The New York Times (Falsely) Informs Its 7 Million Readers Net Neutrality Is 'Pointless'

from the maybe-do-some-research-first dept

Let's be clear about something: the net neutrality fight has always really been about monopolization and a lack of broadband competition. Net neutrality violations, whether it's wireless carriers blocking competing mobile payment services or an ISP blocking competing voice services, are just symptoms of a lack of competition. If we had meaningful competition in broadband, we wouldn't need net neutrality rules because consumers would vote with their wallets and leave an ISP that behaved like an asshole.

But American broadband is dominated by just a handful of very politically powerful telecom giants fused to our national security infrastructure. Because of this, lawmakers and regulators routinely don't try very hard to fix the problem lest they upset a trusted partner of the FBI/NSA/CIA, or lose out on campaign contributions. As a result, US broadband is heavily monopolized, and in turn, mediocre in nearly every major metric that matters. US ISPs routinely, repeatedly engage in dodgy behavior that sees zero real penalty from our utterly captured regulators.

The net neutrality fight has always really been a proxy fight about whether we want functional government oversight of these monopolies. The monopolies, it should be said, would prefer it if there were absolutely none. It's why for the last 20 years or so they've been on a relentless tear to strip away all state and federal regulatory oversight of their broken business sector, culminating in 2018's repeal of net neutrality -- which not only (and this part is important) killed net neutrality rules, but gutted the FCC's consumer protection authority (right before a pandemic, as it turned out).

The repeal even attempted to ban states from being able to protect consumers from things like billing fraud, an effort the courts haven't looked kindly upon so far. But again, the goal here is clear: zero meaningful oversight of telecom monopolies.

So with that as background, imagine my surprise when New York Times columnist Shira Ovide, whose tech coverage is usually quite insightful, informed the paper's 7.5 million subscribers that this entire several decade quest to thwart corruption and monopolization is "pointless":

"People may scream at me for saying this, but net neutrality is one of America’s longest and now most pointless fights over technology."

Yeah I'm not going to scream (too worn out), but I will politely note that the paper of record has absolutely no idea what it's talking about.

Again, the net neutrality repeal didn't just kill net neutrality! It effectively gutted the FCC's consumer protection authority, shoveling any remaining authority to an FTC the broadband industry knew lacked the resources, authority, or staff to do a good job. That was the entire point. The repeal also tried to ban states from being able to stand up to companies like AT&T and Comcast. The goal: little to no real oversight of one of the more broken, monopolized markets in America. During a pandemic in which broadband is being showcased as essential to survival, healthcare, education, and employment. Anybody calling a fight on this subject "pointless" hasn't taken the time to understand what's actually at stake.

The whole story paints the effort to have some modest oversight of telecom monopolies as droll and pointless. At one point, the story (which is really just the New York Times interviewing itself) even oddly implies the debate over what to do about "big telecom" is irrelevant and that "big tech" is all we really need to worry about:

"However, the debate feels much less urgent now that we’re talking about threats of online disinformation about vaccine deployment and elections. The net neutrality debate focused on internet service providers as powerful gatekeepers of internet information. That term now seems better applied to Facebook, Google and Amazon."

This idea that "big tech" is the root of all of our problems, and that "big telecom" is not worth worrying about is a message AT&T and Comcast have been sending out for the better part of the last several years. Given how often I see this concept parroted by the press and lawmakers, it's been fairly effective. It's certainly been effective on GOP mainstays like Josh Hawley, who performatively insists he's an anti-monopolist, but has never had a single bad word to say about the nation's most obvious monopolistic market (telecom). This isn't some errant coincidence.

But here's the thing: the US is dominated by monopolies. They're everywhere (banking, airlines, telecom, advertising). Here's the crazy part: we can tackle the monopolization impacting numerous industries simultaneously. It's not some either-or proposition where you forget about telecom monopolization because Amazon or Google are also behaving badly. You can make sure the FCC has the authority and resources it needs to police telecom and focus on how to loosen Facebook and Google's dominance over the advertising market.

There are several other instances where the Times demonstrates it really doesn't understand the subject it's covering. Like here, where Ovide suggests that having net neutrality rules are pointless because... Google has undersea cables?:

"When Google has its own undersea internet cables, isn’t the reality that some internet services reach us faster no matter what the law says?"

People who don't understand net neutrality often over-simplify it down to something about how the rules "prevented ISPs from offering faster speeds for some services." But that's never been true. The rules only really care about if an ISP uses network management to harm competitors. The rules also had components that required ISPs be transparent about what kind of broadband connection you're buying so consumers could avoid getting ripped off with connections that promise 30 Mbps but come with all manner of hidden restrictions, throttling, or caveats.

There's one part the Times gets (sort of) right, and it's here:

"There probably isn’t much of a middle ground. There are either net neutrality rules or there aren’t. And the internet service providers see net neutrality as a slippery slope that leads to broader regulation of high-speed internet services or government-imposed limits on prices they can charge. They will fight any regulation. And that’s true, too, of the lobbyists who are hired to argue against anything."

The reason we can't find a middle ground is because the broadband industry refuses to meet anyone even a quarter of the way onto the playing field. When the FCC, in 2010, passed some utterly flimsy, loophole-filled net neutrality rules that didn't even cover wireless, Verizon sued anyway (Google, falsely cited as an advocate of net neutrality by many, even lent a hand, if you recall). Meanwhile the reason Congress can't pass even a modest net neutrality law isn't because there's no desire for a "middle ground," it's because lawmakers are utterly awash in AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Centurylink, Charter, and T-Mobile campaign contributions.

In reality, the broadband industry wants no state or federal oversight of its businesses. Particularly not any oversight that could meaningfully harm their regional monopolies, drive competition to market, and lower consumer rates. And while there are some free market policy folk who still like to pretend that removing regulation of natural monopolies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T somehow results in Utopia (a line they've been feeding the American public for 35 straight years now), that's not the case. When you kill oversight of natural monopolies, while simultaneously refusing to adopt pro-competition policies that seriously challenge them, they only double down on the same bad behaviors. It's a lesson the US seems bizarrely unwilling to learn.

Let's also be clear about something. To feebly justify this handout to industry (something surveys showed an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans opposed), the broadband sector used completely fabricated data. It hired firms that had to resort to using dead and fake people to pretend their policy proposal was a good idea. All to effectively lobotomize the nation's top telecom regulator, leaving it incapable of meaningfully holding telecom giants responsible for fraud and anticompetitive behavior right before a pandemic.

Imagine, for just a second, thinking that the quest for accountability, justice, and common sense on this subject is "pointless."

Filed Under: broadband, competition, net neutrality