Hello everyone! If you haven't already heard, today is Internet Slowdown day, where sites will display loading screens to show the effects of this FCC proceeding. If you are like me, you want your Internet to be inclusive, and free to use site-wise. No one wants an exclusive Internet. File a complaint and save what we love!
the irony to these site loading things that have appeared all over the place are that they make zero difference to my loading times anyway
I understand as well. Currently being forced to use a VPN to use Steam, connect to my email for school, and anything that requires using Internet outside of a web browser, all while getting around 2.5/0.25 speeds, after being advertised 5/1. (I heard you could barely load webpages as well or something earlier.)
FYI sites aren't actually going to slow down your internet, it's just basically showing the loading symbol to remind you of how shitty your internet might perform if net neutrality gets abolished.
Can we get a list of websites doing it? I know PornHub is doing it, but that is the only one I know that is.
It's nice to see the issue getting continued publicity. While many likely already know, I encourage anyone who hasn't learned about net neutrality to look into the political and social aspects of the issue. Net Neutrality is a vital issue for the future of the internet, and the social and political change which it has helped to create. If you havn't already, I'd encourage everyone to sign one or more of the various petitions going around promoting Net Neutrality, as well as contacting your congressman/senator (or national equivalent) to voice support for an open internet. If we let corporations (ISPs) and governments (I'm looking at you, China and Britain) keep sticking their nose into controlling the internet, there won't be much of an internet left in a decade or two.
why do you feel sorry for us nothing is slowing down. Just some sites were going to pop up a loading message that you had to close. That's all this crap is nothing is slowing down.
Let me remind you that the UK is completely shatting all over internet freedoms recently as well. At least Britain is, I dunno how much of it you guys may or may not be catching, but Cameron's "dur save the children" line as an excuse to create a whitelisted web is as cancerous, if not more so, than US political process being bought out by anti-consumer ISPs. Both situations are utterly disgusting, mind you, but remember that the US isn't the only one with internet problems. And I won't even mention China.
So let's see, some torrent sites have been blacklisted and GCHQ have snooped on us a little for the american NSA. Oh yes. Our internet situation is terrible. Seriously. The only blacklisted shit pretty much consists of a few torrent sites specialiskng in piracy (TPB for example) and extreme porn (rapey or violent shit that only freaks can get off to surely?). The US and China situations are far worse.
It's more about the precedent being set, that is the British government stating that it is their right to monitor and police the activity of internet users, and ban that activity which it finds distasteful. Sure, right now it's torrent sites and very questionable pornography, however it is the beginning of a slippery slope that leads directly into something like China's great firewall. Allowing a government to censor any activity online is a dangerous precedent that opens the door for widespread abuses in the name of "protecting the children" or some other such misdirected efforts by politicians entirely out of touch with the issue.
Yet we still have neutrality. anyway, our government isn't tech competent or even knowledgable enough to handle it properly. Its a thin veil to make old people happy. Take the pirate bay for instance - all they did was create more proxies and mirrors of it. Knock one down, 300 pop up. If this is all we face then I'm fine with it because its actually quite entertaining to see. http://unblocked.ws/
Having net neutrality isn't a matter of if you can still access blocked domains through use of subversive systems (proxies, VPNs, etc.), it's a matter of if your government and/or internet service providers are engaging in attempts to produce a non-neutral network environment. If my ISP throttles my access to certain sites, and I bypass that using a VPN, my ISP is still guilty of anti-net-neutral actions. Likewise if my government blocks access to a website like the Pirate Bay, enterprising people will immediately create alternative routes, however my government is still guilty of infractions against a net-neutral internet state. Governments and corporations are currently slow and incompetent in their attempts to censor/throttle/limit internet access, however that does not mean that we should allow them to continue these actions until they figure out how to do it more effectively. In my opinion, unrestricted access to the internet should be considered a basic standard utility, like access to clean drinking water and electricity. Corporations who engage in anti-consumer operations to limit and control access should be heavily fined, or criminally prosecuted for continued infractions. Governments, such as China, who censor their citizen's access to the internet should be sanctioned by international regulatory bodies. The internet is a revolutionary development for humanity as a whole, and its control cannot be entrusted to profit driven corporate entities and inept political nanny states who have already clearly demonstrated that they are incredibly unworthy of its control. The internet needs to remain a global platform for global voices, uncensored by political parties and unadulterated by corporate greed, regardless of where you access it from or who provides the connection.
