Wait, what? They’re only just now doing this?
“Democrats were stymied for nearly three years because they did not take majority control of the five-member FCC until October.”
Biden’s first pick got held up in the Senate for a couple years and then replaced in 2023, until that seat was filled nothing was gonna happen.
No way, everyone knows that Biden can easily change all of the federal government whenever he wants to but just chooses not to because he’s a big meanie and only ever does anything so that he’s just 1% less bad than Trump.
/s
While true, there was a major, global crisis still going on in 2021. It’s not as though an FCC commissioner pick was the top priority after the Orange Turd screwed everything about Covid up as best as he could. Biden announced in October of '21 and then Congress was slow to confirm his pick.
Context matters.
Yeah Biden definitely should have nominated someone earlier, then that person could have been waiting for an even longer time before finally getting confirmation and that would definitely result in something being different.
You know something gone wrong here when people have come to expect those responses right off the bat. 😄
Wait, what? They’re only just now doing this?
I get that it took awhile. But why do people always criticize the people doing the right stuff rather than the people causing harm?
Take the win!
Exactly what you said. Take the win.
That faulty line of thinking (shitting on everything) is the same line of thinking that “lets imperfect get in the way of good.”
“Oh, this action was late. Bad!”
“Oh, this action only solves part of the problem. Stop trying! Bad!”
“Oh, the rich will just use a loophole to get around this! Bad!”If repubs can convince critics that doing nothing is better than doing something, repubs win. A seemingly very effective exploitation of the narcissism of the online critic.
The term useful idiot comes to mind.
People scoff when you mention these sentiments have been proven to be pushed by foreign state agencies to create voter apathy too.
Shit look how much people espouse ‘green washing’ on Lemmy then pretend like they’re the one true enlightened ones. Mean they’re stuck doomscrolling on an even less regulated platform than Facebook or Reddit pretending like converted efforts of state propaganda isn’t pushed here.
Like guys, anarchist and communist viewpoints are just fine when you aren’t pushing parroted fascist rhetoric. Few people have issues with you being further left than American progressives. They’re the Lemmy equivalent of vegan jokes now lol.
Not only that, but the explanation is right there, in the article:
Democrats were stymied for nearly three years because they did not take majority control of the five-member FCC until October.
I’m willing to throw some shade at the Dems for not forcing a floor vote here, put people on record refusing the nominee. It’s obvious though his first pick wasn’t getting the 60 needed though to pass, so it’d be for show at best.
That’s not how it works. The FCC is on a completely different cycle and you can only appoint new people when old people expire out. It’s supposed to keep politics out. Impeachment is a possibility but that’s the only remedy.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/07/gigi-sohn-fcc-nominee-withdraws-00085918
“Sohn ultimately faced senators across three confirmation hearings since Biden first tapped her for the post. Her nomination, which awaited a committee vote in 2023, never received floor consideration.”
I’m referring to the notion of the first nomination being held in committee for almost 2 years rather than forcing cloture and having the full vote. It would have presumably gone nowhere, but at least it’s an affirmative action.
Got it!
To exit a room, it’s better to apply pressure to a door than to a wall.
Well the door will jam if you kick it. Then you’re trapped in the damn room. Sometimes you don’t need to apply pressure because the door wants to open. You just need to help it by finding a door knob. And sometimes you can turn the wall into a door.
I’m all for kicking both jammed doors and walls.
I agree! It is fine to have to have a degree of cynicism but too much and nothing gets done. Celebrate every step in the right direction.
I emailed the Ars Technica article to my Trump voting mother on jackass what’s his face when Trump appointed him and accused her of harming the internet. We have a no-politics rule now because of how angry I grew over time with that orange fuck. It was my idea. Saved our relationship.
It’s a waste of time criticizing organizations that are beyond being reformed like the Republican party is. The Democratic party can and must do better and should hear about their screwups, the Republican party just needs to be rendered irrelevant entirely and doesn’t need to see it coming.
If this was the '90s or '00s or early '10s, I’d agree with you. There were a lot of conservative Democrats in congress that were taking up potentially liberal seats and some Democrats (Clinton) pushed conservative initiatives even further in order to win.
Now, I constantly see cynical Democrats blaming everything on Democrats, even if it’s out of their control. Blame Republicans when Republicans are to blame so we can beat them. Blaming Democrats is often counterproductive.
Example, post. This is good. Let’s continue to do good.
The reason the right has been kicking liberal asses lately is their unity. That unity was mostly due to the torrent of dark money from billionaire foundations like the Koch network pushing an agenda, but none the less they moved this country so far right it will take decades to change things. The left needs to learn to stop attacking the few people we still have in power so hard and look at the bigger picture. You will never get progressive change quickly, it takes a long coordinated movement. It’s an election year and we know our options are Biden against the anti-thesis of progressivism. Lets rally now and push Biden for change after the election when we have ensured we elected someone who could actually listen.
Thank you!
Imo, it made sense to attack Democrats 15 years ago who weren’t representing their constituents (more recently, Sinema comes to mind). But we’re past that. Now it’s time to back our people, get more of them in office, push progressive ideals to the public, and get things done.
For example, saying Democrats don’t do enough to protect abortion access is counterproductive. You have to support more liberals so they have the power to make change.
Same with net neutrality. Saying it took them too long doesn’t help. They got it done. Celebrate it.
“Democrats suck because they didn’t do enough to stop Republicans” is an argument that makes me rage
Thanks - I forgot about this episode of the Intercept podcast. Good to re-listen.
They’re not being criticized for doing the right thing. They’re being criticized for the negative aspect. Many others have answered it, but the way you’re framing this is kinda strange.
You’d equally criticize anyone else that you thought had the power to save a drowning man but sat there watching for a while before finally saving him.
Now imagine their replacement actively wants to drown people and for some reason there are people who think both sides are reasonable choices and others are backing the pro-drowning guy.
I’ll take the guy who took his time. And yeah, I’m going to call out the critics.
Now imagine their replacement actively wants to drown people and for some reason there are people who think both sides are reasonable choices
Nobody here is saying that. Do you really think the person who’s wondering why it took this long is sitting there saying the Republicans made a reasonable choice to remove net neutrality? Really?
others are backing the pro-drowning guy.
Who cares? They’re irrelevant to this. We already disagree with them. We’re likely never going to agree with them. They’re not criticizing how long it took to reverse Net Neutrality. They’re mad that it was reimplemented at all.
I’ll take the guy who took his time.
What? Who isn’t? Again, the action of reimplementing Net Neutrality isn’t being criticized. Them taking this long is what’s being criticized. Or do I need to ask you to give evidence of left leaning people complaining that Net Neutrality was reimplemented?
You’re advocating for just taking whatever you get as long there’s someone worse. With that same logic, the guy could wait and watch the drowning guy get bitten by something in the water and get injured trying to save himself and then save him. You’d still accept that no problem huh? You’re saying that there’s no reason to improve, because at least you’re better than the other guy.
Furthermore, everyone I’ve seen so far has accepted the reason for it taking this long. So again, the way you’re framing this is strange.
Congrats. Now the pro-drowning person is in charge.
Fascinating how there’s no logical reason for that to happen, but carry on. Doesn’t look like you ever cared to actually make a reasonable case for yourself.
You kept insulting people who helped drowning victims, now no one wants to save drowning people, or is scared to do so. So the pro- drowning people faction has won.
Insulting? You’re insulted by any kind of criticism huh? Yeah, makes sense. And that’s not in any way how this works. That’s not at all analogous to what we’re talking about anymore.
You just misrepresented what I said and ignored my point. YOU never made a reasonable case. You keep putting Dems down, don’t be surprised when fascists win.
Trump is going to win unless people start supporting Biden. Same with congress. Celebrate the wins or the centrists are going to give control to the fascists.
You just misrepresented what I said and ignored my point.
Quote it then. You’ve done literally nothing to actually show where or how I’ve done that.
YOU never made a reasonable case.
My point was always: you can criticize a negative aspect of something without it being a criticism of the entire thing. That still holds true.
Now you’re trying to make this about the Democrats as a whole. You’re really not able to think about things in parts huh? I can criticize something taking far too long(which, if you saw my response to another comment, removes pretty much all actual criticism from this specific case) and still accept that they did something good. Merely asking why it took this long isn’t, by any means, saying that them doing the thing was wrong. I’ve said this multiple times already.
Trump is going to win unless people start supporting Biden.
Let me know when left leaning persons have started voting, in significant numbers, for Biden merely because they have criticisms for Biden. That’s actually asinine. Actually going along with that same logic, do you think Republicans and centrists magically start voting for Democrats if any criticism is levied from their side?
Celebrate the wins or the centrists are going to give control to the fascists
Nah, I’m not stupid. I’m not going to ignore every negative thing that “my side” does just because you think it means the other side will lose. As I said before that’s literally giving leeway for them to do absolutely anything they want, as long as they’re at least marginally better than Republicans. I’ve gladly accepted that Net Neutrality is back, but I’m not going to realize it’s only back now after years, and ignore it without good reason. At this point, we’re not even arguing over the actual Net Neutrality case anymore.
Saving a drowning man doesn’t have people trying stand between you and the drowning man. Just because a new president comes to power doesn’t mean he just gets to change things from previous administrations on a whim. Those powers that helped see it pass don’t just disappear. Government is fights and compromises and those take time. You deal with the other party and special interests paying whoever they can to move forward or obstruct anything to their advantage. Right or wrong it’s reality of government. Changes in government rarely are bi-partisan enough to pass quickly.
You and I don’t disagree here. The guy I replied to is arguing that we shouldn’t really even be asking why it took this long, because we eventually got it. The act of questioning why it took this long shouldn’t immediately get a response of “at least it’s reversed now, stop complaining”. The guy saving the drowning man could very well have very valid reasons as to why he’s waiting, that we don’t know. But if we don’t know them, we kinda have to ask don’t we?
I’m yet to see anyone get the reason for it taking this long and not accept it. It’s been ~6 months since they got back the FCC. The complaint isn’t over a measly 6 months. That’s an acceptable amount of time really. The first assumption is usually that they’ve had the ability to reverse it much closer to when Biden took office. Waiting until near to the end of a 4 year term is a really long time.
No, the system was the problem, not the people. Criticizing the people is ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst. It’s just adding negativity cause someone wants to complain…
The Conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI) played a key role in establishing a policy and regulatory path for an FCC under Republican Party control, led by Chairman Ajit Pai.
When Ajit Pai was kicked out of the FCC spot he was hired by AEI to be a lobbyist.
Fuck Ajit Pai and the people who put him in power.
Fuck Ajit Pai and the people who put him in power.
… and hire him for well-paying lobbyist jobs, where he has intimate knowledge of the people and systems involved.
I aggravates me to no end that this is a thing for many bureaucrats … leave your gov’t position (likely with a full pension) and land a job that uses your insider info.
Anyone know what the actual changes are, what they mean for us? Is this just preventing ISPs from prioritizing/throttling certain sites?
The main thing is ensuring all internet traffic is treated equally, basically like you said. ISPs can’t block, throttle, or prioritize content. Some examples:
- Comcast can’t throttle Netflix to make their own Peacock service seem better.
- Providers can’t say that you have unlimited usage of Netflix, but other video services count towards your monthly quota. Some mobile providers in other countries do this.
They also made two other changes. Directly from their press release:
- Safeguard National Security – The Commission will have the ability to revoke the authorizations of foreign-owned entities who pose a threat to national security to operate broadband networks in the U.S. The Commission has previously exercised this authority under section 214 of the Communications Act to revoke the operating authorities of four Chinese state-owned carriers to provide voice services in the U.S. Any provider without section 214 authorization for voice services must now also cease any fixed or mobile broadband service operations in the United States.
- Monitor Internet Service Outages – When workers cannot telework, students cannot study, or businesses cannot market their products because their internet service is out, the FCC can now play an active role.
What about cell service providers selectively throttling your speed based on an estimate of the video resolution you are streaming? What about cell service providers counting tethering separately from normal data?
Thanks for writing all that out.
Monitor Internet Service Outages
This one is interesting. I wonder if that means they can enforce some kind of minimum uptime? For areas that have a lot of outages.
Yeah, I’m not sure. The press release on the FCC’s site doesn’t have much detail. I’m sure there’s some “official” text somewhere that has a detailed explanation, but I’m not sure where to look for it.
Anyone want to guess the political affiliation of those who did everything they could to hold this back?
But you already know.
Thank goodness for this news. This is reason alone to celebrate.
Take that, Pai.
Pepridge Farms remembers when this was a bipartisan issue. In less than a single year the telecoms paid off enough Republicans to completely polarize the issue.
This is actually against the very idea of conservatism, since it’s changing the way the internet has always worked.
Conservatives in our government are simply up for the highest bidder. It really is that simple.
Wait, what? They’re only just now doing this?
Better late than never.
There was a long fight over Biden’s nomination of Gigi Sohn to the FCC, during which the FCC was deadlocked at 2-2.
Sohn ultimately withdrew as a candidate about a year ago. Then Anna Gomez was nominated and confirmed last fall, giving Democrats a 3-2 majority. That’s when they started working on net neutrality.
Fuck your bullshit slant. It wasn’t “conservative Democratic lawmakers”, it was Joe Manchin. We all know Joe Manchin is purple at best. Maybe if we’d had more than a skin-of-our-teeth majority in free Senate, Joe Fucking Manchin wouldn’t be a problem.
It’s been in the cooking pot for a while. It just took a while to come to fruition
I’m glad for the win, but until this is something that’s formally legislated by Congress we’re just going to be ping-ponging back and forth depending on which party has majority control of the FCC. What we really need are Congresspersons who are savvy enough to understand and address modern tech problems effectively.
And Trump’s jackass reversed the Obama guy’s thing in like January of his first year. Now we get proper regulation for less than a year again, assuming Biden continues kissing Israel’s ass.
So the choice is vote for Biden who has acknowledged and stated that the violence in Gaza needs to stop. Or vote for Trump who declared that Gaza should be blown to hell.
Sorry, who was kissing Israel’s ass?
Saying they should be stopped while arming them is kissing ass.
Or you dumb fucks could try voting
