed the power of the Internet and given innovators
24:55
the chance to thrive.
24:57
Abandoning these principles would threaten to end the Internet
25:01
as we know it.
25:03
SPEAKER_02: That's why I'm laying out a plan to keep the internet free and open.
25:06
And that's why I'm urging the Federal Communications Commission
25:08
to do everything
25:09
SPEAKER_02: they can to protect net neutrality for everyone.
25:12
SPEAKER_03: That same day,
25:13
SPEAKER_03: Tim Wu,
25:13
SPEAKER_03: who you'll remember from episode one,
25:15
SPEAKER_03: was one of the early ideological fathers of net neutrality.
25:19
SPEAKER_03: He published a piece in The New Yorker about this FCC fight.
25:23
SPEAKER_03: And also on that same day,
25:25
SPEAKER_03: Activists showed up at the home of FCC chairman Tom Wheeler,
25:29
blocked his driveway and demanded that he reclassify broadband
25:33
or else they would
25:33
SPEAKER_03: not let him leave.
25:34
It's like he's like probably trying to go pick up his daughter
25:37
for fucking soccer practice.
25:38
SPEAKER_03: And they were like, not until you reclassify ISPs.
25:41
SPEAKER_03: Wheeler, by the way, later blamed the White House for this.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: So things are getting pretty intense.
25:45
SPEAKER_03: Yes, but by now you have the media pretty much in lockstep.
25:49
SPEAKER_03: The White House is explicitly endorsing reclassification.
25:53
There's this mounting public pressure campaign,
25:55
both online and real life.
25:57
SPEAKER_03: So at an FCC meeting that December,
25:59
SPEAKER_03: protesters rushed the dais and unfurled a banner that said,
26:04
SPEAKER_03: reclassify now,
26:05
SPEAKER_03: like a very dorky flash mob.
26:07
SPEAKER_03: And altogether, this worked.
26:08
SPEAKER_03: So in late February 2015,
26:10
SPEAKER_03: Chairman Tom Wheeler opened the monthly FCC meeting by saying,
26:13
SPEAKER_03: today is a red letter day.
26:15
SPEAKER_03: And by that afternoon,
26:17
the commission had reclassified broadband as a common carrier
26:20
and adopted new net
26:20
SPEAKER_03: neutrality rules.
26:22
SPEAKER_03: And this was officially titled the Open Internet Report and Order.
26:25
So net neutrality was finally,
26:27
and for the first time,
26:28
the law of the land as of 2015.
26:31
SPEAKER_03: But as you will hear, it would not last.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: What were like the specific rules they enacted at the time?
26:38
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
26:39
So if you'll remember from last week,
26:41
in 2010,
26:43
the FCC passed the Open Internet Order of 2010.
26:46
SPEAKER_03: And there were three main components to that rule.
26:48
SPEAKER_03: Do you want to guess?
26:49
SPEAKER_03: Can you remember?
26:50
SPEAKER_03: Dig back?
26:50
SPEAKER_03: Dig deep?
26:53
SPEAKER_01: No fatties.
26:54
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: You smoke them if you got them.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
26:59
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
27:00
SPEAKER_03: It was transparency.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: Yes, obviously.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: No blocking.
27:05
SPEAKER_03: Obviously.
27:05
So ISPs couldn't block lawful websites,
27:07
even if they really,
27:08
really didn't like them.
27:10
SPEAKER_03: And three, no unreasonable discrimination.
27:12
SPEAKER_03: So you can favor some traffic over other traffic.
27:16
SPEAKER_03: But as you'll also remember,
27:17
SPEAKER_03: and you remember this,
27:18
SPEAKER_03: I'm sure,
27:18
SPEAKER_03: Jesse,
27:19
that was later overturned by the courts because the FCC didn't
27:23
have the authority
27:24
SPEAKER_03: to regulate ISPs in that capacity.
27:26
SPEAKER_03: So this was not enforceable.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: The court said that they did not.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: Right.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: There was a fight over whether they had that authority.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: The FCC said yes.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: Right.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: And the courts were like, nope.
27:33
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, bro.
27:34
And that's why they had to reclassify them as common carriers
27:37
so that they could
27:38
SPEAKER_03: have the authority to enforce these rules.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: So the court,
27:41
SPEAKER_01: so it could have gone down that the FCC has this enforcement power,
27:45
SPEAKER_01: whatever ISPs are.
27:46
As it turned out,
27:47
the court said you can only regulate them if they're common
27:52
carriers.
27:52
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
27:53
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
27:54
SPEAKER_03: So that's what they did in 2015.
27:56
SPEAKER_03: And the 2015 rules,
27:57
SPEAKER_03: they maintained those three core tenets,
27:59
SPEAKER_03: transparency,
27:59
SPEAKER_03: no blocking,
28:00
SPEAKER_03: no unreasonable discrimination.
28:02
SPEAKER_03: But they also introduced new regulations,
28:05
SPEAKER_03: most notably a preemptive ban on paid prioritization arrangements.
28:09
SPEAKER_03: So that's the fast lane thing.
28:11
SPEAKER_03: There could be no fast lanes.
28:12
SPEAKER_03: There could be no slow lanes.
28:14
SPEAKER_03: They also extended the rules to wireless internet providers,
28:17
SPEAKER_03: which hadn't been regulated by net neutrality up to that point.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
28:20
SPEAKER_03: But the most controversial rule was
28:22
was that the FCC gave itself sweeping authority to step in
28:26
later if any future
28:27
SPEAKER_03: broadband or business practice seemed to hurt users or websites.
28:31
And this was so broad that it was actually opposed by pro-net
28:34
neutrality groups,
28:35
SPEAKER_03: including the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
28:38
So basically,
28:39
the net neutrality advocates got all they wanted and then some.
28:42
SPEAKER_03: For telecommunications companies, this was the nightmare.
28:45
So remember when I told you last week that the thing they most
28:47
feared was price
28:48
SPEAKER_03: control set by the government?
28:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:51
SPEAKER_03: Well,
28:51
SPEAKER_03: in the 2015 order,
28:52
SPEAKER_03: the FCC didn't set rates,
28:53
SPEAKER_03: but they retained the authority to do so in the future.
28:56
SPEAKER_03: So this was a huge victory for internet activism.
29:00
SPEAKER_03: And then in April 2015,
29:01
activists scored another win when Comcast dropped their bid for
29:05
Time Warner Cable.
29:06
SPEAKER_03: We discussed that last week.
29:07
SPEAKER_03: Again, this is a huge victory.
29:09
Lobbyists had spent millions of dollars trying to push through
29:12
this merger.
29:13
SPEAKER_03: They failed.
29:14
And this showed activists that these public pressure campaigns
29:16
could really work.
29:17
SPEAKER_03: So
29:18
SPEAKER_03: Lee Fong,
29:18
SPEAKER_03: he wrote a piece in The Intercept called Net Neutrality is Here,
29:21
SPEAKER_03: thanks to an unprecedented guerrilla activism campaign.
29:24
SPEAKER_03: That was the vibe.
29:26
SPEAKER_03: David Haslade Comcast.
29:28
SPEAKER_03: We were, I guess, still in the tech optimism era at the time.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: God, very hard.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't that long ago.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: Very hard to try to bring yourself back to that era.
29:36
SPEAKER_03: And yet so many millions of years.
29:38
Victory,
29:39
however,
29:40
was short-lived because,
29:41
Jesse,
29:41
something big happened in November 2016.
29:43
SPEAKER_03: Any guesses?
29:45
SPEAKER_01: My birthday?
29:46
SPEAKER_03: I thought your birthday was in September.
29:47
SPEAKER_03: Nope.
29:48
SPEAKER_03: I'm pretty sure it is.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: I guess I was wrong about when my birthday is.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
29:53
SPEAKER_01: Anything else that big that happened in November 2016?
29:55
SPEAKER_01: You know, nothing comes to mind.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you tell me?
29:58
SPEAKER_03: Donald Trump happened.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
30:01
Yeah.
30:01
SPEAKER_03: So when Trump took office for the first time.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: The first of many.
30:07
SPEAKER_03: Control...
30:09
SPEAKER_03: control of the FCC transferred back to Republicans.
30:12
SPEAKER_03: So as was expected, then Commissioner Ajit Pai was named as chairman.
30:16
SPEAKER_03: Now, Ajit Pai is a lawyer with a background in telecommunications law.
30:19
He's also a Republican and had been appointed to the FCC by
30:23
Barack Obama in 2012.
30:24
I mentioned this in the last episode,
30:26
but again,
30:27
the FCC has five commissioners.
30:29
SPEAKER_03: By law, no more than three can be from the same party.
30:32
SPEAKER_03: So in general,
30:33
SPEAKER_03: the Democratic president will appoint three Dems and two Republicans,
30:36
SPEAKER_03: and the Republican president will appoint three Republicans and two Dems.
30:39
SPEAKER_03: And technically,
30:39
SPEAKER_03: they could also appoint Libertarians or Greens or members of the DSA,
30:42
SPEAKER_03: but they don't,
30:43
SPEAKER_03: maybe during the AOC presidency.
30:45
So Audrey Pye was a sitting member of the FCC,
30:48
but he was confirmed as chair in October 2017.
30:52
And anyone who was following policy at the time knew that the
30:55
next Republican chair
30:57
SPEAKER_03: was likely to repeal the 2015 rules.
31:00
And Ajay Pai was really seen as a villain even before any sort
31:04
of rule changes were announced.
31:06
SPEAKER_03: So take this sentence.
31:07
SPEAKER_03: This was published in a certain Seattle alt-weekly.
31:11
SPEAKER_03: Net neutrality,
31:12
a long-held principle of the internet that was established as
31:14
an official rule
31:15
SPEAKER_03: during the Obama administration,
31:17
requires internet service providers to treat all content
31:20
equally so they aren't
31:21
SPEAKER_03: allowed to slow down,
31:22
SPEAKER_03: say,
31:23
this website just because we might write that FCC Chairman
31:26
Ajepai looks like he
31:27
SPEAKER_03: gargles Mitch McConnell's balls.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: That's harsh.
31:30
SPEAKER_03: I wrote that.
31:32
SPEAKER_03: Apologies to Mr. Pie.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: I knew it.
31:34
SPEAKER_03: I want to correct the record here.
31:36
SPEAKER_03: He does not look like he gargles Mitch McConnell's balls.
31:39
SPEAKER_01: One of the first images of him, he has a giant mug.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: Yes, the Reese's mug.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: And he's sipping from Reese's mug.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: Why?
31:45
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
31:45
SPEAKER_03: John Oliver talked about the Reese's mug a lot on another episode.
31:50
SPEAKER_03: He really loves the giant Reese's mug.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
31:53
So Ajapai took a ton of heat from activists,
31:56
from the media,
31:56
from the public,
31:57
from me.
31:59
SPEAKER_03: Particularly because this was in the midst of the hashtag resistance and,
32:03
SPEAKER_03: you know,
32:03
SPEAKER_03: widespread fears that Trump would usher in fascism.
32:07
SPEAKER_03: I would say that that time those fears were overstated.
32:10
SPEAKER_03: This time I'm a little more on board.
32:13
SPEAKER_03: But here's an example of the rhetoric at the time.
32:15
SPEAKER_03: So this was from the internet advocacy group Free Press.
32:18
They published this in March 2017 before any changes had
32:21
actually been announced.
32:22
SPEAKER_03: So Jesse, please read this.
32:24
From the women's marches that took place across the country and
32:27
around the world to
32:28
SPEAKER_01: the mass protests against the Muslim ban and immigration raids,
32:31
people are resisting the neo-fascist agenda President Trump is
32:34
unleashing on our
32:34
SPEAKER_01: nation.
32:35
The primary reason why millions have been able to mobilize so
32:37
quickly is because
32:38
they have the ability to use the open internet to communicate
32:41
to the masses and
32:41
SPEAKER_01: organize resistance.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: Huh.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: Huh.
33:12
SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's a lot, you know?
33:14
SPEAKER_03: So people didn't like Ajit Pai, and they immediately started protesting.
33:18
SPEAKER_03: So like at the April 2017 FCC meeting,
33:21
SPEAKER_03: protesters with Free Press,
33:22
SPEAKER_03: they showed up,
33:23
SPEAKER_03: they disrupted the meeting,
33:24
SPEAKER_03: they rickrolled Ajit Pai.
33:26
SPEAKER_03: So one protester wrote this later.
33:28
SPEAKER_03: We interrupted a speech by FCC chairman Ajit Pai,
33:31
SPEAKER_03: blasting the 1987 Rick Astley song,
33:33
SPEAKER_03: Never Gonna Give You Up,
33:34
SPEAKER_03: over a speaker,
33:36
while we sang modified lyrics that drew attention to the
33:38
present threat against net
33:39
SPEAKER_03: neutrality protections.
33:40
SPEAKER_03: Cool.
33:41
SPEAKER_01: Could they get sued for copyright?
33:43
SPEAKER_01: When did Rick Astley die?
33:44
SPEAKER_01: Did they get his estate's permission?
33:46
SPEAKER_01: I have so many questions.
33:47
SPEAKER_03: I think if you don't monetize it, I think it's okay.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: I was just concerned about it.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: I've been thinking a lot about copyright stuff lately.
33:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
33:54
SPEAKER_03: To continue.
33:55
SPEAKER_03: We sang silly lyrics like, never going to give you up.
33:58
SPEAKER_03: Net neutrality.
34:01
SPEAKER_03: Never going to run around and hurt you.
34:01
SPEAKER_03: Never going to give you up.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: Never going to give you up.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: Net neutrality.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: That is really fucking bad.
34:09
SPEAKER_03: It's bad.
34:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:10
SPEAKER_03: They were escorted out of the building.
34:12
Were they escorted out because they were disruptive or because
34:15
their song was so dumb?
34:16
SPEAKER_03: Well, it was Homeland Security, so probably because of the song.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:20
SPEAKER_03: Five of the protesters were also banned from the building.
34:23
SPEAKER_03: So that same month,
34:24
SPEAKER_03: April 2017,
34:25
SPEAKER_03: Chairman Aja Pai announced that,
34:27
SPEAKER_03: yes,
34:28
SPEAKER_03: he was going to repeal the 2015 rules.
34:31
ISPs would no longer be classified as common carriers and net
34:34
neutrality would no
34:35
SPEAKER_03: longer be enforceable.
34:37
SPEAKER_03: Quoting Pai here,
34:38
SPEAKER_03: going forward,
34:38
we cannot stick with regulations from the Great Depression that
34:41
were meant to
34:41
SPEAKER_03: micromanage Ma Bell.
34:43
SPEAKER_03: Nothing about the internet was broken in 2015.
34:46
SPEAKER_03: Jesse,
34:47
SPEAKER_03: you were alive in 2015,
34:48
SPEAKER_03: knowing all that you know now about the fight over net neutrality.
34:52
SPEAKER_03: What do you think about that statement?
34:54
SPEAKER_01: That nothing about the internet was broken in 2015?
34:57
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
34:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the internet was starting to suck in 2015.
35:00
SPEAKER_03: Well, he's not talking about content.
35:03
SPEAKER_03: He's talking about...
35:04
SPEAKER_03: The actual, like the pipes, the tubes.
35:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
35:08
SPEAKER_01: I guess a lot of this comes down to the question of like,
35:11
SPEAKER_01: do you want to formalize rules to ensure this thing we already have?
35:15
SPEAKER_01: But no, in 2015, other than like the BitTorrent throttling.
35:20
SPEAKER_03: Which was like early 2000s.
35:21
SPEAKER_01: When was the BitTorrent throttling?
35:24
SPEAKER_03: Like, 2005.
35:26
SPEAKER_03: I think he's pretty much right.
35:27
SPEAKER_03: But back in 2017,
35:29
SPEAKER_03: I was for sure convinced,
35:31
SPEAKER_03: like everyone else,
35:31
SPEAKER_03: that without net neutrality,
35:33
SPEAKER_03: the free and open internet was dead.
35:36
SPEAKER_03: You know, I believe John Oliver.
35:38
I'm sure I wrote slop articles about how John Oliver was saving
35:43
net neutrality.
35:44
SPEAKER_03: And in May 2017,
35:46
SPEAKER_03: the day before the FCC was scheduled to meet for their monthly meeting,
35:50
SPEAKER_03: John Oliver ran a second segment on net neutrality.
35:53
SPEAKER_03: And this one focused in large part on Ajit Pai, including his mug.
35:57
SPEAKER_03: So let's watch a clip.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: But for all of Pi's doofy,
36:01
SPEAKER_00: hey,
36:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm just like you guys,
36:02
SPEAKER_00: persona,
36:03
SPEAKER_00: there are some things about him that you should really know.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: He's a former lawyer for Verizon,
36:08
SPEAKER_00: and despite being a smart man,
36:10
SPEAKER_00: he sure loves to play dumb over why ISPs were ever moved to Title II.
36:16
SPEAKER_02: For decades before 2015, we had a free and open internet.
36:22
Indeed,
36:22
the free and open internet developed and flourished under light
36:25
touch regulation.
36:26
We weren't living in some digital dystopia before the partisan
36:29
imposition of a
36:30
SPEAKER_00: massive plan hatched in Washington saved all of us.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: Now, that is true.
36:35
2015 was not a digital dystopia for anyone,
36:38
with the possible exception of Pizza Rat.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: Because think about it, the internet put that rat through hell.
36:44
One cheat day in three months of eating paleo and she never
36:48
hears the fucking end of it.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's right.
36:50
SPEAKER_00: I said she.
36:52
SPEAKER_00: Hashtag greasy filth monster.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: Hashtag feminism.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: But Pye's larger argument there is deeply disingenuous,
37:00
SPEAKER_00: because he has to know that Verizon,
37:03
SPEAKER_00: his ex-employer,
37:04
SPEAKER_00: won a lawsuit that meant if the FCC wanted strong,
37:07
SPEAKER_00: enforceable protection,
37:08
SPEAKER_00: its only real option was to reclassify the ISPs.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: And yet,
37:13
SPEAKER_00: he cheerily insists,
37:15
SPEAKER_00: under questioning,
37:16
that there is just no evidence that cable companies were
37:18
engaging in rampant
37:19
SPEAKER_00: wrongdoing.
37:20
So Ajupai says in that clip that there was no rampant
37:23
wrongdoing on the part of
37:24
SPEAKER_03: ISPs,
37:25
and there wasn't even before the 2015 open internet order
37:28
codified net neutrality.
37:29
SPEAKER_03: But Oliver is like, no, there was wrongdoing.
37:33
SPEAKER_03: And as an example,
37:34
SPEAKER_03: he pointed to a 2011 case where Google Wallet,
37:37
SPEAKER_03: so that's a mobile payment system,
37:39
SPEAKER_03: it was blocked by AT&T,
37:41
SPEAKER_03: T-Mobile,
37:41
SPEAKER_03: and Verizon.
37:42
SPEAKER_03: And as Oliver explained it,
37:44
The wireless companies were blocking Google Wallet because it
37:47
competed with a
37:48
SPEAKER_03: payment system named,
37:50
SPEAKER_03: unfortunately,
37:51
SPEAKER_03: ISIS that the three companies had launched as a joint venture.
37:54
But once again,
37:55
he simplified this complex technical issue to the point of
37:58
inaccuracy.
37:59
SPEAKER_03: So what actually happened...
38:01
is that at the time Google Wallet needed to access a secure
38:05
part of your phone,
38:06
SPEAKER_03: basically like a chip or a SIM card in every individual phone,
38:09
SPEAKER_03: the carriers controlled this.
38:11
They didn't want to give Google access to this,
38:13
both for security and for business reasons.
38:15
But it wasn't about network traffic,
38:16
which is what net neutrality rules govern.
38:19
SPEAKER_03: So this would not have violated net neutrality rules.
38:21
SPEAKER_03: Does that make sense?
38:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
38:22
it sounds like almost on the verge of a non sequitur that would
38:25
get people to think
38:26
SPEAKER_01: it was about net neutrality when it just wasn't.
38:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
38:28
SPEAKER_03: Let me give you a more modern parallel.
38:30
So Apple refuses to allow third-party mobile payment apps to
38:34
access my phone's NFC chip.
38:36
And the NFC chip is the piece of hardware that's used for
38:39
contactless payments like Apple Pay.
38:40
SPEAKER_03: So the thing you tap, the NFC chip enables that.
38:44
SPEAKER_03: And Apple prevents other apps from using it.
38:46
SPEAKER_03: So if I want to tap, I'm using Apple Pay.
38:49
SPEAKER_03: This is anti-competitive, to be sure.
38:51
SPEAKER_03: And in Europe,
38:52
SPEAKER_03: regulators have forced Apple to open the NFC chip to third-party apps,
38:56
SPEAKER_03: but it has nothing to do with net neutrality.
38:58
SPEAKER_03: So that's basically what happened in the 2011 case that Oliver mentioned.
39:02
SPEAKER_03: Nothing to do with net neutrality.
39:04
SPEAKER_03: Plus, Google figured out a workaround.
39:07
SPEAKER_03: Google Wallet is very much alive today,
39:09
SPEAKER_03: unlike ISIS,
39:11
SPEAKER_03: which was actually acquired after a much-needed name change by,
39:14
SPEAKER_03: you guessed it,
39:15
SPEAKER_03: Google.
39:16
SPEAKER_01: They changed the name to Al-Qaeda.
39:19
SPEAKER_03: So once again, Oliver bastardized a real life case to make his point.
39:25
SPEAKER_03: The Google Wallet case had nothing to do with net neutrality.
39:27
SPEAKER_03: And once again,
39:28
SPEAKER_03: at the end of his segment,
39:30
SPEAKER_03: Oliver urged viewers to go to the website was go FCC yourself.com.
39:36
SPEAKER_03: It redirected to the official page for the FCC to file a comment.
39:39
SPEAKER_03: And of course, his viewers did.
39:40
SPEAKER_03: So this was 2017.
39:42
SPEAKER_03: And in 2017, social justice was all the rage.
39:45
SPEAKER_03: And net neutrality advocacy groups leaned into this.
39:49
SPEAKER_03: So Jesse, I want you to look at this web page from Public Knowledge.
39:52
SPEAKER_03: This is a group that campaigned for net neutrality.
39:54
SPEAKER_03: Read the headline there.
39:55
SPEAKER_01: Net neutrality, the social justice issue of our time.
39:58
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
40:00
SPEAKER_03: The social justice issue of our time.
40:02
This seems to be making a lot of arguments that activist voices
40:07
could be suppressed
40:08
SPEAKER_01: in the absence of net neutrality.
40:10
SPEAKER_01: They mentioned Black Lives Matter and Ferguson and stuff like that.
40:12
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
40:13
SPEAKER_03: So this rhetorical shift,
40:15
this was a fundamental change in how advocates had marketed net
40:19
neutrality.
40:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
40:20
SPEAKER_03: It was now a social justice issue, right?
40:22
SPEAKER_03: A civil rights issue.
40:23
SPEAKER_03: Net neutrality was anti-racist.
40:26
And so Ajit Pai and the Trump FCC rolling back these 2015 rules
40:31
was a step back,
40:32
SPEAKER_03: not just for a free and open internet,
40:34
SPEAKER_03: but a step back for civil rights.
40:36
SPEAKER_03: And that became the focus.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:38
So there's like a chameleon-like nature to the debate where
40:41
like whatever's going
40:41
SPEAKER_01: on in the world at the moment,
40:42
SPEAKER_01: it becomes about that.
40:44
SPEAKER_03: Jesse, this is probably a good place for housekeeping.
40:46
SPEAKER_03: Will you do it?
40:46
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: We are a podcast.
40:48
SPEAKER_01: You can find us at blockterimported.org.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: There you can also find the best way to support us,
40:52
which is to become a premium subscriber for a very affordable
40:57
monthly fee.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: $7.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: You can get all sorts of extra stuff.
41:00
SPEAKER_01: All sorts of extra stuff.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: Extra episodes.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: Access to hangouts.
41:05
You can weekly open comment threads that run to the thousands
41:09
of comments.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: Personals.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: Personals.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: Book club.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: Are coming up.
41:12
Personals is a once a year thing we do in February for
41:14
Valentine's Day that led to
41:16
SPEAKER_01: at least one marriage.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: No murders.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: And no deaths that we are aware of.
41:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:20
SPEAKER_01: Also, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
41:23
And if you have tips or other feedback,
41:25
blocked or imported podcast at gmail.com.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: But Katie, let's get back to the story.
41:28
So the refocus of net neutrality as a social justice issue came
41:32
with some strategic
41:33
SPEAKER_03: disagreements among activists.
41:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
41:36
SPEAKER_03: This was documented by Brian Fung of The Washington Post,
41:39
but two distinct factions emerged within the broader net
41:43
neutrality coalition.
41:44
So the first faction was dominated by public interest groups
41:47
and consumer advocacy
41:48
SPEAKER_03: groups,
41:49
SPEAKER_03: so like free press and public knowledge.
41:51
SPEAKER_03: Fung calls them the hardball faction.
41:53
SPEAKER_03: They wanted a congressional resolution that would overrule the FCC.
41:56
SPEAKER_03: They wanted to primary incumbents who didn't support net neutrality.
42:00
They wanted to punish anyone who didn't support the cause,
42:02
including Democrats.
42:04
SPEAKER_03: And then you had the second faction,
42:05
SPEAKER_03: which was largely made up of tech companies and trade associations,
42:08
SPEAKER_03: and they were willing to compromise.
42:10
SPEAKER_03: So ideological purity was less important to them than getting shit done.
42:14
SPEAKER_01: So who won between these two factions?
42:15
SPEAKER_03: The hardballers.
42:17
And on July 12,
42:18
2017,
42:18
they staged the Internet-wide Day of Action to Save Net
42:22
Neutrality.
42:23
So remember,
42:23
this started with the battle over SOPA and PIPA in 2012,
42:26
the Internet Blackout Day.
42:27
SPEAKER_03: We talked about it last week.
42:29
This time,
42:29
advocacy groups mobilized over 125,000 websites and online
42:34
platforms.
42:35
SPEAKER_03: This included smaller websites and tech behemoths like Spotify,
42:39
SPEAKER_03: 4chan,
42:39
SPEAKER_03: Airbnb,
42:39
SPEAKER_03: Mozilla,
42:40
SPEAKER_03: OkCupid,
42:41
SPEAKER_03: Vimeo,
42:41
SPEAKER_03: Tinder,
42:42
SPEAKER_03: Expedia,
42:42
SPEAKER_03: Pornhub,
42:43
SPEAKER_03: Yelp,
42:43
SPEAKER_03: SoundCloud,
42:44
All these companies displayed banners or pop-ups encouraging
42:48
users to contact the
42:49
SPEAKER_03: FCC and Congress and oppose the repeal of net neutrality.
42:53
SPEAKER_03: So Congress received almost 3.5 million emails in a single day.
42:56
SPEAKER_03: And during the FCC's full public comment period,
43:00
SPEAKER_03: they received approximately 22 million comments.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: And these were overwhelmingly pro-net neutrality?
43:05
SPEAKER_03: Well, no.
43:06
SPEAKER_03: And it turned out that the vast majority of them were fake.
43:09
SPEAKER_03: So the New York Attorney General's office,
43:12
SPEAKER_03: then and now headed by Letitia James,
43:14
they conducted an- Who perpetrated one of the worst mortgage
43:17
frauds in history.
43:19
SPEAKER_01: Just a criminal.
43:20
Sorry,
43:21
I just had to break it and say that because I'm so mad about
43:22
the mortgage fraud.
43:23
So they conducted an investigation and found that nearly 18
43:27
million submissions
43:28
SPEAKER_03: were fraudulent and that this was happening on both sides.
43:31
SPEAKER_03: So there was an anti-net neutrality group called Broadband for America.
43:34
SPEAKER_03: This was an industry group.
43:36
SPEAKER_03: They spent over $4 million on the campaign.
43:38
SPEAKER_03: So they paid consulting firms,
43:40
which then spent their money generating more than 8.5 million
43:44
fake comments.
43:47
SPEAKER_03: And then on the pro net neutrality side,
43:49
one 19 year old computer science student generated 7.7 million
43:53
fraudulent comments.
43:54
And then another 1.6 million were generated from some other
43:57
unknown source.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: We don't need AI.
43:59
SPEAKER_01: We already knew how to create terabytes of fake bullshit without AI.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: It's unnecessary.
44:05
SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
44:06
So the official FCC vote on repealing the reclassification of
44:10
ISPs as common
44:11
SPEAKER_03: carriers and ending net neutrality,
44:13
SPEAKER_03: that was scheduled for December 2017.
44:15
SPEAKER_03: And advocates really ramped up their efforts throughout the year.
44:18
SPEAKER_03: And the protests got more personal.
44:20
SPEAKER_03: So Ajay Pai later told the Washington Examiner,
44:23
SPEAKER_03: quote,
44:23
SPEAKER_03: people were threatening to murder my children.
44:26
SPEAKER_03: My son,
44:26
SPEAKER_03: who was in kindergarten at the time,
44:27
SPEAKER_03: couldn't take the school bus to school for an entire year.
44:31
SPEAKER_03: He continued,
44:31
I had to spend thousands of dollars out of my own pocket for a
44:33
home security
44:34
SPEAKER_03: system.
44:35
SPEAKER_03: My personal email account was hacked.
44:36
My in-laws would get calls at three in the morning,
44:38
cursing them out for no reason at all.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: There was a time when I would have been like,
44:42
SPEAKER_01: maybe he's exaggerating,
44:44
SPEAKER_01: but then I saw Blue Sky,
44:45
SPEAKER_01: which is where all these people sort of...
44:48
SPEAKER_01: congregate and feed off one another.
44:50
SPEAKER_01: And if anything, it sounds like he got easier treatment than he could.
44:52
So people would go to his home in Virginia and leave unmarked
44:56
packages on his porch.
44:58
SPEAKER_03: They would take photographs inside his house through the window.
45:01
SPEAKER_03: Demonstrators put up signs and banners outside his home.
45:05
SPEAKER_03: There was one handmade sign that named his kids.
45:07
Quote,
45:07
is this really the world you want Annabelle and Alexander to
45:10
inherit?
45:11
SPEAKER_03: Did I just talk some?
45:12
SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
45:13
SPEAKER_03: Another said, they will come to know the truth.
45:15
SPEAKER_03: Dad murdered democracy in cold blood.
45:19
Activists sent pieces to his house every half hour,
45:21
or at least that was the rumor.
45:23
SPEAKER_03: It actually wasn't quite as dramatic as that.
45:25
SPEAKER_03: So I confirmed this with Ajit Pai,
45:26
and he said seven or eight of them were delivered to the house
45:29
over the course of a
45:29
SPEAKER_03: few days,
45:30
but it pretty much ended there because I asked all the
45:32
neighborhood pizza places to
45:33
SPEAKER_03: ignore any further orders for delivery to my address.
45:36
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine if then he really wants a pizza?
45:39
SPEAKER_01: He can't get it.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: Like he's super hungry and they're like, you said, nope, you said not to.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: It's like, I know, but it's different.
45:44
SPEAKER_01: That would be so sad.
45:45
SPEAKER_03: He also said,
45:46
SPEAKER_03: after that,
45:46
I still got plenty of unmarked mail and some people visiting or
45:49
trying to visit as
45:50
SPEAKER_03: a security team I eventually got usually block them.
45:52
SPEAKER_03: The house, but no further pizzas.
45:54
SPEAKER_03: Alas.
45:55
And of course,
45:56
there was a ton of bullshit online,
45:57
like Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince.
46:00
He said he was looking into a way to slow down just ObjectPie's
46:03
internet connection
46:04
SPEAKER_03: to dial up speeds.
46:06
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's kind of funny.
46:08
Are we going to get into the huge about face on all this stuff
46:11
in terms of Kiwi Farms?
46:13
SPEAKER_03: We can.
46:13
SPEAKER_03: Let's get into it now.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
46:14
I just – in thinking about the sorts of people who are really
46:18
in favor of net
46:18
neutrality and who are making all these arguments about how
46:21
unpopular content
46:23
SPEAKER_01: shouldn't be censored.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
46:25
I'm guessing the Venn diagram is almost a circle of people who
46:28
then said because
46:29
SPEAKER_01: Kiwi Farms had very ugly but not –
46:33
SPEAKER_01: Illegal stuff.
46:35
They thought it was a no brainer that hackers should be allowed
46:38
to take Kiwi Farms offline.
46:40
SPEAKER_01: And of course,
46:41
SPEAKER_01: Matthew Prince has Cloudflare CEO withdrew their protection of it,
46:45
SPEAKER_01: letting that happen.
46:46
So yes,
46:47
none of these people actually believe in anything is what I'm
46:48
saying.
46:49
SPEAKER_03: Right.
46:49
Like if I think of any website I can think of that I have been
46:53
unable to access,
46:54
SPEAKER_03: not because of some temporary tech glitch or something like this,
46:57
SPEAKER_03: but something that was specifically blocked from the...
47:00
SPEAKER_03: I am blocked from accessing this website.
47:03
SPEAKER_03: It has never come from ISPs.
47:05
SPEAKER_03: It has come from... Kiwi Farms is the only example I can think of.
47:09
And not being blocked,
47:10
but it being taken offline by like DDoS attacks and stuff.
47:13
SPEAKER_01: But specifically because activists pressured Cloudflare not to say...
47:18
SPEAKER_03: Not to protect it.
47:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
47:19
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
47:20
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
47:20
SPEAKER_03: It has never come from Verizon.
47:23
SPEAKER_03: It came from like trans activists, basically.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: The call was coming from inside the house all along.
47:29
SPEAKER_01: The threat to a free and open internet.
47:30
SPEAKER_03: Right.
47:30
SPEAKER_03: So in Ajit Pai, he was just also getting just a fuck ton of tweets.
47:34
SPEAKER_03: Like, Jesse, I posted one in our show notes here.
47:38
SPEAKER_03: Read this.
47:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
47:39
SPEAKER_01: this is some random troll,
47:40
SPEAKER_01: but at Ajit Pai FCC,
47:42
SPEAKER_01: hey,
47:43
SPEAKER_01: cutie,
47:43
you look like you could take a steaming hot load to those
47:46
pearly whites of yours.
47:47
I'm curious how you managed to work your way up from Indian
47:49
tech support to the
47:50
SPEAKER_01: number one brain dead tortellini dick bitch in America.
47:53
SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit racist.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: A little bit racist.
47:55
SPEAKER_01: Sort of like,
47:56
SPEAKER_01: and it's sort of left,
47:57
SPEAKER_01: it is lefty dirtbag leftist coded brain dead tortellini dick bitch.
48:02
SPEAKER_01: Although who knows in this day and age.
48:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
48:04
SPEAKER_03: so the hashtag,
48:05
you can still search the hashtag Ajit Pai sucks and see some
48:09
colorful insults
48:11
SPEAKER_03: directed his way.
48:12
SPEAKER_03: So there were also protests elsewhere,
48:14
including at the Capitol and outside Verizon stores because Pai
48:18
had been a lawyer
48:18
SPEAKER_03: for Verizon.
48:19
I guess they figured the minimum wage workers at Verizon would
48:22
call him up and be
48:22
SPEAKER_03: like,
48:22
SPEAKER_03: brah,
48:23
SPEAKER_03: please.
48:24
SPEAKER_03: Celebrities got involved.
48:26
SPEAKER_03: Michael Stipe, Tom Morello, Will Wheaton, Amanda Palmer.
48:29
SPEAKER_01: Oh, Will Wheaton.
48:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he's come up on the show before.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: Oh, man.
48:33
SPEAKER_01: What an interesting character.
48:35
SPEAKER_01: Well, he had like a minor role on Star Trek The Next Generation.
48:39
And then I don't know if it's fair to say he reignited his
48:44
career by becoming a
48:45
SPEAKER_01: social justice advocate.
48:46
SPEAKER_01: But like during Gamergate,
48:47
he really became the just platonic ideal of the performative
48:53
white male who's not
48:54
SPEAKER_01: like the others.
48:55
SPEAKER_03: So this is a huge thing on social media.
48:57
SPEAKER_03: So Jesse, read this tweet from at the real Banksy.
49:00
SPEAKER_03: It's not actually the real Banksy.
49:03
It's the fake Banksy,
49:04
which in a way I think makes it more Banksy than Banksy.
49:08
SPEAKER_03: Anyway,
49:08
SPEAKER_03: this tweet,
49:09
SPEAKER_03: again,
49:10
SPEAKER_03: not from the real Banksy,
49:11
SPEAKER_03: but from someone people thought was the real Banksy,
49:13
SPEAKER_03: got hundreds of thousands of retweets.
49:16
SPEAKER_01: Twitter, $14.99 a month.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: Snapchat, $9.99 a month.
49:19
SPEAKER_01: YouTube, $19.99 a month.
49:21
SPEAKER_01: Netflix, $9.99 per movie.
49:23
SPEAKER_01: Google, $1.99 per search.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: If you don't want to pay extra for your favorite sites,
49:27
SPEAKER_01: you need to be supporting hashtag net neutrality.
49:30
So he's basically portraying this world in which you need to
49:34
pay $2 per Google search and –
49:37
I think there's maybe a blind spot in the liberal or leftist
49:43
mind here because this
49:44
SPEAKER_01: would never happen.
49:46
SPEAKER_01: No.
49:46
SPEAKER_01: Because people wouldn't pay those amounts of competitors.
49:49
SPEAKER_01: It's just, look, I'm actually not even...
49:54
SPEAKER_01: There's part of me that's like,
49:55
SPEAKER_01: okay,
49:55
SPEAKER_01: why not have a rule dictating all traffic's treated equally?
49:57
But these responses are so sort of divorced from reality and
50:01
over the top just
50:02
because in certain ways markets work pretty well to get people
50:06
stuff they like.
50:08
SPEAKER_03: People respond to incentives.
50:09
SPEAKER_03: Companies also respond to incentives.
50:12
But this really – so like Al Franken called net neutrality the
50:15
free speech issue of our time.
50:17
SPEAKER_03: That was the sort of rhetoric.
50:18
SPEAKER_03: It was seen as this –
50:20
SPEAKER_03: kind of life or death situation.
50:21
You know,
50:22
of course,
50:22
Senators Warren and Bernie Sanders were fighting for it.
50:25
Nancy Pelosi said repealing net neutrality was an attack on
50:28
democracy itself.
50:30
SPEAKER_03: On social media,
50:30
the hashtag Stop the FCC and hashtag Save Net Neutrality were
50:34
amplifying the
50:35
SPEAKER_03: message.
50:36
SPEAKER_03: Activists were urging followers to contact Congress.
50:39
SPEAKER_03: And then right before the FCC was scheduled to vote in December 2017,
50:42
net neutrality activists organized an online protest called
50:46
Break the Internet.
50:47
So starting December 12th that year,
50:49
websites and Internet users across the U.S.
50:52
SPEAKER_03: deliberately made their content appear broken.
50:55
SPEAKER_03: The campaign ran through the eve of the FCC decision,
50:58
SPEAKER_03: effectively serving as this internet-wide red alert.
51:01
SPEAKER_03: And then the day of the vote itself,
51:02
SPEAKER_03: activists stood outside the FCC headquarters,
51:05
SPEAKER_03: ringing bells in protest.
51:07
And yet,
51:07
despite all of this,
51:08
beside Banksy's tweet and Cher's tweet and Will Wheaton's
51:12
tweet,
51:13
SPEAKER_03: None of it worked.
51:13
There was even a bomb called in during the meeting and they had
51:16
to evacuate.
51:17
SPEAKER_03: But in the end,
51:18
the Trump FCC voted on what they called the restoring Internet
51:21
freedom order and
51:22
SPEAKER_03: repealed the Obama era rules.
51:24
SPEAKER_03: So once again, net neutrality was dead.
51:27
SPEAKER_01: OK.
51:27
SPEAKER_01: And did anything happen?
51:29
SPEAKER_03: No, not really.
51:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
51:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
51:31
SPEAKER_01: I guess we don't know,
51:33
SPEAKER_01: but...
51:33
SPEAKER_03: So after the Trump FCC killed net neutrality,
51:36
SPEAKER_03: the opposition immediately rallied.
51:38
SPEAKER_03: Many groups, along with some states, announced plans to sue the FCC.
51:43
In Congress,
51:43
Dems began organizing a resolution to overturn the FCC's order.
51:48
SPEAKER_03: None of this ultimately panned out,
51:49
but what did happen was that a 33-year-old California man sent
51:54
emails to Ajit Pai
51:55
SPEAKER_03: threatening his children.
51:56
SPEAKER_03: The man's name was very confusingly Makara Mann.
51:59
SPEAKER_03: He was arrested...
52:00
SPEAKER_01: Wait, Markara Man?
52:02
SPEAKER_03: Markara Man.
52:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
52:04
Sounds like there's a town named Markara and a man from there
52:08
did something.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: What a strange name.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: That was his name.
52:10
So he was arrested and he told the FBI that he had a message
52:13
for Ajit Pai.
52:14
SPEAKER_03: Quote, I'm sorry I made a threat against your kids.
52:17
SPEAKER_03: That was crossing the line.
52:18
SPEAKER_03: I hope you'll change your mind, but I doubt it.
52:21
SPEAKER_03: Best regards, Mark.
52:22
Markara Man,
52:24
if he was on like a last name,
52:26
first name list,
52:27
it'd be Man,
52:28
Markara Man.
52:29
SPEAKER_01: And I find that pretty funny.
52:31
SPEAKER_03: So at that time, Pi was really seen as public enemy number one.
52:35
But the truth is,
52:36
the net neutrality wars just sort of fizzled out after that.
52:40
SPEAKER_03: Like there were still legal challenges in a few states,
52:42
SPEAKER_03: including Washington state,
52:43
SPEAKER_03: my own state,
52:44
SPEAKER_03: enacted their own net neutrality rules,
52:46
SPEAKER_03: rules that have,
52:46
SPEAKER_03: by the way,
52:47
SPEAKER_03: never been legally enforced.
52:49
SPEAKER_03: But the public just sort of stopped caring.
52:51
SPEAKER_03: There was other shit going on.
52:53
SPEAKER_03: You know,
52:53
the same companies that had supported net neutrality were being
52:56
blamed for Trump's
52:57
SPEAKER_03: election.
52:58
SPEAKER_03: There was Cambridge Analytica.
52:59
SPEAKER_03: There was fake news on Facebook.
53:01
SPEAKER_03: Twitter giving Trump a megaphone directly to the public.
53:04
All of these companies were seen as complicit in his election
53:07
and his presidency.
53:09
SPEAKER_03: And in response to that criticism,
53:11
SPEAKER_03: these companies in turn started censoring conservative content.
53:14
SPEAKER_03: And that is sort of ironic, right?
53:15
SPEAKER_03: Like the companies that were fighting for net neutrality,
53:18
SPEAKER_03: for no discrimination in web access,
53:20
SPEAKER_03: were absolutely engaging in discrimination themselves.
53:24
SPEAKER_01: Is that a fair comparison between individual platforms and
53:32
SPEAKER_01: So I'll be it in an often heavy handed way.
53:34
If an individual platform says we're not going to allow this
53:36
sort of content on
53:36
SPEAKER_01: here,
53:37
that strikes me as different from Internet service providers
53:39
being able to pick
53:40
SPEAKER_01: winners and losers like who gets bandwidth lies.
53:44
I think that if you advocate for a free and open Internet and
53:47
then you censor
53:48
SPEAKER_03: conservative voices because you don't like them,
53:50
SPEAKER_03: I think you're it.
53:51
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think and I think they were doing this.
53:53
They were they were advocating for net neutrality because of
53:57
public pressure campaigns.
53:58
SPEAKER_03: They were censoring conservatives because of public pressure campaigns.
54:02
SPEAKER_03: They were just responding to what people like who the loudest yeller was.
54:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
54:07
SPEAKER_03: Do you need some examples of the censorship I'm talking about?
54:10
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
54:11
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so... And then we can fight over whether it's actually censorship.
54:14
SPEAKER_03: So Facebook labeled videos by Diamond and Silk.
54:17
SPEAKER_03: Those are those Trump bloggers.
54:18
SPEAKER_03: They labeled them as unsafe.
54:19
SPEAKER_01: Unsafe.
54:20
They then testified in Congress that the platform was
54:24
suppressing their content.
54:26
SPEAKER_03: In July 2018,
54:27
SPEAKER_03: a Vice News report,
54:28
SPEAKER_03: so this unimpeachable,
54:30
they found that Twitter search function was not auto-suggesting
54:33
Republican
54:34
SPEAKER_03: officials' accounts.
54:35
SPEAKER_03: This fueled claims of shadow banning.
54:37
SPEAKER_03: In August 2018,
54:39
SPEAKER_03: Apple,
54:39
SPEAKER_03: Facebook,
54:40
SPEAKER_03: YouTube,
54:40
SPEAKER_03: and Spotify banned Alex Jones for repeated violations.
54:43
SPEAKER_03: Around the same time, Twitter banned the Proud Boys and Gavin McInnes.
54:47
SPEAKER_03: And then, of course, later banned Donald Trump after January 6th.
54:51
And even if you think that these actions are totally fine and
54:54
these are independent companies...
54:56
SPEAKER_03: engaging in their own content moderation practices.
54:59
SPEAKER_03: I think people can make that argument.
55:00
SPEAKER_03: But the perception that social media was censoring conservative voices,
55:05
SPEAKER_03: for one,
55:05
SPEAKER_03: it kicked off the partisan debate over social media fairness.
55:08
And two,
55:09
more importantly,
55:10
it led to Elon Musk's eventual purchase of Twitter.
55:13
SPEAKER_03: I think all of that is downstream.
55:15
SPEAKER_01: I agree.
55:16
SPEAKER_03: And at the same time,
55:17
all the predictions about this two-tiered internet with fast
55:20
lanes and slow lanes
55:22
SPEAKER_03: and mass censorship,
55:23
SPEAKER_03: it just didn't materialize.
55:25
So between the time that net neutrality protections were
55:27
repealed in 2024,
55:29
the only major incident often cited as a net neutrality
55:33
violation was during the
55:34
SPEAKER_03: 2018 Mendocino wildfire.
55:37
SPEAKER_03: So the Santa Clara Fire Department's command vehicle hit its data cap,
55:40
SPEAKER_03: and the carrier initially required them to upgrade their plan.
55:44
SPEAKER_01: That's not a net neutrality thing.
55:45
SPEAKER_03: Right.
55:46
SPEAKER_03: So net neutrality activists point to this as a violation,
55:48
but data caps are not a net neutrality issue because net
55:52
neutrality is about equal
55:53
SPEAKER_03: access to content,
55:54
SPEAKER_03: not the amount of data a customer can use.
55:57
So this is this thing that often happens where net neutrality
56:00
activists will point
56:01
SPEAKER_03: or John Oliver will point to these examples of net neutrality violations,
56:04
SPEAKER_03: but they're not actually net neutrality violations.
56:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they seem to do that a lot.
56:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
56:09
SPEAKER_03: so the repeal of net neutrality did not,
56:11
SPEAKER_03: you might have noticed,
56:13
SPEAKER_03: usher in the end of the free and open internet.
56:15
SPEAKER_03: You know, we're all here.
56:17
SPEAKER_03: We can see it now.
56:18
SPEAKER_03: The internet has its flaws, but it's pretty open.
56:21
And the censorship that I've seen in recent years was not from
56:24
Comcast or Verizon.
56:26
SPEAKER_03: It was from Twitter and Facebook and Reddit and YouTube.
56:29
SPEAKER_03: It was from Cloudflare,
56:31
SPEAKER_03: which didn't directly censor KiwiFarms,
56:34
SPEAKER_03: but they did refuse to...
56:35
SPEAKER_01: They took an action that anyone could have guessed what would happen.
56:38
SPEAKER_01: Right.
56:39
SPEAKER_03: But then in 2020, there was another election.
56:42
So after Biden took office in 2021,
56:44
he named FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel.
56:46
SPEAKER_03: He named her chairman.
56:48
SPEAKER_03: And she,
56:48
SPEAKER_03: just like Ajit Pai,
56:49
promised to overturn her predecessor's legacy and now reinstate
56:53
net neutrality,
56:54
SPEAKER_03: which the Biden FCC did in April 2024.
56:58
But this time around,
57:00
A,
57:00
few people cared,
57:01
and B,
57:02
the legal landscape had changed dramatically.
57:05
SPEAKER_03: So in July of 2024, the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron rule.
57:09
This was the rule that let courts defer to federal agencies
57:12
when laws were unclear.
57:14
SPEAKER_03: And this significantly handcapped federal agencies.
57:17
And it meant that the Biden FCC's net neutrality order was
57:20
almost guaranteed to
57:21
SPEAKER_03: lose in court,
57:22
SPEAKER_03: which it did in January 2025.
57:24
SPEAKER_03: So once again, net neutrality was dead.
57:27
And the reaction could not have been more different than it was
57:30
when Ajit Pai
57:31
SPEAKER_03: killed it in 2017.
57:33
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
57:33
SPEAKER_03: back then there were lawsuits,
57:35
SPEAKER_03: massive campaigns,
57:36
SPEAKER_03: viral outrage,
57:37
SPEAKER_03: media coverage,
57:38
SPEAKER_03: a John Oliver segment,
57:39
SPEAKER_03: wasted pizzas,
57:40
SPEAKER_03: people threatened his kids.
57:42
But this time,
57:42
I didn't even know that this happened until I started working
57:45
on this segment.
57:45
SPEAKER_03: Did you?
57:47
SPEAKER_01: No, I did not.
57:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no one cared.
57:50
SPEAKER_03: And the truth is,
57:51
SPEAKER_03: you know,
57:51
SPEAKER_03: in the long history of the internet,
57:52
SPEAKER_03: or the short history of the internet,
57:54
SPEAKER_03: network neutrality has only been official policy for about two years,
58:00
SPEAKER_03: two years and change.
58:01
SPEAKER_03: So Jesse,
58:01
SPEAKER_03: I'm curious,
58:02
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
58:02
do you think anything was different about the internet in those
58:05
few years when net
58:06
SPEAKER_03: neutrality was on the books?
58:07
SPEAKER_01: No, I also don't think
58:11
I think like whether or not we would notice it doesn't
58:13
necessarily answer the question.
58:15
I think it probably turns out – I mean obviously the worst like
58:18
Banksy-esque fears
58:19
of like you have to pay to do anything on the internet didn't
58:24
come true and never
58:24
were going to come true just because of how like competition
58:26
and markets work.
58:28
SPEAKER_01: Part of me is still not convinced.
58:30
I guess I don't understand the downside of having some of these
58:33
regulations.
58:34
I think it's one thing if people really misunderstood the
58:36
technical arguments and
58:37
SPEAKER_01: if John Oliver was sloppy.
58:41
SPEAKER_01: It seems like overall this didn't seem like an issue.
58:44
I still don't like the idea of ISPs being able to pick winners
58:47
and losers if they
58:48
SPEAKER_01: could technically do that.
58:50
SPEAKER_03: Right.
58:50
SPEAKER_03: But the thing is, they don't.
58:51
SPEAKER_03: So that's what the anti-net neutrality advocates argue.
58:56
SPEAKER_03: This isn't something that happens.
58:58
SPEAKER_03: ISPs don't do this.
59:00
SPEAKER_03: Customers wouldn't like it.
59:01
SPEAKER_03: They don't do it.
59:02
SPEAKER_03: So the regulations themselves are unnecessary.
59:05
It's not as though I don't think there are real threats to a
59:07
free and open internet.
59:08
SPEAKER_03: I do.
59:09
SPEAKER_03: Like,
59:09
Congress is currently closer to eliminating Section 230 of the
59:13
Communications
59:13
SPEAKER_03: Decency Act than ever before.
59:15
SPEAKER_03: This would mean that websites are liable for what users post on them.
59:19
And the implications for this are massive because if a company
59:22
can be sued for what
59:23
SPEAKER_03: people say on their app or in the comments section or on social media,
59:26
SPEAKER_03: platforms will start censoring websites.
59:28
SPEAKER_03: Much more.
59:29
SPEAKER_03: And there would be some upsides to this, to be sure.
59:31
SPEAKER_03: You know, if Facebook can get sued for scams posted on their platform.
59:35
SPEAKER_03: I mean, a huge, a huge percentage of Facebook content is scams.
59:40
SPEAKER_03: If they could be sued for that, they would crack down on scammers.
59:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
59:43
SPEAKER_03: But the implications for free speech are enormous or maybe not.
59:47
I mean,
59:47
maybe it'll be just like net neutrality and we won't actually
59:50
notice when it's gone.
59:51
SPEAKER_03: I kind of doubt it, though.
59:52
SPEAKER_01: This seems like much more specific and less hypothetical.
59:55
SPEAKER_01: If Facebook was really held responsible for anything posted to it,
59:58
SPEAKER_01: it's hard to see how that wouldn't be a disaster.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_03: I mean,
1:00:00
SPEAKER_03: if we were held responsible for what people said in our comments,
1:00:02
SPEAKER_03: we would moderate the comments.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
1:00:05
SPEAKER_03: so my position where I land on this now,
1:00:07
SPEAKER_03: which is not where I was in 2017,
1:00:10
SPEAKER_03: 2018,
1:00:10
SPEAKER_03: is that this was kind of much ado about nothing.
1:00:12
But I wanted to check with people who were more directly
1:00:14
involved in the fight.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_03: So I emailed publicknowledge.com.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_03: The Electronic Frontier Foundation,
1:00:19
SPEAKER_03: pre-press,
1:00:19
SPEAKER_03: Fight for Our Future,
1:00:20
SPEAKER_03: Demand Progress,
1:00:22
SPEAKER_03: half a dozen net neutrality activists.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_03: I emailed Tim Wu.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_03: I asked them all the same question.
1:00:27
SPEAKER_03: Now that net neutrality is dead, what has changed for consumers?
1:00:31
SPEAKER_01: Guess what they said?
1:00:34
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_01: You tell me.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_03: Nothing.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_03: No one wrote me back.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_03: I didn't get a single fucking response.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_03: I did have better luck with a scholar named David Chofniss.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_03: He's at Northwestern.
1:00:46
So he published a paper in 2019 that claimed that wireless
1:00:50
networks are throttling
1:00:51
SPEAKER_03: content all the time.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_03: And to test this, he and his researchers built an app called WeHe.
1:00:57
So people can download the app and it basically runs speed
1:00:59
tests for different apps
1:01:01
SPEAKER_03: on your phone.
1:01:01
SPEAKER_03: So you can select like Instagram, Netflix, HBO Max, et cetera.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_03: And it'll tell you if your network provider is throttling your speed.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_03: You can download the app yourself to test this.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_03: So I talked to Choffness on the phone.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_03: And what he told me is that they found,
1:01:17
what they found is that throttling basically does not happen on
1:01:21
wired broadband
1:01:22
SPEAKER_03: networks.
1:01:23
SPEAKER_03: So your home Wi-Fi, fiber, whatever, they don't throttle content.
1:01:27
SPEAKER_03: But they found that cellular networks do this all the time,
1:01:30
SPEAKER_03: specifically when it comes to streaming video.
1:01:32
So he named Verizon,
1:01:33
AT&T,
1:01:34
T-Mobile,
1:01:35
Xfinity,
1:01:36
prepaid carriers like Cricket and Boost,
1:01:38
SPEAKER_03: And when I asked him why would they do this,
1:01:40
SPEAKER_03: he said he doesn't know because a lot of these companies advertise,
1:01:43
SPEAKER_03: you know,
1:01:44
SPEAKER_03: lightning fast 5G,
1:01:45
so why would they be slowing down streaming video if it
1:01:47
degrades the quality of the
1:01:48
SPEAKER_03: service for the customer?
1:01:49
SPEAKER_03: He didn't have an answer to that.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_03: But according to Choffness,
1:01:52
these cell companies are constantly violating the principles of
1:01:55
net neutrality,
1:01:55
SPEAKER_03: not by blocking,
1:01:56
SPEAKER_03: which would be obvious,
1:01:57
SPEAKER_03: but by slowing down video streaming.
1:02:00
So it sounds like it does have an impact on some consumers'
1:02:03
experience,
1:02:04
right?
1:02:05
SPEAKER_03: Well, here's the thing.
1:02:05
SPEAKER_03: So...
1:02:07
There can be multiple reasons why you're having trouble
1:02:09
streaming video on your phone.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_03: So this happens all the time, right?
1:02:11
SPEAKER_03: It could be your Wi-Fi signal,
1:02:13
or it could be that your provider is intentionally lowering
1:02:16
your download speeds
1:02:16
SPEAKER_03: and you might not know which it is.
1:02:18
SPEAKER_03: And even if your provider is throttling, you might not notice.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_03: So I downloaded Wi-Fi.
1:02:23
SPEAKER_03: I tested my home Wi-Fi.
1:02:25
SPEAKER_03: It's through Spectrum, no throttling detective.
1:02:27
SPEAKER_03: And then I turned off Wi-Fi and I got on 5G.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_03: My cell provider is Mint.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_03: And I ran the app again.
1:02:32
SPEAKER_03: And WeHe did detect throttling on my HBO Max app.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_03: Significant throttling, too.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_03: It was like half the download speed it should have been.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_03: So then I opened up HBO Max on my phone.
1:02:43
SPEAKER_03: And I pulled up the first video.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_03: And it was completely fine.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_03: So no delay, no lags at all.
1:02:48
SPEAKER_03: So were they throttling?
1:02:50
SPEAKER_03: According to WeHe, yes.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_03: But it didn't degrade my experience as a user.
1:02:54
SPEAKER_01: OK.
1:02:54
So – but I mean this basically suggests that the basic argument
1:03:00
that these big
1:03:02
SPEAKER_01: companies could pick winners and losers and choose to throttle,
1:03:06
SPEAKER_01: that they do that.
1:03:07
It's just you're just saying it hasn't affected your experience
1:03:09
and you think it
1:03:10
SPEAKER_01: might not affect other users' experiences.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_03: Well, I have no idea.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_03: I mean, people download the app.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_03: Try it for yourself.
1:03:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:03:15
So I also I ran this paper by Will Reinhart from the American
1:03:19
Enterprise Institute.
1:03:20
SPEAKER_03: Will has been following this issue for years.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_03: He's a free market guy, low regulation guy.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_03: He's a critic of net neutrality regulations,
1:03:27
SPEAKER_03: not the principles of net neutrality,
1:03:29
SPEAKER_03: but the regulations themselves.
1:03:30
So he read Choffness's paper and he pointed out that if
1:03:34
Choffness is correct,
1:03:35
The companies were throttling video apps when the 2015 net
1:03:39
neutrality order was in place.
1:03:41
SPEAKER_03: So the researchers, their data set was from January 2018 to January 2019.
1:03:46
SPEAKER_03: The net neutrality repeal wasn't in effect until June 2018.
1:03:51
SPEAKER_03: So for the first half of the study,
1:03:53
SPEAKER_03: there were net neutrality laws on the books,
1:03:55
SPEAKER_03: and it doesn't appear to have changed the carrier's behavior whatsoever.
1:04:00
So I suspect Troughton's would say,
1:04:01
okay,
1:04:01
well,
1:04:01
then the problem is enforcement.
1:04:03
SPEAKER_03: But Reinhart told me in an email, quote, if these policies, i.e.
1:04:06
SPEAKER_03: the throttling,
1:04:07
SPEAKER_03: predated the repeal of federal net neutrality rules,
1:04:10
then the predictions about what ISPs would do absent regulation
1:04:15
were demonstrably
1:04:15
SPEAKER_03: wrong.
1:04:16
SPEAKER_03: The behavior was already happening under the rules.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_03: So Will also told me that bigger picture,
1:04:23
SPEAKER_03: when it comes to this years-long fight over net neutrality,
1:04:25
SPEAKER_03: he said,
1:04:26
SPEAKER_03: quote,
1:04:27
SPEAKER_03: the real tragedy wasn't just the wasted resources,
1:04:29
SPEAKER_03: but the opportunity cost.
1:04:31
SPEAKER_03: While activists were celebrating their victory at the FCC,
1:04:34
SPEAKER_03: they ignored the more difficult but durable path of legislative action.
1:04:38
SPEAKER_03: Congress moves slowly, but when it acts, the results tend to stick.
1:04:42
So he's saying that if activists had focused more on enshrining
1:04:45
net neutrality in law,
1:04:47
Rather than flooding the FCC with comments because John Oliver
1:04:50
told them to,
1:04:51
SPEAKER_03: maybe net neutrality would have become permanent,
1:04:54
SPEAKER_03: but instead it shifted as the FCC did.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_01: So it's just,
1:04:57
SPEAKER_01: right,
1:04:57
just a less durable way of seeking these changes because of the
1:05:00
way the FCC
1:05:01
SPEAKER_01: pingpongs back and forth.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:05:03
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to leave the last word on this to Will.
1:05:05
SPEAKER_03: He also said this.
1:05:06
SPEAKER_03: To me,
1:05:07
this is a story about how a small group of organizations
1:05:10
learned to weaponize
1:05:11
public attention and regulatory capture to achieve policy goals
1:05:15
that couldn't
1:05:15
SPEAKER_03: survive the legislative process.
1:05:17
It's about how the modern administrative state became a
1:05:20
battlefield for competing
1:05:21
SPEAKER_03: visions of information control,
1:05:23
with both sides learning that viral moments and coordinated
1:05:26
pressure campaigns
1:05:27
SPEAKER_03: could override traditional democratic deliberation.
1:05:30
SPEAKER_03: But most importantly,
1:05:32
it's about the first major political movement to discover the
1:05:34
power of mobilizing
1:05:36
SPEAKER_03: online outrage.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_03: So there you have it, Jesse, many hours later.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_03: And basically where I land on this is that in many ways,
1:05:44
SPEAKER_03: the net neutrality wars were a gigantic waste of time and energy.
1:05:48
SPEAKER_03: But on the other hand, we got two podcasts out of it.
1:05:51
SPEAKER_03: And I would say that is worth several million comments to the FCC.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_01: We did.
1:05:55
SPEAKER_01: Thank God for that.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you, Katie.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_01: That's like a really, really complicated subject.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's so complicated.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_03: I feel, I think a little bit smarter now.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_03: I want to thank Will Reinhart.
1:06:06
SPEAKER_03: He is like instrumental in helping me understand this.
1:06:09
SPEAKER_03: And also Timothy B. Lee, who also was great help.
1:06:12
SPEAKER_01: This has been Blocked Reported.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_01: As always, we are produced with help from Jessica the 80s Baby.
1:06:17
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening and goodbye.
1:06:19
SPEAKER_01: I hope this isn't throttled.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_03: Bye.
1:06:25
Bye.