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This is such a bizarre argument to make in this particular case. The only way the government is "controlling" the internet is having a regulation that no one is allowed to control the internet. Your stance is basically akin to this: Major automotive companies start adopting highways across the United States. They are granted permits to set up toll stations along the highways they own, so that on a road owned by Toyota, only owners of Toyota cars can expect to drive with any expectation of a reliable speed. Drivers of every other brand have to drive in slow lanes, or pay tolls to get into faster lanes, or may not be able to drive on those roads at all. Clearly no one wants this. The government steps in and says "This fucking sucks. Roads need to be reliable and accessible to everyone within reason." and sets up a regulation to end the practice. By your logic, the government is being the tyrannical party in this situation even though it's clear they're acting in the best interests of the public, which is their job.

It's at a point where government intervention of some kind is necessary either way, yeah. If some legislation was made to break up the mafia-like territorial control agreements all the ISPs have FIRST, then repealing the Net Neutrality rules would make sense and arguments that the free market would sort itself out would hold weight. As-is most people have either no choice or a choice between at most two ISPs (here in Florida it's Comcast and Century Link with MAYBE Brighthouse/Spectrum if you happen to live in one of the like 3 cities they cover), so there is no market. Making it fall under utility rules like light and power makes a lot of sense since that's pretty much the way ISPs have set themselves up. You have little to no recourse if Talquin Electric fucks with you because you have no other options, so it makes sense for them to be government regulated so they can't do that. Same here.

I only wanted to add that they can only if you get your internet from their Google Fiber service - which is only out in a few highly populated areas - but otherwise, I pretty much agree with this. While Amazon, Netflix, and co.'s reasons may not necessarily be altruistic in nature - I don't know how they think, maybe it is for all we know - we've already seen ISPs do things against sites/services they don't like or that potentially cuts into their bottom line. - Verizon blocked text messages from pro-choice group NARAL, calling them controversial. - AT&T limited its use of FaceTime to incentivize people to get more expensive data plans. - AT&T apparently censored a portion of a live-stream of Pearl Jam's Lollapalooza set that contained criticisms of then-president Bush. - Comcast blocked BitTorrent, which was ruled illegal by the FCC at the time - now Ajit Pai says it wasn't a big deal And there's still more! And this is just some of the shit we know about, there could be many more instances that haven't been published yet. Trying to compare ISPs to content producers and providers is stupid. On the one hand, you have companies whose primary service is to sell you connectivity. They sell you access to the internet through their infrastructure. On the other hand, you have companies who create content or provide services - shows, streaming, social media, online marketplaces, webcomics, art, games, etc. - that are delivered to you through the internet. While I won't discount that the potential for reduced revenue, lower sales/usage, and not having to pay out for "priority" or for higher bandwidth caps is a large driving factor in content providers' push to keep net neutrality, that's a pill I'm willing to swallow compared to letting our ISPs have the power to control what we see and do online. If our market for ISPs wasn't so monopolistic - with most places having only one or two, maybe three, ISPs to choose from - it might not be so bad, there would be some potential for The Free Market™ to finally do something useful. But we don't. So it won't. The internet is a necessity at this point, even if you're just connected through your phone carrier's mobile network. We need to have some kind of protections in place to keep consumers safe from the predatory practices of the companies that control our ability to access the internet. Full stop. We are far beyond the ability of The Free Market™ to do anything useful in regards to ISPs, the only thing we have left is government regulation.

The Net Neutrality "laws" are more a classification than anything. Access to the internet is deemed a telecommunications utility and therefore falls under the same rules as phone service, as a simplification of the issue. "The internet" isn't considered anything much like "the phone network" or whatever is. Access to the internet however is deemed currently as a basic utility along the same lines as phones and cable/satellite TV, whose providers (most of the same companies, in fact, since Comcast, Verizon, and Century Link at least all have their own phone and TV services too) also already fall under the exact same rules that are currently protecting Net Neutrality. I'm unsure if you're arguing that these services should also be "unshackled" from government oversight as well or you've merely misunderstood what's going on. These are not new rules. They've been in place for over 50 years (over 80 in one form or another) [Edit: Correction, over 150 years in one form or another], it's merely the classification of internet access that is fairly recent as a simple ruling on something that has been in place in one form or another since close to the internet's inception, since ISPs have been trying to throttle access to certain sites (among other things) for at least that long. Net Neutrality does not protect from a theoretical threat, all of these laws and classifications stem from ISPs (primarily Comcast) having attempted in the past to do the exact same things people are afraid they will do now. The Wikipedia page is pretty thorough. Some of this I didn't know precisely until now (though I was certain about the Title II classification and what it meant), it's actually an interesting read. As for this: It is when it's blindly assuming and declaring that the government is bad no matter what. By all means, advocate for a smaller government presence where they're not needed or actively make things worse, but complaining about the government making the lives of its people better is asinine. The entire point of a government is to serve its people to the best of its ability. Saying any government intervention is bad is just advocating anarchism which, yes, is edgy. It's probably the most stereotypically edgy emo teen thing that exists.

Screw it let's get it back in the results:

The problem with democracy is that everyone must have a correct political opinion on everything, even on things that they don't understand and can't actually change.

So I got a call from someone wanting to do a survey. I answer in English since I was just talking in English to someone else. The person on the phone asks if I speak Greek, as the survey is in Greek. I answer "όχι" which means no in Greek and tell them I'm not interested, again in Greek. They apologise for the inconvenience, say they are only looking for Greek speakers, and hang up.

It's not about trust. These laws have a proven track record of working for the benefit of everyone. Repealing them has no tangible benefit in the current landscape of ISP semi-monopolies, and repealing them now can do nothing but harm. Yes, it's all trendy and edgy to be like "Lel the government is evil they shouldn't touch or do anything" right now but fact of the matter is sometimes, as shown in this case, government regulation has a net benefit for everyone but the executives of these ISPs. On the other side, yeah, no shit Amazon/Netflix/Etc. stand to gain from these laws staying in place and that's why they advocate for them. So? What's the issue with that? It's a win-win in that case, that's a GOOD thing. Again, yeah, it's cool and edgy to bitch about corporations making money these days, but at least attempt to look at the bigger picture. Bad for corporations =/= good for everybody else and vice versa. If you want to talk about trust, can always trust a megacorp to do what's in their best interests and they have a lot of swing in that regard. Why be pissed when it swings in your favor because interests align for once? Just so you can shoot yourself in the foot to "stick it to the man"?

Got a few spectacular ones from work yesterday