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Mozilla Democrats Government Republicans The Internet United States Politics

Americans From Both Political Parties Overwhelmingly Support Net Neutrality, Poll Shows (mozilla.org) 245

Posted by msmash from the agreement-on-something dept.
Mozilla conducted a survey in which it found that a majority of Americans do not trust the government to protect Internet access. From an article, shared by a reader: A recent public opinion poll carried out by Mozilla and Ipsos revealed overwhelming support across party lines for net neutrality, with over three quarters of Americans (76%) supporting net neutrality. Eighty-one percent of Democrats and 73% of Republicans are in favor of it. Another key finding: Most Americans do not trust the U.S. government to protect access to the Internet. Seventy percent of Americans place no or little trust in the Trump administration or Congress (78%) to do so. Mozilla and Ipsos carried out the poll in late May, on the heels of the FCC's vote to begin dismantling Obama-era net neutrality rules. We polled approximately 1,000 American adults across the U.S., a sample that included 354 Democrats, 344 Republicans, and 224 Independents.
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Americans From Both Political Parties Overwhelmingly Support Net Neutrality, Poll Shows More

Americans From Both Political Parties Overwhelmingly Support Net Neutrality, Poll Shows

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  • People don't know what they are talking about (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @02:23PM (#54570585)

    Most Americans do not trust the U.S. government to protect access to the Internet. Seventy percent of Americans place no or little trust in the Trump administration or Congress (78%) to do so.

    And yet that is exactly what they are asking for with Net Neutrality...

    • Re:People don't know what they are talking about (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xenx ( 2211586 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @02:30PM (#54570667)
      And the fact that the government is removing said protections just shows that most Americans are right not to trust them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mveloso ( 325617 )

        There are no protections per se, since they never went into effect.

        • A Protection/policy/law that is slated to be implemented is generally followed by businesses before it actively goes into effect, so that they are in compliance when it does go into effect. It gets them ahead of the curve and allows them to find issues they might have complying, before penalties for non-compliance come due.

      • What protections?

    • How does dismantling NN protect access to the internet?

      • Takes the government out of the position of defining exactly what is QoS (hence legal prioritization). Can't trust 'em.

        There are no net neutrality rules that require all packets to be treated the same, because making QoS illegal breaks the net.

    • And yet that is exactly what they are asking for with Net Neutrality...

      Trusting the government to manage something in a limiting way and trusting a government to introduce regulation preventing the limiting of something are polar opposites.

      People know fine what they are talking about. Unfortunately many people here on Slashdot just look up the term government regulation in the dictionary and apply it black and white, all or nothing, in every scenario.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Sure. If all your doctor was a drunken quack, and you didn't have a choice of another doctor, you wouldn't trust him to save your life.

      But you'd still want him to.

    • This is kind of the fundamental problem with NN.

      I've long argued and it was obvious from being on Slashdot during the initial cash grab plans that pretty much everyone but the people hoping to rob us want NN. The real problem is with what we can DO about it. The government isn't exactly trustworthy either, so granting them broad powers is dangerous.

      And yet, if we can find a more reasonable solution, we all want an internet where everyone gets to participate on an even footing, without the ISPs screwing ev

  • ...people who own stock in Comcast, AOL Time Warner and/or AT&T.
    • No... while I do own stock in T and VZ, I am very much in favor of Network Neutrality. Comcast/Charter could be different, but I believe the big telco's are best served with an advanced, educated population and a growing economy. Short-sighted profit seeking with "fast lanes" does not fit into this scenario.

  • What about the only stat that matters? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @02:26PM (#54570621) Journal

    These numbers are of little importance. What do people with lots of unoccupied land around them think about net neutrality? That's the most important statistic in American democracy.

    • America isn't a democracy. The only statistic that matters is what do people who actually make the laws think?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sconeu ( 64226 )

        The only statistic that matters is what do the people who throw briefcases full of bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hcampaing contributions at Congress think?

  • Net Neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @02:29PM (#54570665)

    Of course no one wants Net Neutrality violated.

    Republicans don't want the anti-business and anti-capitalism of blocking people from freely trading.

    Democrats want equality of opportunity to all people.

    Net Neutrality fits the rulebook for both parties.

    • Re:Net Neutrality (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @02:53PM (#54570901)

      Those theoretical ideals are not relevant. This is a class issue.

      The upper class wants to be able to further its wealth through monopolism and rent-seeking. The lower class wants to maintain affordability and full access.

      Generally speaking, the upper class wins. The lower class has to hate it a whole lot to focus enough effort on fighting for it, and usually that just doesn't happen.

      • Generally speaking, the upper class wins

        In the US over the last 30 years, sure. Historically speaking, not even close.

  • Who cares, most politicians don't (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @02:30PM (#54570675)

    For close to two decades this site has been peppering us with stories of elected officials across the political spectrum trying to regulate the internet.
    They just use a constant cycle of attrition against us to get what they want.

    The people overwhelmingly decry bill_x?
    Wait a few months, call it something else, and go again until the people stop protesting. Let's not actually listen to the will of the people or industry or anything.

    Just keep grinding until we have all the control we want.

  • They don't trust the government to protect internet access, but they want the government to do it anyway. SMH

    • Re:These Americans seem confused (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @02:38PM (#54570759) Homepage Journal

      They don't trust the government to protect internet access, but they want the government to do it anyway. SMH

      They want them to do it, but don't expect that they will. What part of this is difficult to comprehend?

    • Probably because government is the only entity that can protect internet service. It seems to me that they - rightly - don't trust the current government to do so.

    • They don't trust the government to protect internet access, but they want the government to do it anyway.

      Correct. We want government to function properly. Republicans want government to malfunction horribly. Republicans control the government. Therefore, we believe that a shitheel FCC commissioner who uses phrases like "honor their wishes" when talking about the comments of a fucking astroturfing botnet can only be trusted to do what Comcast tells him to do, despite our wishes.

      We thought Tom Wheeler was going to be an industry shill, because that was his job for many years before he became FCC Chair. He s

      • They don't trust the government to protect internet access, but they want the government to do it anyway.

        Correct. We want government to function properly.

        If you expect a whole slew of gigantic super-bureaucracies, which is what the current US government is, to not be supremely corrupt, dysfunctional, and unresponsive to citizens, you expect what has never been and will never be.

        Strat

  • There are tons of things Americans support (Score:5, Insightful)

    by liquid_schwartz ( 530085 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @02:40PM (#54570779)
    Most Americans support estate taxes on millionaires, most Americans do not support mass illegal immigration, and if the option "none of the above" was allowed it would have won the last election. Unfortunately most Americans are not as well connected as moneyed interests who buy (AKA fund) elections. If we had a functioning democracy, instead of the oligarchy that we currently have, I'm sure things would be both much different and better.

    Citations:

    http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]

  • but seeing as how we're not really a democracy [bbc.com] I don't see how it matters. Wake me up when we've switched to a parliamentary system with no voter registration process and an executive elected by popular vote.

  • I wonder what percent of the people actually understand what net neutrality is? Pretty low I guess.

    • Very low. That's ok. It is people like us that should be educating them on what it is, why it is important, and making sure we are active in voicing our opinion to the companies and government.

      Dumbing down the discussion to "remember how Netflix used to go to really bad resolution when you tried to watch TV?" or "If there is no Network Neutrality, your ISP could decide to make it too slow to go to NRA.org, FoxNews, or Brietbart without paying extra money."

  • Next up (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @02:50PM (#54570879)

    Poll shows an overwhelming majority of Americans from both parties have no idea what net neutrality is.

  • Look it up. U.S. is a republic.

    Thank goodness for that too . . .

  • "We polled approximately 1,000 American adults across the U.S., a sample that included 354 Democrats, 344 Republicans, and 224 Independents."

    Apparently polling 1,000 citizens out of a population of 330 million now tells us how the majority of Americans feel.

    I guess the sample size makes sense, since the other 99.9999% of the population doesn't have a fucking clue what Net Neutrality is, nor do they give a shit.

    At least now we can add titles worthy of being called fake news to the infamous tool we use to manipulate the masses. Why even bother polling? Just cut straight to the bullshit next time.

    • Do you honestly not know how surveys work?

      • Do you honestly not know how surveys work?

        Yes. I also understand why statistical results are often dismissed and mocked as bullshit and hype too.

        Watering down statistical analysis with such an obscenely small sample size tends to showcase its capability to assume which provides little or no real value, especially when polling about something that does affect the majority of the population.

        And in the day and age of social media, it's pretty fucking easy to get a poll in front of the actual majority, making any and all excuses to not do so rather la

  • Hm, really?
    An ONLINE poll collected from SELF-SELECTED volunteers through an ONLINE panel of people who like to take polls (WTF?) and who are then culled according to:
    "Suppliers who meet the following criteria are deemed Acceptable (meaning we continue our recruitment efforts with them):
    - Responsive panelists (with high response rates, click/conversion rates)
    - High volume and low percentage of duplicate/bad data
    - High

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by argStyopa ( 232550 )

      stupid pre 21st century shit-code slashdot.

      My point was to illustrate that this was hardly a 'neutral' pool - they were a pool of enthusiastic internet users who (likely, as they regularly want to participate in polls) are probably unemployed.

  • Most Americans have in their heads have an opinion on what net neutrality means to them regardless of what's in the legislation. This can lead to disastrous outcomes, case in point the affordable care act. People thought this would make their healthcare more affordable but for many it has done the exact opposite. The same is possible for net neutrality and it allows people to assign their own meanings to it making it palatable to a larger group..

  • Most people thought Netflix was about NN (Score:3)

    by thule ( 9041 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @04:49PM (#54571947) Homepage
    ... and most people are wrong. People thought that ISP's were shaping Netflix traffic. ISP's were NOT shaping Netflix traffic. It was a peering problem where one party didn't want to upgrade the peering links. Most people assume the culprit must be the evil ISP, but that wasn't true. Cogent didn't want to upgrade the links because they like their settlement-free peering links. When they took on Netflix as a customer, those numbers changed and they didn't want to pay for it. The best solution was for Netflix to make their own peering agreements outside of Cogent. Problem solved.

  • This whole thing is more about the selection of a catchy name and less about the actual rules than most people know. I'm guessing the polled people don't really understand what "Net Neutrality" is. Heck, even the FCC commissioners don't fully understand what a mess "Net Neutrality" actually is and how it's neither good networking nor Neutral as written. Oh no, it's really just a lobbyist written set if rules designed to protect carriers and not making the internet Neutral in any way.

    So, shame on the pol

  • "I support Net Neutrality" but "I don't want the government to regulate the internet"

    As much as I want to believe all the people that say regulating the Internet as a utility would allow us to keep net neutrality without allowing the FCC to impose other regulations.... I have to remind people that the FCC is why you can't say '7 naughty words' on television. They are also in the business of enforcing monopolistic advantages for the big companies that pay for spectrum at auction, instead of using the comm
  • I want a survey of the major campaign contributors. That's what really drives change.
  • Silly "citizens." The only thing that matters is what the current FCC chairman thinks.

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