FCC votes to restore net neutrality (opens in new tab)

I suspect California's "California Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act of 2018" had a positive (from users' perspective) "chilling effect" on ISPs, as well as the center-stage focus on the issue itself. No one wanted to be the first to step out in front of that speeding train and get run over in the court of public opinion.

Comcast or Verizon would 100% have started plowing the fertile earth of "fast-lane fees" by now if they could've started doing so quietly.

How does it affect an American in everyday life? I've never known anything but net neutrality in Europe.

not really. I have no idea what went on "under the hood", but it certainly wasn't anything I noticed.

I do think NN is better than nothing, but I'm not sure it's exactly the right model either. iirc, the main risk called out was different QoS for different traffic types, possibly with the ability to pay to get yours prioritized? the teenage libertarian version of me very much liked the idea of the internet being a "dumb pipe", but I don't see QoS as being intrinsically wrong now. there are some applications (video chat, mp games, etc) where it is very important that packets arrive mostly in order and with minimal latency. there are other applications (async data transfer) where it doesn't matter as much.

to me, the core issue is that I just don't trust companies like comcast, and I rarely have a viable alternative. NN seems like more of a bandaid than fixing the root cause.

California already enforces net neutrality, which is basically a de facto protection for the rest of the country. It is not unreasonable for the federal government to take over enforcement of something that is very much their responsibility (the internet is quite possibly peak interstate commerce).

> That never really happened.

A few reasons this might be true:

1. States like California passed their on laws enforcing net neutrality, making it much more difficult for national ISPs to implement the expected predatory practices

2. It takes time to implement new processes, and it was never clear that NN would stay dead, so ISPs wouldn't want to invest too heavily in fear of a day like today.

3. It might have happened to some users and you didn't see it. It of course was never expected that the moment NN was repealed, everyone's internet everywhere would turn to sludge.

That's because, to my knowledge, none of the major internet providers took advantage of it being eliminated, presumably because the idea of "faster internet access to Netlfix" or whatever didn't test well with audiences who were used to the status quo of net neutrality. Had the ban remained in place, it's possible that status quo would have been slowly been eroded.

EDIT: Upon reading another comment, and California's Net Neutrality law, it's also possible that ISPs didn't deem it worth it to see if California would sue companies that provide net-neutral service to Californians but non-net neutral service to out-of Californians.