Will Losing Net Neutrality Affect How We See the Forum?

[iluvemojis]

Hello! For those of you in America, there’s going to be a vote on whether net neutrality will be repealed (I’m sure a lot of Americans if not all have heard of it). l don’t really understand net neutrality and l wanted to know if someone could explain if/how it would affect forum use.

[SD12]

Hey, I'm an American but I'm still a bit fuzzy on exact details. Basically, from my understanding, net neutrality prevents internet service providers from charging people more for access to specific websites. If you are paying for internet already, you wouldn't be charged more for access to another website or streaming website. If it was removed, things would be a lot more costly and you wouldn't be able to access websites you didn't pay for or websites that didn't pay up. I don't know how that would affect the forum though, but like I said I'm no expert.

[Usagi]

39 minutes ago, iluvemojis said:

 

Hello! For those of you in America, there’s going to be a vote on whether net neutrality will be repealed (I’m sure a lot of Americans if not all have heard of it). l don’t really understand net neutrality and l wanted to know if someone could explain if/how it would affect forum use.

Actually even if the FCC votes yes, the congress/senate will be able to approve or disapprove the the decision. So we have that! That and they would probably only charge the websites that are popular, and do it in packages. Websites like Youtube would all be in one package. Social media would all be in one package. The forum may not be affected after initial prices. 

[iluvemojis]

15 hours ago, SD12 said:

Hey, I'm an American but I'm still a bit fuzzy on exact details. Basically, from my understanding, net neutrality prevents internet service providers from charging people more for access to specific websites. If you are paying for internet already, you wouldn't be charged more for access to another website or streaming website. If it was removed, things would be a lot more costly and you wouldn't be able to access websites you didn't pay for or websites that didn't pay up. I don't know how that would affect the forum though, but like I said I'm no expert.

That’s what I’m wondering as well, whether the forum will have to pay fees or if we would have to pay fees to access it. 

15 hours ago, TsundereKushami said:

Actually even if the FCC votes yes, the congress/senate will be able to approve or disapprove the the decision. So we have that! That and they would probably only charge the websites that are popular, and do it in packages. Websites like Youtube would all be in one package. Social media would all be in one package. The forum may not be affected after initial prices. 

Thank you! This gave me a lot of hope. l do hope that our forum is able to continue running

[Usagi]

3 hours ago, iluvemojis said:

 

That’s what I’m wondering as well, whether the forum will have to pay fees or if we would have to pay fees to access it. 

Thank you! This gave me a lot of hope. l do hope that our forum is able to continue running

I really do as well! I just joined but I enjoy it a lot thus far! 

[Tassielli]

Hello all,

 

net neutrality does a great many things in order to keep the internet and all websites free and equally accessible; most importantly t prevents service providers like Comcast and Verizon from creating fast lanes and slow lanes for websites, or blocking content entirely.

 

If it's going away (and it seems likely that it will as republicans will most likely hold the FCC decision), there are a great many things which could happen. ISPs may charge domains in order to be in the fast lanes or even have reasonable download speeds, which for paid services like Netflix, where download speed is tantamount, will most likely drive up consumer costs. However, this option is not as likely  as a tiered internet, similar to your cable plan.

 

Ajit Pai, a former verizon employee and current chariman of the FCC, claims that getting rid of it will create a competitive market for internet similar to cable (not feasible due to the lack of ISPs in many areas). Basically, "areas" of the internet will be packaged into categories like gaming, social media, email, scholarly/educational, etc. You can choose which ones to buy based on your needs. This can be problematic for sites like fan fiction, AO3,  because they fall into what will most like be an "other" or extra package, and are likely to exist in "slow lanes" regardless (or so the CS world speculates) However, because these website are largely text based, they are not significant downloads and most likely speed will not be too affected if this occurs (thank god!), but less trafficked or profitable sites that stream or have large download content are in double. 

 

My personal concern with SFF is that many ISPs classify it as porn and many people are worried that porn will be the most throttled content should net neutrality be reversed. Once again, SFF being mostly text based content will probably still load a semi reasonable speed, but it bards to be sure as ISPs will have the ability to block things completely

 

This is all just speculation, but most everyone is certain it will somehow cost consumers more. I recommend you research portugals internet providing services if you are curious as they operate with net neutrality and have a tiered interment system the likes of which might be coming to the US.