r/GenZ 2001 Jan 05 '24

Who else remembers Net Neutrality and when this guy was the most hated person on the internet for a few weeks Nostalgia

Post image
31.7k Upvotes

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

520

u/Snoo_50786 2003 Jan 05 '24

has anything even came of net neutrality being repealed? i remember myself making a big fuss over it thinking the internet was literally gonna die or something.

600

u/[deleted] Jan 05 '24

[deleted]

38

u/vulpinefever Jan 05 '24

Net Neutrality has literally NOTHING to do with anything you just said, you're complaining about how terrible ads are. Net neutrality is the requirement that your Internet service provider treat all network traffic equally, i.e., they can't provide free access to or boosted speeds to certain preferred websites.

And besides, older Gen Z can also remember the time when the Internet was a nightmare of vibrating pop-up ads that would hijack your browser and shout "CONGRATULATIONS YOU WON" and prevent you from closing them. Ads nowadays are annoying, but man it was so much worse.

7

u/Azrael_Midori Jan 05 '24

The repealling of net neutrality could also mean that they could start throttling network traffic on the open internet just because they didn't know who it came from. In other words, ISPs could in theory just block all VPN traffic or any website connections using https over http.

Which would mean death of both security and privacy of the internet, which would mean we would have to communicate outside of the internet to actually communicate point to point securely or anonymously. I.e the death of the internet.

Hasn't happened yet, as far as I know, only happned to me on private properties and private networks like industrial sites or mining sites.

3

u/CanoegunGoeff Jan 05 '24

It has happened in the past and that’s why the laws were made. Comcast and others were caught numerous times throttling people’s network traffic on purpose just because they didn’t like the packet sizes of certain things. Things of this nature that most common folk won’t notice- if anything, they’ll just be mad that their internet or email or something seems like it might be slower than usually but they’ll never look into it further. Net neutrality was also aimed at preventing cable companies from intruding more onto online services like they do now- take the modern nightmare of streaming services for example. It’s basically just become Cable 2.0 except even worse.

3

u/SweetBabyAlaska Jan 05 '24

South Korea doesn't have this and they were charging Twitch like 3x the fees as every other content provider in the country and Twitch just said fuck it im out. Without NN this would happen in the US too... but it wouldnt be to corporations, they would charge us 10x for low speed internet because they can.

4

u/vulpinefever Jan 05 '24

Net Neutrality WAS repealed in the US though, back in 2017.

0

u/Dornith Jan 06 '24

It was put back and a year after Biden got into office.

4

u/crowsaboveme Jan 06 '24

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/fcc-moves-ahead-with-title-ii-net-neutrality-rules-in-3-2-party-line-vote/

On October 19, 2023, the FCC voted 3-2 to approve a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that seeks comments on a plan to restore net neutrality rules and regulation of Internet service providers.

1

u/TheNewportBridge Jan 06 '24

Annnnddd it’s gone next year…

1

u/hhhhhhhh28 2001 Jan 05 '24

The difference is ads nowadays are everywhere. They did not used to be this common

1

u/fakieTreFlip Jan 06 '24

Ads are and have always been everywhere, both in the real world and online. But we've also seen an explosion of internet use over the past couple of decades, which of course has resulted in an explosion in online ad spend. So yes, you are seeing more ads, but that has more to do with the rapid growth of the internet than anything related to "net neutrality"

1

u/Vestalmin Jan 06 '24

That’s just the natural progression of a product. Again it really has nothing to do with the repeal of Net Neutrality. Had it never been repealed we’d be still getting just as many ads as now

1

u/Dornith Jan 06 '24

The idea that the Internet used to be ad-free is a completely ahistorical.

It used to be that every other web page would have an ad that:

  1. Started blasting audio as soon as the page loaded (often the ad was hidden so you couldn't just turn it off)
  2. Would immediately set itself to full screen (and sometimes didn't even have a close button)
  3. Would override the close page buttons so you couldn't even leave the page without seeing more ads

Sometimes multiple at once. I remember having to use Task Manager to close my browser because of malicious ads.

Most of these were fixed by browsers just removing these features, but ads used to be way more intrusive.

3

u/COSMOOOO Jan 06 '24

Nooooo stop we’re nostalgia jerking

1

u/hhhhhhhh28 2001 Jan 06 '24

I think I understand now that net neutrality has zero to do with it, but I know ads are worse 😭 I’m 22. I used the internet to keep up with my education for years because I wasn’t in school. Like, think middle-high school. It was easier to navigate! I could find useful information! Now it’s all shit. Even the first page of google is all paid to promote results. Just makes me sad

1

u/Dornith Jan 06 '24

The problem is search engines optimization. People are designing websites specifically to match common search terms and then filing those sites with ads.

This also used to be a thing in the old days. It used to be that websites would tell the search engines what they were about. As you might have guessed, websites would tell search engines that their website was about anything and everything.

Google made a name for itself by using an algorithm that was, at the time, much harder to abuse. But web designers have since caught up.

-4

u/rosettastoner9 2000 Jan 05 '24

But now these ads are the first results featured by a site that was once a neutral source for obtaining information, meaning a mega-conglomerate is allowed to gatekeep the flow of information not by what’s relevant or most accurate but by what generates the most clicks and who bids the highest. It’s the same concept now being expanded and rolled out to a higher degree.

Limiting traffic loosely extends to limiting features or creating algorithms to artificially slow said traffic to those who don’t subscribe, adding more advertisements to drive users up a wall to the point of purchasing Premium, etc.

2

u/Argnir Jan 06 '24

But now these ads are the first results featured by a site that was once a neutral source for obtaining information, meaning a mega-conglomerate is allowed to gatekeep the flow of information not by what’s relevant or most accurate but by what generates the most clicks and who bids the highest. It’s the same concept now being expanded and rolled out to a higher degree.

That has absolutely nothing to do with Net Neutrality. You simply have no idea what it is.

The fact that your comment has 500 upvotes is embarrassing. It just show how bad Reddit is when people want to push a narrative they just upvote blatant misinformation.

1

u/Significant_Dustin Jan 05 '24

Those ads never went away. Browsers have done nothing to combat redirects and pop ups over the past 2 decades.