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Comment on Net neutrality is back as FCC votes to regulate internet providers

On a serious note, plenty of people here surely know what net neutrality is. Net neutrality is the guarantee that your ISP doesn’t (de-)prioritize traffic or outright block traffic, all packets are treated equally.

That’s true but it’s also the common (but overly shallow) take. It’s applicable here and good enough for the thread, but it’s worth noting that netneutrality is conceptually deeper than throttling and pricing games and beyond ISP shenanigans. The meaning was coined by Tim Wu, who spoke about access equality.

People fixate on performance which I find annoying in face of Cloudflare, who is not an ISP but who has done by far the most substantial damage to netneutrality worldwide by controlling who gets access to ~50%+ of world’s websites. The general public will never come to grasp Cloudflare’s oppression or the scale of it, much less relate it to netneutrality. Which means netneutrality policy is doomed to ignore Cloudflare and focus on ISPs.

Most people at least have some control over which ISP they select. Competition is paltry, but we all have zero control over whether a website they want to use is in Cloudflare’s exclusive walled garden.

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beefcat@beehaw.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
A website isn’t a common carrier, you cannot argue that a website isn’t allowed to control who they serve their content to. Cloudflare is a tool websites use to exercise that right.

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- debanqued@beehaw.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  A website isn’t a common carrier
  
  The discussion is about network neutrality, not just common carriers (which are only part of the netneutrality problem).
  
  you cannot argue that a website isn’t allowed to control who they serve their content to.
  
  Permission wasn’t the argument. When a website violates netneutrality principles, it’s not a problem of acting outside of authority. They are of course permitted to push access inequality.
  
  Cloudflare is a tool websites use to exercise that right,
  
  One man’s freedom is another man’s oppression.
  
  necessitated by the ever rising prevalence of bots and DDoS attacks.
  
  It is /not/ necessary to use a tool as crude and reckless as Cloudflare to defend from attacks with disregard to collateral damage. There are many tools in the toolbox for that and CF is a poor choice.
  
  Your proposed definition of net neutrality would destroy anyone’s ability to deal with these threats.
  
  Only if you neglect to see admins who have found better ways to counter threats that do not make the security problem someone elses.
  
  Can you at least provide examples of legitimate users who are hindered by the use of Cloudflare?
  
  That was in the linked article.
  
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