One of the things I really love about Katie is that she doesn't pretend she didn't think something in the past that she now has a new position on, and this episode is a great demonstration of that. She's intellectually honest to a degree that is very rare in the universe of political commentary. The degree of honesty and nuance that both Katie and Jesse show are why I am happy to be a paying subscriber. Keep it up!
At last a topic I feel I can really talk on with authority 🤣. Not only is he still alive and kicking, he’s still gigging. He did a series of concerts with Blossoms covering The Smiths and he was hands down brilliant. They got him to do a full set at Glasto 23.
So, John Oliver seems like a real prick in this. Ajit Pai, a man appointed under Obama had his life and his family's life turned into chaos because Oliver decided to pick on him. Previously I thought of Oliver as a well meaning, if opportunistic, comedian with aspirations to journalism, but the way this story shakes out, he's actually a legitimate force for evil in the world.
Has Oliver ever apologised for being wrong and causing this hell go rain down on this guy? Hell, has even acknowledged that he was wrong? I remember Penn and Teller's Bullshit, and one thing I respected them for, was they literally had an episode calling bullshit on their own show. I don't think Oliver has ever done anything remotely like this.
I’m unconvinced by the Wehe results. I’m not a network engineer so any wireless professionals/CCIEs out there please correct me if I’m wrong but there are considerable technical and regulatory constraints to providing mobile bandwidth: spectrum licenses have to be bought, and transmitting traffic traffic without a wire is harder in every possible way.
Wireless carriers throttling bandwidth taxing video allows other nearby users to not have a terrible experience. This is equivalent to the “Friday night pornhub throttling” thing mentioned in the previous thread. After all, if you’re streaming video over data there could be someone less than a mile away *using the same cell tower as you to call 911. Do we want to mess with that phone call? Yes, there are no shortage of marvels that allow thousands of subscribers to use the same cell towers. But there are entirely non nefarious reasons for wireless providers to throttle video.
It is worth noting that all of the supposedly throttled content was video. t-Mobile, and likely other carriers, limit video to 720p unless you have a higher tier plan and turn on HD video. They tell you this explicitly and, per the comment from the engineering professor on Part 1, is an example of throttling based on traffic type not who it is from. About 80% of internet traffic is video so if you are managing a network to control congestion the main thing you would throttle would be video. Also, since apparently video from all sources was throttled it doesn’t sound like the carriers are picking winners and losers.
I can’t recall where I read it so may not be right, but I believe one way cell providers throttle is by first allowing you high speeds but then slowing you down if you continually download large quantities of data in a short period of time.
Yes - it isn't _exactly_ true that only one person at one time can be using a piece of the liscenced radio spectrum that a carrier has leased, but it is close enough to being true to people outside of the industry and that is the physical limitation. If you are sending singals via a cable in the ground you don't have an equivalent limitation.
I believe voice data is already prioritized in cellular networks, so throttling video data over other non-video data is discriminating based on content.
Throttling has to be done at the tower level, and for non-voice traffic nearly no towers will be able to discern the actual content sent in a packet. All the tower really sees are ones and zeroes. They can tell how much a particular subscriber is sending and receiving and throttle from there, but the actual content of the traffic is immaterial in that decision.
Another way of putting this is that if they were throttling video on cellular data for any other reason that technical considerations, then why do we not see AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile do the same throttling on their wired home internet services?
Not sure what you mean by `technical considerations'. They have a finite amount of bandwidth and they want to give more people access to that bandwidth so that they can make more money.
One person always using the bandwidth impacts the people who are sporadically using bandwidth because too many people are trying to use the service. This is the fault of the provider for allowing too many people to access the service.
And ISPs do throttle wired, home connections. Small downloads happen very quickly because they provide a lot of bandwidth temporarily. But if the download continues the speed will drop. They used to advertise this as a feature.
Video was the only thing studied in the Wehe study, and they were not testing particular types of content. From the study:
"Apps tested by Wehe For this study, Wehe uses traces recorded from YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, NBC Sports, Vimeo, Spotify, and Skype."
On wireline throttling:
"Throttling via WiFi In the vast majority of ISPs tested via WiFi, our methodology did not detect throttling. The exceptions were the UAE blocking Skype (1 instance), and five other providers in North America. At least three of these five (Viasat, Hughes and NextLink) are satellite providers, and are likely more bandwidth constrained."
So not only do the authors basically not see wireline throttling, they admit that bandwith capacity is a legitimate mitigating factor. This is what I meant by 'technical considerations'
> This is the fault of the provider for allowing too many people to access the service.
If we want to go down that path get ready more expensive cell service for fewere people. If providers were required to gaurentee every connected line will always have capacity, this will prevent low cost carreriers from leasing network access from larger carriers, and even the AT&T/Verizon/TMUS couldn't make gaurentees like that. There is a reason literally no consumer wirelessbroadband has this restriction, it would make everyone worse off. 100% cellular network uptime is simply not realistic for a whole host of reasons
This is not true for LTE calls, only for wifi calls (or other VoIP, like Vonage). There is a separate carrier (think a side band) for true voice calls. Everything else competes for the same general internet bandwidth, but honestly cable modem networks running DOCSIS 3.1 do this pretty well nowadays, which is why wifi calling mostly works fine even when you're doing a big download.
(Source: me, I do work for my company at IETF, and was heavily involved in low-latency work for several years in the late 2010's.)
The towers likely are not doing much packet inspection but the upstream portion of the network can and does. Decisions on how to handle data can then be communicated back to the tower to reduce the number of slots given to the user.
Thank you so much for this story, Katie. I have been waiting for the definitive retrospective on Net Neutrality for years. The blind activism set off my bullshit detector from the start, but I didn't have the complete narrative. I used to love Jon Stewart and John Oliver, but they are the perfect personifications of righteous ignorance that has defined the last 10 years.
Like others, I'm very skeptical of the Wehe study. There are so many factors that influence wireless performance that I don't see how they possibly could control for them all (distance from tower, congestion, etc.) - factors that just typically don't exist on wired networks in the same way.
Finally, Jesse - Jesus Christ. Wil Wheaton didn't have a minor role on TNG - he had a starring role. It's like you didn't even watch the show, which is inexplicable since it is objectively the greatest show ever made. I have very mixed feelings about Wil. As a kid watching TNG, I looked up to Wesley. Even today on rewatches I still like the character - the haters simply have it wrong. But man oh man, Wil Wheaton is next-level insufferable. I can't wait to see how people like him adapt to the post-woke era.
Jesse said at one point "we can discuss whether or not it's really censorship." But they never came back to it.
Katie consistently called various non-state acts censorship — which I appreciate and I agree with her.
I suspect the point Jesse was going to make was: "It's not censorship unless the state does it."
I don't know that my guess is right, but people in the U.S. say this all the time, especially fairly educated knowledge worker types.
But this is not accurate: Anyone or anything silencing anyone else *is censorship.*
That just doesn't mean it violates the freedom of speech as enshrined by the First Amendment.
But it's still censorship.
I like the First Amendment a lot, but in the US many people conflate it with free speech, and that's not right. The First Amendment simply sets a limit on the law.
That doesn't mean we can't have a conversation about whether or not one form of silencing or another sucks or not. Even if it doesn't violate the 1st amendment.
In fact, if you read John Stuart Mill's ON LIBERTY, which is kind of the source philosophical text for free speech, he spends a lot more time on speech abridged by people against other people — reputation, reading the room, the current thing, yada yada — than he does on state curtailment of speech.
Just something I always like to point out when these topics come up.
Censorship can still be bad even if it doesn't violate the first amendment.
You can still call out a platform for censoring someone even if they are not in violation of the first amendment.
There's the principle of free speech
And then there's the law.
Important distinction, but the law is not the limit of what's worth criticizing.
Nah, to me it's all about the government. Private actors "censoring" is just individual judgment. No jail, no fines, no knocks on the door. Censorship can be and usually is good when it doesn't violate the 1st Amendment.
Not to get all Richard Hanania, but this is a decoupling moment.
I’m saying private actors doing it is still censorship.
You’re saying you only find the state doing it as bad. I don’t agree. Fine. But anyone silencing anyone is censorship. There are degrees. There are more and less objectionable.
But just because the state doesn’t do it, that doesn’t mean it’s not.
Now, it might be OK if a private actor does it! and it’s def not the same ethical slam dunk.
Thanks for this story. It’s disturbing to learn how badly Pai’s family was harassed by activists who were unclear on the meaning of the policy itself. Seems like there might be some parallels with the current protests against ICE—harassing individuals rather than doing politics. How often does a person change his mind after being harassed?
Perhaps the point is not to persuade but to punish?
The only argument I remember back in the day on this was some activist saying "no net neutrality means providers can let some ISP's pay more to get on a faster highway."
Thanks guys for this detailed
2 part explanation.
Guess I should have payed more attention back then but you know, working for a living.....
We should have just called the show “Grain of Truth with John Oliver”. We could have done all the same segments but people would have at least known what they were getting.
Something I think people should know is that the researcher on these pieces (I’m almost positive it was the same guy) was known to have problems with the truth. The errors Katie points out are bad — TV shows should get stuff right! — but they’re not egregious. A different outlet might issue a correction and people could either accept the mea culpa or not. But not only will there be no mea culpa: The mistakes can’t be written off as an accident when the guy in charge of getting things right had a longstanding reputation for shoddy work. Researchers occasionally make mistakes — that’s inevitable. But this guy got things wrong over and over again — always to the benefit of the same viewpoint — so it’s harder to dismiss the mistakes as unfortunate but unforeseeable errors.
Any streaming service the size of HBO Max is going to have deployed cache servers inside of the ISP's network. There's no reason for them to take the expensive path between their own network and the ISPs to serve every bit of their content when instead they can move the content over that path once and then the ISP's millions of subscribers can grab it from the cache instead.
Imagine yourself thirty years ago. You're not going to travel to the library every time you need to look up a word in the dictionary when you can just keep a dictionary at home.
This also gives them the opportunity to discriminate without actually violating net neutraility. At no point do we need to identify the packets from the streaming provider and deprioritize them. We just have the cache servers meter the quality and speed of content they push out. The ISP gives them the same weight as everything else, it's the streaming service that slows things down.
I'm almost certain this must be what they're doing. The streaming providers have to be cooperating with the ISPs to support things like quality caps on mobile. there are many plans that purport to allow streaming up to 720p, or you can stream at higher quality for a higher fee.
I'm not on one of these connections, but I'm guessing when you are 1080p isn't even selectable, right?
I don't think it's right to say that the ONLY argument against net neutrality regulation is that ISPs are not actually favouring some users over others, so it's not needed. There are actual downsides to hitting companies with the sort of regulations that telecoms are subjected to.
This sort of regulation inhibits the level of investment that has lead to the vast improvements in internet technology we saw in the last few decades. Keep in mind that this sort of regulation also regulates pricing models and comes with its own extra costs to ensure that you are conforming to regulation.
Increasing government regulation when there isn't the need for is just generally a terrible idea.
Another argument against net neutrality is that sometimes there are *good* reasons for ISPs the throttle. If there are some activities that are just way more bandwith intensive than others, and only a small number of people are doing them, then throttling those things seems like a way to ensure a minimum acceptable experience for everyone.
One of the things I really love about Katie is that she doesn't pretend she didn't think something in the past that she now has a new position on, and this episode is a great demonstration of that. She's intellectually honest to a degree that is very rare in the universe of political commentary. The degree of honesty and nuance that both Katie and Jesse show are why I am happy to be a paying subscriber. Keep it up!
I agree this one thing covers up a ton of foibles and quibbles and is worth a lot.
Jesse assuming Rick Astley is long dead was pretty funny. The guy's only 60 years old.
At last a topic I feel I can really talk on with authority 🤣. Not only is he still alive and kicking, he’s still gigging. He did a series of concerts with Blossoms covering The Smiths and he was hands down brilliant. They got him to do a full set at Glasto 23.
I love Rick, he's not only extremely talented, but he seems like a genuinely lovely guy.
Yes one of those rare people in the business you never hear a bad word about. So glad to seeing his career have a second flourish.
So, John Oliver seems like a real prick in this. Ajit Pai, a man appointed under Obama had his life and his family's life turned into chaos because Oliver decided to pick on him. Previously I thought of Oliver as a well meaning, if opportunistic, comedian with aspirations to journalism, but the way this story shakes out, he's actually a legitimate force for evil in the world.
Has Oliver ever apologised for being wrong and causing this hell go rain down on this guy? Hell, has even acknowledged that he was wrong? I remember Penn and Teller's Bullshit, and one thing I respected them for, was they literally had an episode calling bullshit on their own show. I don't think Oliver has ever done anything remotely like this.
This episode taught me that my hero, Jesse, is as good with women as I am. Everything else in the episode is inconsequential.
I’m unconvinced by the Wehe results. I’m not a network engineer so any wireless professionals/CCIEs out there please correct me if I’m wrong but there are considerable technical and regulatory constraints to providing mobile bandwidth: spectrum licenses have to be bought, and transmitting traffic traffic without a wire is harder in every possible way.
Wireless carriers throttling bandwidth taxing video allows other nearby users to not have a terrible experience. This is equivalent to the “Friday night pornhub throttling” thing mentioned in the previous thread. After all, if you’re streaming video over data there could be someone less than a mile away *using the same cell tower as you to call 911. Do we want to mess with that phone call? Yes, there are no shortage of marvels that allow thousands of subscribers to use the same cell towers. But there are entirely non nefarious reasons for wireless providers to throttle video.
It is worth noting that all of the supposedly throttled content was video. t-Mobile, and likely other carriers, limit video to 720p unless you have a higher tier plan and turn on HD video. They tell you this explicitly and, per the comment from the engineering professor on Part 1, is an example of throttling based on traffic type not who it is from. About 80% of internet traffic is video so if you are managing a network to control congestion the main thing you would throttle would be video. Also, since apparently video from all sources was throttled it doesn’t sound like the carriers are picking winners and losers.
I can’t recall where I read it so may not be right, but I believe one way cell providers throttle is by first allowing you high speeds but then slowing you down if you continually download large quantities of data in a short period of time.
Yes, my question was about capacity—seems like there would be different issues on cellular networks than wired broadband?
Yes - it isn't _exactly_ true that only one person at one time can be using a piece of the liscenced radio spectrum that a carrier has leased, but it is close enough to being true to people outside of the industry and that is the physical limitation. If you are sending singals via a cable in the ground you don't have an equivalent limitation.
I believe voice data is already prioritized in cellular networks, so throttling video data over other non-video data is discriminating based on content.
Throttling has to be done at the tower level, and for non-voice traffic nearly no towers will be able to discern the actual content sent in a packet. All the tower really sees are ones and zeroes. They can tell how much a particular subscriber is sending and receiving and throttle from there, but the actual content of the traffic is immaterial in that decision.
Another way of putting this is that if they were throttling video on cellular data for any other reason that technical considerations, then why do we not see AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile do the same throttling on their wired home internet services?
Not sure what you mean by `technical considerations'. They have a finite amount of bandwidth and they want to give more people access to that bandwidth so that they can make more money.
One person always using the bandwidth impacts the people who are sporadically using bandwidth because too many people are trying to use the service. This is the fault of the provider for allowing too many people to access the service.
And ISPs do throttle wired, home connections. Small downloads happen very quickly because they provide a lot of bandwidth temporarily. But if the download continues the speed will drop. They used to advertise this as a feature.
Video was the only thing studied in the Wehe study, and they were not testing particular types of content. From the study:
"Apps tested by Wehe For this study, Wehe uses traces recorded from YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, NBC Sports, Vimeo, Spotify, and Skype."
On wireline throttling:
"Throttling via WiFi In the vast majority of ISPs tested via WiFi, our methodology did not detect throttling. The exceptions were the UAE blocking Skype (1 instance), and five other providers in North America. At least three of these five (Viasat, Hughes and NextLink) are satellite providers, and are likely more bandwidth constrained."
So not only do the authors basically not see wireline throttling, they admit that bandwith capacity is a legitimate mitigating factor. This is what I meant by 'technical considerations'
> This is the fault of the provider for allowing too many people to access the service.
If we want to go down that path get ready more expensive cell service for fewere people. If providers were required to gaurentee every connected line will always have capacity, this will prevent low cost carreriers from leasing network access from larger carriers, and even the AT&T/Verizon/TMUS couldn't make gaurentees like that. There is a reason literally no consumer wirelessbroadband has this restriction, it would make everyone worse off. 100% cellular network uptime is simply not realistic for a whole host of reasons
This is not true for LTE calls, only for wifi calls (or other VoIP, like Vonage). There is a separate carrier (think a side band) for true voice calls. Everything else competes for the same general internet bandwidth, but honestly cable modem networks running DOCSIS 3.1 do this pretty well nowadays, which is why wifi calling mostly works fine even when you're doing a big download.
(Source: me, I do work for my company at IETF, and was heavily involved in low-latency work for several years in the late 2010's.)
The towers likely are not doing much packet inspection but the upstream portion of the network can and does. Decisions on how to handle data can then be communicated back to the tower to reduce the number of slots given to the user.
Thank you so much for this story, Katie. I have been waiting for the definitive retrospective on Net Neutrality for years. The blind activism set off my bullshit detector from the start, but I didn't have the complete narrative. I used to love Jon Stewart and John Oliver, but they are the perfect personifications of righteous ignorance that has defined the last 10 years.
Like others, I'm very skeptical of the Wehe study. There are so many factors that influence wireless performance that I don't see how they possibly could control for them all (distance from tower, congestion, etc.) - factors that just typically don't exist on wired networks in the same way.
Finally, Jesse - Jesus Christ. Wil Wheaton didn't have a minor role on TNG - he had a starring role. It's like you didn't even watch the show, which is inexplicable since it is objectively the greatest show ever made. I have very mixed feelings about Wil. As a kid watching TNG, I looked up to Wesley. Even today on rewatches I still like the character - the haters simply have it wrong. But man oh man, Wil Wheaton is next-level insufferable. I can't wait to see how people like him adapt to the post-woke era.
The violent televised attack on Elmo broke him!
Jesse said at one point "we can discuss whether or not it's really censorship." But they never came back to it.
Katie consistently called various non-state acts censorship — which I appreciate and I agree with her.
I suspect the point Jesse was going to make was: "It's not censorship unless the state does it."
I don't know that my guess is right, but people in the U.S. say this all the time, especially fairly educated knowledge worker types.
But this is not accurate: Anyone or anything silencing anyone else *is censorship.*
That just doesn't mean it violates the freedom of speech as enshrined by the First Amendment.
But it's still censorship.
I like the First Amendment a lot, but in the US many people conflate it with free speech, and that's not right. The First Amendment simply sets a limit on the law.
That doesn't mean we can't have a conversation about whether or not one form of silencing or another sucks or not. Even if it doesn't violate the 1st amendment.
In fact, if you read John Stuart Mill's ON LIBERTY, which is kind of the source philosophical text for free speech, he spends a lot more time on speech abridged by people against other people — reputation, reading the room, the current thing, yada yada — than he does on state curtailment of speech.
Just something I always like to point out when these topics come up.
Censorship can still be bad even if it doesn't violate the first amendment.
You can still call out a platform for censoring someone even if they are not in violation of the first amendment.
There's the principle of free speech
And then there's the law.
Important distinction, but the law is not the limit of what's worth criticizing.
Well said.
Nah, to me it's all about the government. Private actors "censoring" is just individual judgment. No jail, no fines, no knocks on the door. Censorship can be and usually is good when it doesn't violate the 1st Amendment.
Not to get all Richard Hanania, but this is a decoupling moment.
I’m saying private actors doing it is still censorship.
You’re saying you only find the state doing it as bad. I don’t agree. Fine. But anyone silencing anyone is censorship. There are degrees. There are more and less objectionable.
But just because the state doesn’t do it, that doesn’t mean it’s not.
Now, it might be OK if a private actor does it! and it’s def not the same ethical slam dunk.
But what it is
and it’s valence
are two different questions.
The only problem I have is with Katie’s pronunciation of Reese’s. That’s just incorrect.
And “dais” but that’s excusable
I wonder how she pronounces Reese’s pieces
From my investigation, approximately 50% of Americans have invented “ree-seas” out of wholecloth. Baffling.
Rick Astley isn't dead, Jesse! He just celebrated his 60th birthday yesterday. He's hotter today than he was 40 years ago.
We're never going to give him up
Hmm, I dunno, he was a real snack at 20… 😋
Thanks for this story. It’s disturbing to learn how badly Pai’s family was harassed by activists who were unclear on the meaning of the policy itself. Seems like there might be some parallels with the current protests against ICE—harassing individuals rather than doing politics. How often does a person change his mind after being harassed?
Perhaps the point is not to persuade but to punish?
That's exactly the point.
But today is Saturday Feb 7th, the day before the Super Bowl. How am I supposed to know who won the
Super Bowl?
Don't all your listeners drop everything to listen to your podcast the minute it drops? Why would they watch the Super Bowl first?
Non paying listeners don’t get episodes until Monday, primos get them Saturday.
Oh! Thanks for the clarification!
Or watch ice dancing or curling or the biathlon?
Curling is pretty cool.....
My comments on Pt. 1 are reinforced with this.
I do think that you could dig more into the wireless providers. Again, I don’t see where FCC would have any authority over unlicensed wireless data.
You all mentioned CloudFlare…..See McM’s interview with their CEO after they shut off 8chan.
https://youtu.be/ULXWJgmhP1c?si=HM_CHAb-B8m6kylH
Fuck that guy.
Also, I remember turning my page black in 1996 over Jim Exon’s Communication Decenxy Act.
And, rewatched the CF segment. You were right about who they’d booted. Fuck the Nazis, but also fuck that guy.
The only argument I remember back in the day on this was some activist saying "no net neutrality means providers can let some ISP's pay more to get on a faster highway."
Thanks guys for this detailed
2 part explanation.
Guess I should have payed more attention back then but you know, working for a living.....
We should have just called the show “Grain of Truth with John Oliver”. We could have done all the same segments but people would have at least known what they were getting.
Something I think people should know is that the researcher on these pieces (I’m almost positive it was the same guy) was known to have problems with the truth. The errors Katie points out are bad — TV shows should get stuff right! — but they’re not egregious. A different outlet might issue a correction and people could either accept the mea culpa or not. But not only will there be no mea culpa: The mistakes can’t be written off as an accident when the guy in charge of getting things right had a longstanding reputation for shoddy work. Researchers occasionally make mistakes — that’s inevitable. But this guy got things wrong over and over again — always to the benefit of the same viewpoint — so it’s harder to dismiss the mistakes as unfortunate but unforeseeable errors.
On Wehe:
Any streaming service the size of HBO Max is going to have deployed cache servers inside of the ISP's network. There's no reason for them to take the expensive path between their own network and the ISPs to serve every bit of their content when instead they can move the content over that path once and then the ISP's millions of subscribers can grab it from the cache instead.
Imagine yourself thirty years ago. You're not going to travel to the library every time you need to look up a word in the dictionary when you can just keep a dictionary at home.
This also gives them the opportunity to discriminate without actually violating net neutraility. At no point do we need to identify the packets from the streaming provider and deprioritize them. We just have the cache servers meter the quality and speed of content they push out. The ISP gives them the same weight as everything else, it's the streaming service that slows things down.
I'm almost certain this must be what they're doing. The streaming providers have to be cooperating with the ISPs to support things like quality caps on mobile. there are many plans that purport to allow streaming up to 720p, or you can stream at higher quality for a higher fee.
I'm not on one of these connections, but I'm guessing when you are 1080p isn't even selectable, right?
I don't think it's right to say that the ONLY argument against net neutrality regulation is that ISPs are not actually favouring some users over others, so it's not needed. There are actual downsides to hitting companies with the sort of regulations that telecoms are subjected to.
This sort of regulation inhibits the level of investment that has lead to the vast improvements in internet technology we saw in the last few decades. Keep in mind that this sort of regulation also regulates pricing models and comes with its own extra costs to ensure that you are conforming to regulation.
Increasing government regulation when there isn't the need for is just generally a terrible idea.
Another argument against net neutrality is that sometimes there are *good* reasons for ISPs the throttle. If there are some activities that are just way more bandwith intensive than others, and only a small number of people are doing them, then throttling those things seems like a way to ensure a minimum acceptable experience for everyone.