A plan to fix the internet: Put the government in charge | Hacker News Reader

A plan to fix the internet: Put the government in charge

washingtonpost.com

19 pointsedward15 comments

This article adds some context:

https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/internet-costs-compared...

The US prices would be better if we could subsidize competitors until there were about three choices per consumer.

I don't know of any major markets that don't have '3 choices/person'. Rural areas are kinda left out, but with increasing consts of fibre, I doubt that will change soon.

& competitors already get subsidized; tax write-offs.

10 dial-up only providers, a dish that caps out at 10mbps vs one a broadband provider who is the only one with anything considered actual high-speed isn't competition.

This was the case is multiple places I've lived in the Midwest.

I live in Midwest now (KS). Yea, that was true 10 years ago, but even 4G is decent in rural areas now. & there are 2-3 dish providers in some areas.

+ my point is, most population don't have that limited choices.

It also sounds like a plan to take fix that last bit of privacy US citizens still have.

Some don't realize the fix is often worse than the problem.

A better approach is to declare certain web tech as public utility, like a search engine, there has been zero innovation that has changed the marketshare.

So Yahoo! search remains a rival of Google? The assumption of innovation not changing market share doesn't seem to hold. Hell, Bing is known in some circles as a bettet search engine for porn only.

Utility designation is a common but vapid "solution" that doesn't define what relevant restrictions would be placed, let alone how it would help. It can mean anything from trying price fixing for ad revenues to effectively spam and censorship bureaus. Or worse - demanding that their prioritization engine not prioritize! A plan so bad it sounds like a blind copy from the concept of it applying to ISPs, a domain where it would make actual sense.

https://search.brave.com/

>Bing is known in some circles as a bettet search engine for porn only.

I honestly fail to see how that is a compelling argument for why search engines should be as private as they are now.

>Utility designation is a common but vapid "solution" that doesn't define what relevant restrictions would be placed, let alone how it would help

Fundamentally it would be about giving a fair shoot to competition to actually innovate on things that matter, by opening + standardizing the search tech that has become de facto standard and it's more like we replace x86_64 with ARM64 before we see a new search engine replace Google.

While I think that state owned tech companies is far from desirable, I believe that one kind of law can make internet a pleasant and competitive place: interoperability.

Now we need to find a way to:

1. Convince law makers that it's important

2. Find incentives not to make bloated standards like we have today (OpenID Connect, HDMI, USB C...)

3. Find an appealing model so we can move on the web3 craze where the protocols' designers get all the $$

https://archive.is/ZoshV

> give the government control over communication so they can stop "virulent misinformation", as defined by them

How about no

How about 'not just no, but heck-no'? ;)

Yea I figured the article would devolve to censorship just by headline.

Which one?

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