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Reddit, Twitter, and 200 Others Say Ending Net Neutrality Could Ruin Cyber Monday (theverge.com) 88

Posted by msmash from the avengers,-unite dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: More than 200 businesses and trade organizations have signed a letter to the FCC asking that the agency reconsider its plan to end net neutrality. The letter is signed by an array of big and recognizable tech and web companies: that includes Airbnb, Automattic (which owns WordPress), Etsy, Foursquare, GitHub, Pinterest, Reddit, Shutterstock, Sonos, Square, Squarespace, Tumblr (certainly to the displeasure of its owner, Verizon), Twitter, and Vimeo, among quite a few others. The letter is being released on Cyber Monday and speaks directly to the internet's constantly growing role in the US economy. "The internet is increasingly where commerce happens," the letter says. It cites figures saying that $3.5 billion in online sales happed last year on Cyber Monday and $3 billion on Black Friday. Throughout all of last year, online purchases accounted for $400 billion in sales.
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Reddit, Twitter, and 200 Others Say Ending Net Neutrality Could Ruin Cyber Monday More

Reddit, Twitter, and 200 Others Say Ending Net Neutrality Could Ruin Cyber Monday

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  • Finally, a convincing argument (Score:5, Funny)

    by HalAtWork ( 926717 ) on Monday November 27, 2017 @03:42PM (#55632335)

    Finally, a convincing argument to end net neutrality

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Eldaar ( 5056619 )
      Possible FCC Reactions:
      Oh, repealing net neutrality would hinder a free and open exchange of ideas to promote democracy and mutual understanding? That's too bad, and we disagree because....

      Wait, it might cost corporations money? Oh, maybe it is a bad idea, after all.

      ---


      Yeah, it turns out that many current officials in government will only listen when money is on the line.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Phusion ( 58405 )
        After reading this head line, I more or less thought the same thing.. "well, they plead for sanity and that didn't work, so it's time to explain how much money they could lose"

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 )

      I am a supporter of Net Neutrality. However off the wall statements doesn't help the cause. Being that I expect 80% of Cyber Monday is via Amazon, and 15% going via other big names. That these companies are willing to pay for premium access. What is more worrisome, is that in today's political climate. That pressure can be put on the ISPs to Slow down companies that they don't like. Currently CNN by the Trump administration. But when the Democrats get back in office, it could target Fox News. Slowing

      • This is just /.'s what, dozenth post of editorials in favor of FCC Title II Net Neutrality rules in the last few days?

        We get it already, the /. editors are going all out to preserve FCC regulation of Internet access.

        Here's a different view, based on actual economics and studies and stuff... [marginalrevolution.com]

        I'm one of the ones who think the FCC regulating Internet access under Title II just leads over time to established/entrenched interests using that to preserve the status quo and prevent innovation and change which might

        • I'm one of the ones who think the FCC regulating Internet access under Title II just leads over time to established/entrenched interests using that to preserve the status quo and prevent innovation and change which might disrupt them in favor of consumers, but hey, as long as /. has a soap box, they're going to keep shouting their view over and over and over again until even people on their side are going to be so annoyed they will stop listening.

          What a fantastically empty arguement! I love it. I really do. Title II leads to established/entrenched interests, right? Pretty much what we have right now. Gotcha. OK, so what then? REPEAL NN so those entrenched players can now go hogwild and do whatever the hell they want with the internet? Yeah, that makes sense.

          I think most of us don't really care much about the established/entrenched status of internet access. It just is, it's not going to change, no law will change that, and probably shouldn'

          • You don't seem to understand how government commissions work... how they've always worked. Try looking up the history of a few of them, it's a pretty well known cycle.

            Some "reformer" says, "Hey, here's this problem, let's have a government commission make some regulations about it!" and people go, "That does sound like a problem, great idea!"

            So the regulatory commission takes it on and "solves" it with some regulations. They aren't exactly what the reformer's crowd would have done, but after some input from

      • I am a supporter of Net Neutrality. However off the wall statements doesn't help the cause.

        Same trouble with opposing climate change. It's certain to be bad, but it's too abstract to get many people to care. Specific bad things to motivate people are predictions, and when people find out it's only POSSIBLE, not DEFINITE, they feel like they've been lied to and excuse themselves to go back to apathy.

  • Please reconsider.

    Instead of doing anything to stop you, we'll just pretend we care and ask you to stop. We don't want established players such as ourselves to have a death grip on the industry. No, not at all. So please, won't you reconsider?

  • It's not that bad (Score:3)

    by viperidaenz ( 2515578 ) on Monday November 27, 2017 @03:46PM (#55632365)

    If cyber monday and black friday only get 3x an average day in sales, that's like the difference in mall sales between a Saturday and a Monday.
    I would have thought the difference was bigger than that.

  • Store located on Elm Street claims making Elm Street less accessible will be catastrophic.

    News at 11.

  • If it is that important then ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Monday November 27, 2017 @03:57PM (#55632407) Journal
    OK. This is how the law makers are going to think.

    If it is that important to these players, and if they are handling that much of commerce, why the hell they did not spend enough in lobbying (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) to "educate" me using the proper channels (i.e K street firms staffed by ex senators and reps). The way I see it now, all these firms are making this load of money and they are not paying proper tribute, no no not tribute, campaign contributions, to us. Under what premise these companies expect any help from us? What part of pay to play they don't understand?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      True, where the heck is Google, Facebook, and Amazon? They and their founders have deep pockets and grease their palms.

  • "beware of Greeks bearing gifts"?

    Can we still say that on the internet?

  • And if you have to ask how net neutrality is protecting cyber monday then we're just going to accuse you of being stupid, mostly because we don't have any case to explain this.

  • There is no way in hell the ISPs are going to mess with eCommerce except where it pertains to bandwidth-heavy goods and services. That would be so greedy and such an assault on ordinary users that it would make the average Republican voter become open-minded to nationalizing the big ISPs and making utilities out of them. It would rank right up there on the level of stupid as fining grandma for downloading family photos and using Facebook to talk to her grandkids.

  • So who do you want controlling your access to the free market? Verizon, Comcast or AT&T?

    • Re:So who do you want... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dragonslicer ( 991472 ) on Monday November 27, 2017 @04:35PM (#55632639)

      So who do you want controlling your access to the free market? Verizon, Comcast or AT&T?

      Wait, I get a choice?

      • So who do you want controlling your access to the free market? Verizon, Comcast or AT&T?

        Wait, I get a choice?

        No, not really. Just the illusion of choice.

        • The illusion being it's possible to chose someone who provides bandwidth, service and pricing that is half decent.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Xyrus ( 755017 )

        Actually, rolling back net neutrality might be a good thing. Think about it. People are saying we're becoming zoned into all of our devices. We're always online, we don't talk to people anymore, so on and so forth. I think this is exactly what's needed to get us back to real socializing.

        So let the big ISPs start treating the internet like cable. Let them charge $20 for acces to facebook, $50 for access to netflix, etc. Internet access is already ridiculously expensive when compared to other developed countr

  • The FCC is not above the law (Score:5, Informative)

    by volkris ( 694 ) on Monday November 27, 2017 @05:10PM (#55632871)

    Fortunately, the FCC isn't empowered to make such decisions on their own. The tech companies need to be speaking to Congress if they want the laws changed, and legislators will work on legislation to change the US government policy.

    I assume the tech giants, knowing how our government is set up, understand this and are just using their letter as a publicity stunt.

    In any case, we absolutely should not promote the idea that regulatory agencies have such a free hand to implement whatever policies they can be convinced to implement.

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