Biden’s FCC is Adopting New ‘Diversity’ Rules to Take Control of the Internet
“The FCC is dishonestly claiming that it is promoting equity and fairness. However, the FCC is just seizing control over business decisions, funneling resources to politically preferred constituencies.”
Very few people in media are even talking about this. Perhaps we will hear more after the holidays.
The Daily Signal reports:
Biden’s Ministry of Diversity Comes for the Internet
The Federal Communications Commission has adopted “woke” new rules to control internet services that will increase consumer costs, slow investment in new technologies, and raise the prospect of yet more government intrusion and censorship.
Commissioner Brendan Carr—one of two Republicans on the five-member FCC—called the plan “an unlawful power grab that gives the government a roving mandate to micromanage nearly every aspect of how the internet functions.”
Former FCC adviser Adam Candeub added: “The FCC is dishonestly claiming that it is promoting equity and fairness. However, the FCC is just seizing control over business decisions, funneling resources to politically preferred constituencies.”
The timing is particularly suspect, given entrepreneur Elon Musk’s effort to provide uncensored internet access via Starlink to go with the uncensored speech he already has delivered on his social media site X (formerly Twitter).
The FCC adopted the package of regulations Nov. 15. The new rules would empower the commission to prosecute internet service providers for alleged discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and other protected classes, as well as income.
The rules empower the FCC to “crack down on digital inequities,” as The Associated Press put it. By which the commission might mean, for example, punishing companies for building infrastructure in neighborhoods where the agency expects people actually will buy it.
The newly Democrat-dominated FCC allegedly imposed the new rules to “eliminate discrimination” in access to internet services. By which the commission means the uneven rollout of 5G service, itself stymied by regulatory red tape.
Congress, in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill, delegated to the FCC the task to “ensure that all people of the United States benefit from equal access to broadband internet access.”
In fact, the agency found no evidence of intentional discrimination, but the leftists on the FCC used Congress’ delegation as an excuse to force equity and diversity mandates ranging from controls over discounts, language options, and credit checks to marketing and advertising.
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Comments
We already have welfareish programs providing free or nearly free internet service to nearly anyone, free Ipads or cell phones.
The Federal government spent a reported $100,000,000 to bring fiberoptic internet service to a community of 44 Hawaiian homes in my county….homes that already had all normal utilities including the same internet service as their neighbors. To listen to the proposal, you would think these were grass shacks far from any cable tv, internet, telephone and electric utilities occupied by the destitute. They are in fact modern homes with all the amenities one could expect in a middleclass neighborhood, such as they are. Occupied by police officers, teachers, plumbers, electricians, etc.
Morse code, which service they regulate, has a disparate impact owing to requiring spelling. They could look into that.
Take away his teleprompter and you’ll find that Barack Obama is an expert at Morse code…. duh, duh duh duh duh, duh, duh, duh duh duh duh duh….
“Digital inequities” — leave it to the vile and totalitarian Dhimmi-crats to always contrive new and obnoxiously contrived alleged “problems” to add to their victimology propaganda lexicon. Throw this one next to “climate justice” and “environmental justice.”
“Digital inequities”
Here I thought that digital data was “1” and “0”.
Seems now it also has color.
The internet isn’t just for white people, it’s also for poor people.
Good one
I presume that the downvoters are unaware of the fact you are paraphrasing Joe Biden..
Oh goody, another gov’t agency of questionable legitimacy is unilaterally expanding their reach to ‘improve’ things for us. Yippee. How much is this gonna cost? How much delay in getting Star link service rolled out to me is this gonna cause?
Anybody remember FidoNet? Hobbyists using desktop computers and telephones created a nationwide (arguably worldwide) network, with no government control or oversight.
That’s inequitable! (blows the whistle, assigns a penalty) People in some neighborhoods are much more capable of building and operating such a network than those in some other neighborhoods.
Shame shame shame!
True enough. I never did get Binkley to run properly on my 386…
“created a nationwide (arguably worldwide) network, with no government control or oversight.”
More than one self-organized net at the time. More than one alternative kicking around currently.
The pipes *under* the meaning layer were always the weak spot, because they require physical inter-operation, n integration. They’re targetable. Worse, they’re licensed-ish in various ways.
This is like the Federal DoT declaring they’ll monitor roads, because some traffic might be skewed. Too many boys going to the national Boy Scout Jamboree. Oh wait. They fixed that. Too many girls going to a national cheerleading competition. Oh wait. They’re fixing that.
Like the “disproportionate impact” pretense normalized under The One (and his AG Wingman), this opens the door for unlimited bad statistical claims. I can’t decide if it’s also mostly for lawfare, or yet another activist patronage job scam. Maybe both.
If they can’t get in through the equity door, they can fall back to seizing DNS — the thing that lets you find sites by name. DNS regulation, punted to the UN a few years back, in effect seizure on the sly. You want those people deciding who’s allowed to be found? Or seizure of DNS on the sly — while *oversight* got handed around, it’s *implemented* by cooperating piles of name resolution services, which accept content from each other. Who hosts most of that these days? If you guessed “Google”, you’d be right. And they take orders. (Plus there is DNS resolution hosted or bundled by ISPs — yr ISP decides where you’ll look for DNS resolution.)
There’s an old report — 10 years ago? — from the then Internet Observatory. They just hang off InterWeb trunk and listen. Something like 60% of the traffic they couldn’t identify.
Different from The Internet Radio Telescope at Stanford, an obvious social-system exercise lightly sprinkled with “internet” to make it sound tech-y.
I’m so old, I remember when *some* science was about looking at stuff as it is, not knowing whether what you found would be convenient. These days it’s all the “research” version of push polls, with the sought answers chosen for regime convenience. Lysenko lives. (He’s not among those starved by his famines.)
Yet more proof that the various 3-letter agencies of the federal government are undercutting freedom and liberty in the United States.
But it’s for our own good. So that makes it OK!
Net Neutrality returns, surprised they have been so long getting to this.
They were learning. Net neutrality got shot down, hard. They needed cover sticky enough — “equity” is still flying, and some idea how to do it on the sly.
In a week in which FISA gets reauthorized again at the same time *another* FBI memo gets uncovered, *directing* investigation of parents at school borad meetings, the FTC can “regulate” whatever they want, and nobody will stop it.
On TOR, 10 mb download, 5 mb upload, ping ~485 ms.
On Firefox, 330 mb download, 12 mb upload, ping ~ 30 ms.
I wonder how long it will be before I have to make my TOR browser the default on my computer. Even some VPNs might be suspect. If privacy is ever an issue, the speed hit may be worth it.
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Because trans activists are butt hurt they lost their “safe space” on twitter.
https://media2.giphy.com/media/chKr6NjJZ1L3Npa0hZ/200w.gif?cid=6c09b952twwx5s86s2dgm08uefsjq9re7zhehi378ckam1um&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=200w.gif&ct=g
I want 5G kept far away from me. I don’t need it or want it. Nor smart meters. Perhaps our utility companies are slow-walking the 5G due to our reluctance, and now Biden is going to force them anyway.
We’re certainly not a disadvantaged community though, so maybe that will spare us the 5G.
Wow 2 downvotes. Those would be more impactful if the downvoters had the courage to state reasons.
This reeks of ‘net neutrality’ re-packaged as pen & phone policy on steroids to circumvent Congress.
Better: Equal access to broadband is “If you pay for it, you can access it.” FJB
Whenever you hear anyone on the left say the word “equity” prepare to have someone’s freedom being taken away.
What it means is that you are going to pay for yours AND his, and he is going to pay for neither.
Let me get this straight. Something that has turned two generations of minds in to mush via social media is going to be regulated so that no one wants to use it? Where do I sign up? Imagine the faces of the demonrats when they realize that people will just believe what they see with their own eyes and not manipulated info by their media bros. FJB