Net neutrality special edition

We’ve got a special edition episode of The Vergecast for you this week. On Thursday, the FCC put out a draft proposal for reversing the net neutrality order of 2015. The Verge has been following FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s actions in restoring “Internet Freedom” and how it will affect the internet for all of us. Nilay Patel invites news editor Jake Kastrenakes on the show, who has been reporting on this for the past few months, as well as senior reporter Adi Robertson, who reported on the FCC’s net neutrality rules back when this was a problem in 2014. The trio talk about the past, present, and future of the open internet and the FCC’s actions disrupting it. If you’re out of the loop or just need more information on this topic, now is the time to listen! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Nilay Patel?

  Hello and welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Theverge.com. A multi-sensory internet experience that will honestly soon be throttled by your local internet provider. That's where we are in life. Anyway, look, here's the situation. This is a special episode of The Vergecast. The usual crew, I've kicked them out, there's no Dieter. Actually, Dieter had to go to a meeting, so this all worked out. But there's no Dieter, there's no Paul. It's me, it's Neely, but Jake Kastrenakes is here. Hey Jake.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Hello, how's it going?

• 0:33Nilay Patel?

  Addie Robertson is here.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 0:34Nilay Patel?

  And I wanted to do something special this week. We have talked around net neutrality on The Vergecast for several weeks now, but Ajit Pai, the chairman of the FCC, put out his plan today, this is Thursday, he put out his plan today for the future of net neutrality, which as far as I can tell, means getting rid of it.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  That's more or less the case.

• 0:55Nilay Patel?

  That's more or less it. And what's interesting to me, anyway, is that Jake has been reporting on this stuff nonstop for the past several months. In 2014 and 15, Addie did a ton of reporting on this for us, and the new plan really hearkens back to the old plan, so I thought it'd be really fun to have both of these guys here so we could talk about what the hell is going on. Because the future of net neutrality, what we think of it and how it had been settled is now, as near as I can tell, totally up for grabs. And the future of basically how we access all of the services on the internet is thus up for grabs as well. Is that kind of your read right now, Jake?

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. The thing is, they've basically left the table wide open, right? So, we're going through the exact same fight that Addie covered a few years ago, where we're going, what legal authorities should we use to implement net neutrality?

• 1:50Nilay Patel?

  If at all.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  If at all, right, yeah, that's the thing. So, I mean, here's the really big question that they're asking with this proposal. Should we even have net neutrality? That's the thing. They're trying to pretend like it's not a net neutrality proposal, it's just like, this arcane legal thing. And like, there are a lot of arcane legal things.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  They're very, very arcane.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  However, those arcane legal things are the difference between having net neutrality and not having net neutrality.

• 2:13Nilay Patel?

  So, let me just do the really fast history, as fast as I can.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Good luck.

• 2:18Nilay Patel?

  It's not gonna go very well, but I'm gonna do my best.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Nineteen thirty.

• 2:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, first there was phone lines. No, what's the short version of this? There were several attempts in like twenty, between twenty ten and twenty fourteen to impose what we think of net neutrality rules on internet carriers. That means no blocking of services, no locking out of devices, no throttling of services, like Comcast can't slow BitTorrent down, which they did, and no paid prioritization. No, YouTube can pay to come at you faster than Vimeo, right? Those are like four things that a lot of internet consumers kind of tend to agree on. The authority that the FCC had to implement those rules was constantly under attack because

• 3:03Nilay Patel?

  they had classified the internet as a Title I information service, and in order to get the authority to implement those rules, they had to reclassify it as a Title II telecommunications service. This is the heart of the debate at that time.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Which we would have to go back to the nineties to explain.

• 3:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's just an ancient debate. But that, basically it happened, right? So finally in twenty fifteen, Tom Wheeler's FCC, with significant prodding from the Obama White House, reclassified the internet as a Title II telecommunications service, and then imposed these four rules: no blocking, no locking, no throttling, no paid prioritization. And if you do any of that stuff, you have to do it transparently and tell people what you're doing. Also importantly, they said mobile and wired broadband should be the same. That's net neutrality as we understand in America. Years past, the internet providers in this country did not start to go out of business. They continued to do just fine. Everyone thought Hillary is going to win, the internet providers were not screaming bloody

• 4:01Nilay Patel?

  murder, then Trump won, and suddenly the FCC is like, "Everything's a disaster, the internet's falling apart, we need to get rid of these rules." I mean, that's how you could read this situation. That's basically the timeline. Now Ajit Pai, who was actually appointed by Obama as a Republican member of the FCC and is now the chairman of the FCC... Is saying, "We gotta get rid of this Title II classifications, killing the internet." And I don't even know if we need these net neutrality rules.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  To be clear, though Obama appointed him, he's like Mitch McConnell's guy.

• 4:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Which I think is very telling here, because he is, is an extremely smart guy. He knows what he's doing. He's doing a ton of stuff at once and very fast.

• 4:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I would, can I say this? I'm just, he's Trump-ier than Trump, in a very significant way, in that, I said this on Control Italy yesterday, Trump like hates the media, right? Like, this big performative act of hating the media, but it's like constantly calling the New York Times.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 4:56Nilay Patel?

  Pi just, he's only talking to the media types that like him, and he will not accept any challenge to what he's saying. It's like a very normal...

• 5:05Speaker 01

  I love going through what he's faved on Twitter.

• 5:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Just yesterday, he faved some things about how, "Some New York Times coverage of the proposal was not quite right. I thought it was very unfair."

• 5:21Nilay Patel?

  But, so that's where we are. So today, he put out his proposal. He was hinting at it for months. They say ever since he took off.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, since he, since he got the position, he's, without fully saying it, he's, he's been dropping hints that like, "I hate this thing. I'm gonna get rid of it."

• 5:38Nilay Patel?

  And he voted against Title II in 2015.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, he's always been against this thing. And now we finally have his plan. We can finally read through it. This is what, you know, in, one of the cool things that he has done is that he's putting out the full text of proposals, you know, the second that they're announced, pretty much. And so we can go and read through this thing right now. And it does two things, basically. The first is this legal authority thing. It flips it from Title II, which is the real tough one, that, that was fought for in 2015, flips it from Title II to Title I.

• 6:11Nilay Patel?

  So back to where it was before.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Back to Title I.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  And in doing so, it creates the kind of legal authority issues that stopped the FCC from putting in tough net neutrality rules in the first place, the kind of stuff that Addy was covering years ago and that got brought, got them to court.

• 6:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, here's how I would put this. So what they put out today is called a notice of proposed rulemaking. If you read it, it sounds like a long set of essay prompts because it's all questions. The questions are insane. They, one of the questions like, is throttling bad for consumers?

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Does harming exist?

• 6:53Nilay Patel?

  I have believed in my heart that throttling is bad on the internet. Like, you're ISP throttling certain services versus other services. I don't know that Vergecast listeners, like, there's an argument about that. Like, that's one of those, like, generally accepted facts that, like, we have moved on. I read this and it just sounds like the FCC is run by a bunch of freshmen in a dorm. And I'm like, what if we erased all laws and built a new system of internet regulation? But the problem is, like, the internet exists and these companies are huge. And I, I just, as I read this and I read these questions that are like, we would like comment to see if we even need transparency rules. It just seems very idealistic

• 7:37Nilay Patel?

  in a way that, given the actual reality of the internet ecosystem, actually tends towards malice instead of, like, innocence.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I agree completely. It's bizarrely idealistic. And there are points where you're reading it and you can kind of get sucked into the logic and go, oh, I guess if they did that sort of evil thing, that could subsidize some good. But the thing is, like, a lot of this is dependent on there being competition between internet providers. And, like, surprise, there isn't competition between internet providers.

• 8:09Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  And, and so much of it is grounded in the idea that Internet providers are going to be able to compete. Consumers are going to have choice between, you know, what, whether they choose an internet provider that does the things that they like or don't like. And the thing is, that's not true. Like, I can provide, I can choose between cellphone providers, but I can't choose between the wired internet provider that I get at home. I have one option, and that is it. And fortunately, they're at a reasonable price at a reasonable speed for me, but that is not true for a lot of other people.

• 8:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and huge swaths of the country only actually have one meaningfully good wireless provider as well.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Right, and I think the argument that wireless and wired can compete is just insane.

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  Right, and I would point out that his rulemaking also suggests that wireless be completely regulated differently than wired broadband. And, and, it's, I can't, like, get over it. Like, it's unmooring. It's like you, there are so many assumptions that we make about how the internet works, and like, how it should work, and what the rules should be, and they're pretty simple assumptions. Like, if I was to pay a provider for access, they shouldn't screw with it. That seems like a good place to start from a policy proposal, but this literally questions that foundational assumption. And then, other big assumptions we make, like, 5G wireless access will provide meaningfully

• 9:34Nilay Patel?

  fast speed, and some people won't need wired internet access, because it'll be fast enough and available enough. Well, if you treat it totally different, you've actually made a whole different kind of internet that more people will get access to, and that seems even more dangerous than the other thing. It's near, I mean, it's just that, it's that level of, here's this common set of assumptions, and in 2015, there was this huge outcry, and I think everybody remembers, like, the John Oliver video about net neutrality.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  An unprecedented number of comments, I think the most that had ever been received for an FCC question.

• 10:08Nilay Patel?

  They, you know, so the FCC got ahead of it today, and they said, "The number of comments on either side of this issue is not going to help us decide." So they're already, they already know that the overwhelming public opinion is going to be, "Don't ruin this," or "Don't take away Title II," and they're already ahead of it by saying, "We're not going to just count comments." Like you can comment all you want.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was on the call and they basically said, oh, it's about quality, not quantity. Which is like, it's very bizarre because the FCC is supposed to care about the public interest, like, public interest, that is like, two words that are very important to them and all of the decisions they make. But they're basically going ahead and saying, well, what if we don't listen to them because Comcast is a better legal argument? And like, you know, I'm sure that most of the people commenting are not going to be lawyers, but like, it's a lot to go and two years after you have this unprecedented outcry, just say like, well, those people were wrong.

• 11:11Nilay Patel?

  Right. And there's some like, there are some checks on their behavior, right? They're not allowed to just capriciously change regulations back and forth. They have to demonstrate, this is true of all agencies, they have to demonstrate that something significant changed, such that they need to undo their own regulatory policy. And Pi's argument is basically, there was a little bit of dip in broadband investment.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:36Nilay Patel?

  Is that the whole argument?

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's pretty much it. They've said like, since Title II was implemented, which was like, about two years ago, there's been a decline in broadband investment. But the thing is, there's actually only been one year of a dip and the industry group that represents these companies called it small, they said oil prices could have had to do with it. So, there's not a ton of evidence to back up the fact that Title, or the suggestion that Title II has completely crippled the, you know, internet provider industry. And, you know, by and large, they're doing well, investors are happy, and, you know, their stock prices-

• 12:18Nilay Patel?

  Well, you wrote a great piece that everyone should go, look, their stock prices are up, their profits are up. If they're not investing as much as they did in one year, the year after their investment has actually gone up year over year, they're doing fine. I don't think anyone's worried about Comcast.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  They're doing completely fine. It's just that they have an opening to get rid of these rules right now, and they're going to do it because they can.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  This is also, next year is the year that Comcast's agreement to follow the Open Internet Orders expires.

• 12:45Nilay Patel?

  Right. So when Comcast bought NBC, one of the conditions of that was basically to follow something that looked like the Open Internet Order, right? So they agreed to a bunch of net neutrality provisions, and the one that was really important was they agreed that they wouldn't prioritize NBC content over other video service content. But if you just look around the industry right now, AT&T is buying Time Warner. Clearly what they want to do is sell you an AT&T mobile package that includes HBO, right? That doesn't count against your data. They're very open with that being their goal right now.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  And we have this Verizon-Yaho AOL combination.

• 13:23Nilay Patel?

  The monster.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Which is horrifying.

• 13:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So, right now, at this moment, what happens next, Jake?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  So, the proposal will get voted on later this month, and after that, there's going to be months and months and months of time where people are just arguing over this, and you'll be able to go to the commission's website, file a comment. They will theoretically take that into consideration, and then sometime probably later this year, they'll come out with a new, a final proposal, and then they'll vote on that, and then those will be the rules. But the really tough thing right now is that we just don't know what these rules are going to look like, because even though they're being transparent and putting out this draft proposal right now, like you were saying, it is just filled with questions.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Like, a proposal, in theory, should have, you know, "We are proposing doing X," but it doesn't do that. It just says, "Hey, what about those rules? Should we do something with them?"

• 14:23Nilay Patel?

  Well, let me quote from the proposal, the notice of proposed rulemaking. And this is like, again, when I say this thing, like, takes your connection to reality and aggressively tries to wedge under it, it's...

• 14:39Nilay Patel?

  Internet service providers, this is a quote, "Internet service providers do not appear to offer telecommunications, i.e. the transmission between or among points specified by the user of information of the user's choosing without change in the form or content of the information as it is sent and received to their users." Well, what the hell do they provide? Like, that is exactly what I want from my ISP. I want to, like, connect to the network that I pay for, be like, "I would like that information from that service, and I'd like them to bring it to me without screwing with it." And they've got this whole stuff in between, like, literally, like, I'll just read some more. "Broadband internet users typically do not specify the quote-unquote 'points' between and among which information is sent online.

• 15:24Nilay Patel?

  Instead, routing decisions are based on the architecture of the network, not on consumers' instructions." So they're arguing that the basic decentralized architecture of the internet makes it not a telecommunications service, because it can intelligently send you, like, information across the network. That is crazy. It's crazy in the sense that, like, voice communications, which should not be part of this conversation, are now, in fact, routed over the internet.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  I mean, that's been the problem with Title I and Title II for a long time, that now everything's kind of the internet. Like, that's the problem with zero reading a couple of years ago, that, like, how do you count, okay, this is TV that we provide basically over the internet for data plans, and this is TV that we provide over the internet that we're, like, prioritizing.

• 16:08Nilay Patel?

  Comcast did this, where they were, if you watched Comcast services on an Xbox connected to your Comcast router, they wouldn't charge your data cap. And their big claim, which was technically true, was that they were routing that over a special private internet that they had brought to your house along the same pipe.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Right, so everything's the internet, but some things aren't the internet.

• 16:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, some things are their own special internet. To me, this just seems like the core problem is that people pay for these services, they expect to get what they get. If they don't get that, they just don't have a choice. There isn't some other provider who's like, "We promise not to screw with you." Right? And so what you end up with is a lot of lawyers saying a lot of crazy lawyer words. I mean, this paragraph about telecommunications between or among points specified by the user is the most lawyerly way of cutting down the entire promise of the internet. By saying, "We have defined the word telecommunications in a way that excludes the Internet. So that's not telecommunications and we don't have to prom-- we-- these companies don't have to deliver what they necessarily promised you."

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it's just, they're using these arbitrary legal distinct-- or technical distinctions so that they can get the classification that they want, which I guess is maybe true either way. But the thing is that in practice, we all think of the Internet as just this thing that delivers us from point A to point B. It brings us whatever website we want to go to.

• 17:33Nilay Patel?

  So what-- why-- you've been talking to like many, many people, right? You've talked to the telecom companies. What do they want? What's the point of all this?

• 17:42Speaker 01

  I mean, this is the bizarre thing, right? And I'm-- I mean, Addy, I'm assuming they did the same thing a few years ago. Through all of this, they keep going, "Oh, net neutrality. We love net neutrality. It's just this legal classification we don't like." But the thing is that inherently, not having that legal classification means they don't have net neutrality.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  They want net neutrality that is voluntary. They want net neutrality that they can hold to because they promise that they will hold to it, but they don't want any kind of legal ramifications for it.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so this is the bizarre situation that they're in, where they're saying-- they're just saying, "Trust us," basically.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  I am definitely anti-murder, but I really think that we should repeal those laws.

• 18:22Nilay Patel?

  So there's-- Comcast put out this like number of blog posts today, and this is where I should disclose. Comcast is a minority investor in Vox Media. The company owns The Verge. I am sure they're very pleased with their minority investment right now as they listen to this podcast.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  This podcast will get delivered on a higher bitrate, though.

• 18:42Nilay Patel?

  I hope so. It's gonna sound great on your Comcast connection. So they put out, it was like three blog posts yesterday from like this-- Brian Roberts had one that's like, "I fucking love net neutrality." In this, it's titled, "While some try to conflate the two issues, Title II and net neutrality are not the same. Title II is a source of authority to impose enforceable net neutrality rules. Title II is not net neutrality." This is really wonky, but you-- if you don't have authority to enforce the rules, you don't actually have rules. You just have suggestions. Right, like you have a set of like normative behaviors. And when I keep saying it's like unmooring, like the idea that our laws should not have authority

• 19:26Nilay Patel?

  behind them, that is like some deep fucking freshman dorm room bong rip shit. Like, what are laws, man? They're just ideas that other people, like, that's what this reads like to me. Like, Title II is just the authority for the laws. We believe in the act, like, the norms, but you can't make me do them. I choose, like, we as actors together in society will choose these norms. And it's like, that's not how it works.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Right, and to be fair, basically how business has argued for absolutely everything, always.

• 19:56Nilay Patel?

  It's just, they don't compete, right? The thing that gets me about this over and over and over again is if you try to suggest to me that the FCC should regulate the App Store on the iPhone, I think that's ridiculous. Like, if I don't like what Apple's doing with their App Store policies, I can like throw my iPhone out the window, I can get an Android phone, I can get a window, like, I can do all kinds of things, like, it might not be great, but I can do them, I can get away from Apple very easily. If I, almost anywhere in America, you can't get away from your broadband provider, right? Or it comes at an increased cost or at a lower service quality. So, the idea that they shouldn't, we as like, the citizens of America should not require

• 20:41Nilay Patel?

  our government to impose some rules around reasonable public policy, just seems disconnected from reality, at such a fundamental level to me.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  Yes, well, and it comes with a lot of other things that are sort of hostile even to the idea of creating competition, like hostility toward municipal broadband and things that would create multiple networks. Like, it's just this giant package of terrible things.

• 21:04Nilay Patel?

  What, go on the municipal broadband bit.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  I mean, for many years, like, networks like Verizon have basically fought to get, to like, stop people from, cities from making their own, like, municipal broadband networks, like, we're gonna just set up our own fiber, or we're going to like, run our own networks, and that means that we can compete with companies like Verizon or like Comcast. I'm not sure exactly what the situation is at this point, but they're basically just throw up legislative, like, policy roadblocks that make this as hard as possible.

• 21:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, there's, my favorite one is in Philadelphia, the city of Philadelphia where Comcast's headquarters tried to build a Wi-Fi network. And like, literally, the monster that is Comcast just made that not happen. Right, and I, look, you can argue that maybe you don't think your city is gonna provide you with the best wifi. Most coffee shops can't provide you with, like, good wifi. Like, I get it. But if the fundamental question is, is internet access a utility that you depend on? Or is it some specialized service that you, as a consumer, buy by choice? I would say the balance of it is, you can't participate in the society without internet access at a high level. So, we should probably treat it more like a utility than not.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Who was the person who just said you could just get off the internet?

• 22:18Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that was a, it was a, some rep from Wisconsin, my home state, where internet access is garbage, I can tell you right now. I can look at my parents' Eero on my phone. My parents pay a lot of money for internet access. I believe they have Time Warner. Of course, I set up their Eero, so I can, like, go look at it whenever I spy. I can, like, block my parents' internet access.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Do you see what they're visiting?

• 22:38Nilay Patel?

  I can't, I honestly can't do that. I love my Eero. But I set it up for my parents, because I was, they had their old crappy internet service. Oh, it's AT&T. They have, uh, whatever, AT, they have U-verse.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 22:49Nilay Patel?

  AT&T's fiber, but it's not actually fiber.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  I always think that name is fake, every time I see it.

• 22:53Nilay Patel?

  It's not actually fiber. They run it over DSL lines. So, my parents pay, like, something like seventy-five or eighty dollars a month to their house in Wisconsin, and they get twenty-three down, which is awful.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Disgusting.

• 23:05Nilay Patel?

  But they got three Eeros.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  That's not technically broadband, right?

• 23:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's not technically broadband, right? I think it's fifty is, right, technically broadband now?

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Which is also something that Pi is mad about, I believe.

• 23:14Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it's too high?

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Well, it was, they were arbitrary in determining that.

• 23:18Nilay Patel?

  Okay, let's say two nice things about Ajit Pi, and then we'll read an ad. And then I wanna, I wanna talk to Addy about, sort of, the past. So, here's what, I'll say one nice thing, and then you have to say one nice thing. Here's my nice thing. I truly believe that he wants more people to be connected to the internet. He says it very sincerely all the time. He wants to reduce, like... The, the, he's always like out in the middle of the country being like, I met with another cowboy who wants to put fiber in the ground, like always. I think he's a very sincere in his belief that if he lowers the costs for these broadband companies, that more and more networks will get built. I don't agree with him that that is the, those things are related, like the causal relationship between I can, making the networks more lucrative

• 24:03Nilay Patel?

  and more deployment exists. I think that's a reasonable policy debate to be had with lots of data on both sides, but I think he's sincere in his belief. That's my nice thing about a G-Pine.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I, uh, well, first of all, I definitely agree with you. Uh, I think he completely is legitimate in his belief and he thinks that what he's doing is going to help. Um, I just generally think he's crazy.

• 24:24Nilay Patel?

  (laughing)

• 24:25Speaker 01

  But, but I mean, the, the thing, the thing that makes it so hard is my, is the thing I'm gonna say is that he, he's just like an extremely personable, nice, funny guy. And like, he's great on Twitter. He's great during the meetings. He danced a little bit when he got rickrolled.

• 24:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Like, he, he's a great guy. He drinks out of a giant like Reese's cup mug or something.

• 24:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, he's a big goofy dad.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Right. And that's the thing. It's, it's very, uh, disarming. Um, and then he just goes up and is like, I'm gonna take these nice things away from you, but I'm gonna make a really cute sports metaphor for why I'm doing it. And you're like...

• 25:02Nilay Patel?

  Wait, well, tell them what the sports metaphor is.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  I don't even remember. There are too many of them. Also, I don't know sports enough. I can't recuse these things straight.

• 25:07Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think his, it was the LA Times, right?

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. My also not knowing sports memory of it was, we did a thing that was really bad that broke up a bunch of stuff and we wish we hadn't made that decision.

• 25:18Nilay Patel?

  I have, I pulled it up. It's, it's not, it's not a great metaphor, but whatever. He, he wrote, this was his speech that he gave. During the speech, he also referred to Free Press as like a bunch of commies who wanted to dismantle all capitalism. So like, he's a little bit all over the place, but his, his metaphor, uh, was that in 2012, the Oklahoma City Thunder, uh, traded away, uh, James Harden because they didn't want three superstars on their team because they wouldn't be able to pay the salary cap. And now the Oklahoma City Thunder are any good. And he, his whole point is, well, they were worried about the salary cap and now Oklahoma City basketball fans are, they're, they'll never get a championship. And he's like, well, you did title two because you were worried about these harms, but now the internet's

• 26:03Nilay Patel?

  bad. That's his metaphor. There's a lot of ways to argue at that metaphor. And it's just, I just don't think it's the same. That metaphor makes more sense with other things. It makes way more sense with other things. Also, we're not trying to win the NBA championship with the internet. We're just trying to like run our businesses, but like, whatever. Anyway, let me read this ad and then Addy, I really want to talk to you about our favorite shared topic, section 706.

• 26:29Nilay Patel?

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• 27:08Nilay Patel?

  on ZipRecruiter for free by going to ZipRecruiter.com/verge. That's ZipRecruiter.com/verge. So try for free, one more time. Go to ZipRecruiter.com/verge. All right. So Addy, years ago, you were like our main reporter on this beat for a lot of what was happening with the FCC. Many years ago. Yeah, three years ago. Yeah. Lifetime ago. Many. We were different people entirely. We were in a different office. Everything was different. And a lot of what's happening right now, it just occurred to me that the debate is the same. And the only thing that's really changed about the debate is the confidence... That the telecom companies have in issuing the same arguments.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  There are a few differences, but yeah.

• 27:49Nilay Patel?

  But go through what the state of 2014 was and we can talk about some differences.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Okay, so the state of 2014 was that Julius Gonikowski, who was the FCC Commissioner back in 2010, had issued this nice series of guidelines that was the Open Internet Order that basically covered the thing you just said. And then Verizon sued and again was like, "We like net neutrality, we just don't like this thing."

• 28:11Nilay Patel?

  We don't like the Open Internet Order?

• 28:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 28:13Nilay Patel?

  It wasn't even Title II yet?

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Yes, it was definitely not Title II. It was 2010 and then Verizon sued. And there was this long legal battle, basically over whether the FCC had the authority to use something called Section 706, which was that they can go outside Congress's explicit instructions to do stuff that promotes broadband adoption. And so if you believe that net neutrality promotes better internet and promotes competition and promotes all kinds of great things, then you can use Section 706. A court didn't particularly agree with the authority and basically struck down part of the Open Internet Order.

• 28:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was the no blocking and no throttling.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  It was the useful parts.

• 28:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  They kept transparency.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was great.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  So in 2014, they did that. And around that time, I cannot remember the exact date, Tom Wheeler, who everyone thought was going to be this like-

• 29:04Nilay Patel?

  The dingo.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Big telecom industry guy. He'd come in from lobbying. They were like, "Oh no, what's going to happen?" And then he turned out to actually be very amenable toward-

• 29:14Nilay Patel?

  But John Oliver famously called Tom Wheeler a dingo.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:18Nilay Patel?

  Right? He was the lobbyist. He came in, "You're letting lobbyists regulate the industry." But then he did it.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, he actually did. And there was, obviously, yeah, there was a lot of pressure, but he put forward rules and the rules were the Title II reassignment that we were talking about.

• 29:31Nilay Patel?

  But just to get that timeline right, they lost at the DC Circuit with 706 for no blocking and no throttling.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:39Nilay Patel?

  Wheeler's first response was the DC Circuit has actually laid out a plan for me to do something like net neutrality, still using Section 706.

• 29:50Nilay Patel?

  And everyone thought that was ridiculous.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 29:52Nilay Patel?

  That was like a real moment where he was like, no, no, this isn't a defeat. This is a grand victory.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  He had some great quote, I mean.

• 30:00Nilay Patel?

  Uh, it was truly insane.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  It's weird how similar this is because I've been writing about this all day and I'm literally just going back to Addy's stories and everything's the same.

• 30:10Nilay Patel?

  It's all the same. This is what, this is actually why I wanted both of you here.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  They're, they're going back to the same insane arguments being like net neutrality, it can totally happen, sort of.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  See, I think there are differences, though. One of them is that Comcast's big argument was, we're gonna have to follow these rules anyway.

• 30:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Because of the, because of the NBC purchase.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Right, which 2018 was a very long time away at that point. And so that was a big thing that they, like, that was a huge thing that they could pull out, that now they just, like, no, it's just actually gonna be gone.

• 30:39Nilay Patel?

  Well, yeah, but they are saying, we believe in net neutrality, we're not, we're not gonna undo these things. It's in form, very similar to what just happened, I think this is last month, when Congress invalidated the data privacy rules, and all the, they were all like, no, no, no, don't worry, we're still, we're definitely still following those rules.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  I mean, even the.

• 30:57Nilay Patel?

  We just don't want them to exist. But again, this comes back to like, should there be rules? Or should you just blindly trust in our corporate ethic? It's like, or what if we just had rules? Like, that's like a choice that we have.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:11Nilay Patel?

  In our nation of laws. Like, they, literally, the argument is, should we have laws or should we, should we all just trust the corporations? And like, that is like, very dystopian to me.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Yes. It's dystopian in a way that we have been fighting about for like, a hundred years.

• 31:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but we had, like, the rules were there, and now they're saying, well, we're still gonna follow the rules, we just don't want them to be there. Like, they don't want, it's, that argument to me is so hollow, it's, they keep saying, we're not gonna do the bad thing, but if we do the bad thing, we don't want there to be consequences for it. And I just don't understand why they think that anyone will be convinced by that.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  The context is also flipped a little bit, though, because in, at, around 2014, 2015, the, a big argument was, well, we haven't had these rules for a while, we haven't had Title II, and everything's been basically fine.

• 31:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  And now their argument is, like, we are the ones on the defensive who have to say, like, no, look, things are actually gonna go bad if you change this.

• 32:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  We've had two years of, okay, we've had net neutrality, now what's happened? Now they're like, oh, god, this guy's gonna fall.

• 32:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but they did do a bunch of bad things. Like Comcast did aggressively throttle BitTorrent.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Yes, in 2009?

• 32:21Nilay Patel?

  AT&T and Apple definitely made an agreement to not let Skype run over the AT&T network and only let FaceTime run over. I mean, like, it's a long list, actually.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Yes. Well, a lot of it happened pre-2010, but, or around then.

• 32:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was the dawn of mobile. Like, a lot of weird things started happening. And I think a lot of the rulemaking that Pi, in his Order Today, is referencing is like, "Well, we had a light-touch regulatory framework in the Clinton years. We can just go back to that because the internet's great." And it's like, dude, most of these companies didn't exist. Like, most of the things that we rely on for the internet literally were not around during the light-touch regulatory framework years. Now, the whole context of the internet and our economy is different. You maybe should not let carriers have that much control over such a huge chunk of the economy. And it's like a weird, to me, that's weird. But let's go back to this timeline because we got off track.

• 33:18Nilay Patel?

  So Wheeler lost the D.C. Circuit Court. He came out and said, "I can still do this under 706." Most people thought that was real dumb.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:26Nilay Patel?

  Susan Crawford, who writes for Back Channel Now, but she was a professor at Cardozo Law School, referred to that strategy as "once more with feeling", because they were just gonna basically do the thing that they got kicked out of court.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:39Nilay Patel?

  Obama stepped in. This actually happened. They had a meeting at the White House and a bunch of Obama advisers told Tom Wheeler, "Like, you just stop it. Like, there's been a Title II rulemaking open for years. Just do the thing that we should have always done." And the Title II idea was actually the previous chairman's ideas. It was Julius Janikowski's idea ages and ages ago. And they set it aside. So they basically took it off the shelf and did it again. There was a big outcry and they did it. Right? Like, that's basically the timeline here. But this middle period...

• 34:11Nilay Patel?

  That's what we're back to now. This middle period where Title II is not available and everyone kind of agrees on the rules and this Section 706 authority is like the murky thing that will make it happen.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  I mean, the other thing is that it's that now if this gets repealed, like, they are trying to fight really hard to make sure that you can't do it again.

• 34:32Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Like, that's the other thing, is that there is a sort of finality that was not really at stake in the earlier debate.

• 34:37Nilay Patel?

  Well, right, I mean, I think a lot of what Comcast wants, and actually that a PR person from Comcast was tweeting at me today, and her argument was, "This is all a mess. What we really need is legislation." And there is like, some amount of, I don't know, I wouldn't call it conspiracy theory, but like, game theory, not to use that phrase, but here we are, it's time for some game theory, that what Pi is doing is he's throwing the regulatory process in chaos, so that Democrats and Republicans actually write a law that like, does something.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  I mean, it's unfortunate, but you're kind of right, because, I mean, we're really testing the limits of what the FCC can do here. Because if after two years and literally like, a non-existent body of evidence, they can completely change how they regulate internet providers, then we're just gonna be able to do this every four or eight years, whenever the administration change is over. And so, there is an extent to which like, a law would be good, especially since like, a lot of the really basic stuff, people are generally in agreement on, like, it has become like, very politically unpopular to be opposed to net neutrality, even if you're, you know, against it, everybody's still out there saying, "I'm for an open internet," in some

• 35:53Speaker 01

  way, which generally suggests that something could get done. I just don't know if anybody wants to get in that fight in Congress right now, when they have so much other stuff to deal with.

• 36:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, they're a little overloaded. Right, like, there's like, a healthcare reform idea that's still like, up in the air, there's like, tax reform is up in the air.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  The wall to fund.

• 36:12Nilay Patel?

  There's a wall to build, there's a princess to murder, there's Gilder to blame for it.

• 36:18Nilay Patel?

  A lot going on. To me, I just want to focus on this zone because there's this great word that I learned today in the notice of proposed rulemaking about Section 706. So they say, "We're going to go back to Title I. We're going to figure out if we even need rules about throttling or whatever." And then at the very end, they're like, "Oh, Section 706. What if that is merely hortatory?" I'd never heard this word before. Hortatory means tending to exhort.

• 36:53Nilay Patel?

  So what if Section 706 is just to exhort the FCC to promote broadband? That's it?

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Like just a general mission statement?

• 37:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just like, "I exhort you to build networks." Like, instead of a grant of authority.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  So it's a rule that doesn't actually involve any kind of rules?

• 37:08Nilay Patel?

  It's just a fist pump.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  It's a slogan.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  What if the commission was really just a state of mind?

• 37:13Nilay Patel?

  What are laws? Like, all of this comes down to, like, existentially questioning why governments exist in the most fundamental ways. Like, is this a law? Is this a grant of authority? Or is this merely an exhortation that we should have the Internet? Like, that's the level that the FCC is at here. It's so deeply confusing. I've been so upset all day.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  I mean, that's the problem, is that, like, years ago, this would have been like, "Oh, God, this is terrifying and unmooring." This now just feels like government. This feels like everything. Everything is up in the air. Norms don't matter anymore. None of it makes sense.

• 37:52Nilay Patel?

  It is deeply, deeply confusing. But that's where we are. Like, the D.C. Circuit in 2014, was that when that ruling was?

• 38:01Speaker 02

  Yes, because they made the rules and then passed them in 2015.

• 38:05Nilay Patel?

  Right. So the D.C. Circuit said, "You've classified the Internet as a Title I telecommunications service. Then you've tried to layer on these rules about no blocking and no throttling. Those rules make the Internet a common carrier. If you're going to make it a common carrier, you need to actually classify it under Title II." That was explicitly what the court said at that time. And now we're back to, we're gonna go back to Title I, undo Title II, and somehow, we're gonna get these rules in. And it is just deeply unclear.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Well, it's, it's-

• 38:37Nilay Patel?

  Particularly if the grant of authority in 706 is merely an exhortation and not actually authority.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  It's not somehow we're gonna get these rules in, it's somehow, maybe, we'll get the rules in. It's, right, because that's why there are all those questions in there. It's like, do we have the authority? But also, are they even necessary? And so this is the thing, like, you could've skipped three years of debate, and you're still in the same spot, except now, instead of trying to put the rules in place, they're trying to see how much they can whittle them down. And it seems like that's anywhere from, like, nonexistent to, you know, not quite anything.

• 39:18Nilay Patel?

  But you know what you can get on the internet right now? Great images from Graphic Stock. I'm just trying.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Can I, can I just, you know, there's one thing? I wanna thank whoever from Getty went to Ajit Pai's speech and took some photos.

• 39:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, because there were like four.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  There were, there were three images of him that were not awful for, for like, a solid six months. And it has been terrible, and our social media managers have been yelling at me to stop using the same photos.

• 39:52Nilay Patel?

  And they all have Tom Wheeler in the background, right?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Well, this is the problem, if you wanna sol- like, there are like, five with Tom Wheeler in the background, and I don't wanna use those, because Tom Wheeler's not around. There are only three solo, and one has his, like, mouth hanging open-

• 40:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  -in a really embarrassing way.

• 40:05Nilay Patel?

  He doesn't photograph well.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  What happened to the one with him sipping the Kermit picture of him?

• 40:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's what I mean, like, there's like, so many, like, I'm not saying he's unattractive, I mean that his, like, he, uh, the percentage of photos where he is making a bad face is much higher than it should be.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Some people just have very expressive faces.

• 40:25Nilay Patel?

  Nah, I think, I think the Getty people just don't like him. Anyway, look.

• 40:31Nilay Patel?

  There's also great images on Graphic Stock, okay? That's what this show is brought to you by today. Graphic Stock has the largest unlimited download library of graphics, photos, vectors, and illustrations with more than 350,000 images and growing. This month, Graphic Stock is also launching a new collection featuring thousands of futuristic, dream-inspired images. These now all come included with your subscription. And downloads are yours forever, even after trial ends. They're all 100% royalty-free. The Vergecast, given only seven days of Graphic Stock, so you can try it out and explore this new, dream-inspired collection, free, Jake! Get on that before you get throttled. So, go to graphicstock.com/vergecast, start downloading, get started today.

• 41:11Nilay Patel?

  That is graphicstock.com/vergecast for seven-day free trial, 100% royalty-free images. Everything's dream-inspired. Just ride that wave.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Mouths are hanging open.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  It's still better than that time that I took that empty picture of the FCC desks, and we used that for like 50,000 posts.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  I used that yesterday.

• 41:32Nilay Patel?

  We have one, it's like, I went and interviewed Julius Fienakowski of the FCC, like, on the day that he was like, opening his museum of old Apple II's in the basement. And like, we took one photo of the FCC logo on a glass wall, and then we made it black and white, and we just used that one all the time. And it looks totally foreboding, but that day was like, it was just a bunch of like, kids at the FCC building being like, "I'm playing with an Atari!" And it's like, we made it super black and white and foreboding, and now we use it all the time.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  I have always wondered where that photo came from, because it's not the best, as far as like, illustrative photos go. Like, you can't really see a logo through like, a glass sheet.

• 42:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't know why it was black and white.

• 42:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was, it's just one of the, it's like, I took it, I'm like-

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Now I understand.

• 42:18Nilay Patel?

  An old, it was, I think we took it, it's like a photo we took with a video camera. So to get the grain out, we made it black. It's like, that level.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Well-

• 42:25Nilay Patel?

  This is the early internet, man. There's no net neutrality back then. We were just trying to sneak it by.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  It is.

• 42:31Nilay Patel?

  So, let's talk about the future, such as it may continue to exist. So, let's, Addie, I want to start with you. So, in, all of the Title II stuff happened.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  Yes. It did happen.

• 42:44Nilay Patel?

  We think. Reading this document, then the world ended, the internet shut down for two years. But during that period of argument, what was your kind of read on the shape of the debate, right? Because it was a lot of consumers, there was the Oliver video, rewrote a bunch of very strident pieces. It seemed like the great weight was to make net neutrality happen.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Yes, there was a great weight. There was, I mean, internet companies like Netflix, very famously, they would just do what amounted a little bit to publicity stunts, like that they would be like Verizon's slowing down our traffic, guys. Now your service is terrible.

• 43:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Like whether or not that was true, which was complicated. But anyway, so it was very, very visible. And also, there were not a lot of protests about other things compared to now.

• 43:32Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  That you could have these giant net neutrality protests, you could have like the, you could have like Tumblr do banner ads and shut down. You could have these like huge internet wide things that it seemed like everyone could agree on. Like it was, I think Russell recently called it like a third rail issue.

• 43:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  That there was just, it sounded terrible to say anything.

• 43:52Nilay Patel?

  I mean, we have written stories now that are like, Trump supporters on Reddit have to pick between net neutrality and supporting the Trump administration.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:59Nilay Patel?

  Which is actually really interesting, because you go read R. the Donald, and they don't know how they feel about it right now. It's not a unified voice from that area right now.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  There have always been, like libertarians have very consistently and like consistently with their values, said, look, we just want regulation to not happen, period. Like there are reasoned arguments against it. Like reasoned, not that I agree with them, but reasoned, they come from a genuine place and that they are logically consistent and that they, at that point, would argue basically, look, we don't need this, we've not had it for a while, it's okay. Which may or may not have been true, but that was like their, that was their trump card at the point.

• 44:40Nilay Patel?

  Trump card.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  I can't say that anymore now.

• 44:42Nilay Patel?

  Set it. All right, so based on that, let's talk about now. Because that was then, and Netflix really was at the forefront of this. They were pushing very hard for net neutrality. They were rallying their subscribers. You actually wrote a piece, was it last month?

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Well, that's interesting, because Lauren Good asked Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, what he thought about net neutrality now that Trump's in office. And he kind of just brushed it off.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  I mean, with Netflix, that's like the argument that people would always make during the protests was that, once you're a big internet company, you don't actually have any incentive to fight for net neutrality anymore. That then you're like the people who can pay to have your traffic prioritized, or to make your deals with like John Ledger and stuff.

• 45:30Nilay Patel?

  No, but so this is true of us too, right? Like, it is true that one of the reasons that I deeply care about net neutrality is that this business we started, The Verge, five years ago, only exists because we could just start a website and start publishing, right? Now, we're like a really big company, we have a minority investor in Comcast, if it all goes to hell, we can probably pay some money and get prioritized and be fine. But that means the next set of creators won't be, but fuck them because we're the winners, right? Like, that's fine, but idealistically, I think it's more important that new people have access to like the audience.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  And in a really sort of free-market-y sense, that is the way that things get better, that people will like compete with us and push us to get better, so we don't just like...

• 46:15Nilay Patel?

  No, Marquez is going down. That kid is done. He's great. Okay, so based on all that, that was the argument then. How do you see this argument shaping up now and over the next few months? Like, is Netflix gonna come out hard? There was a bunch of startups that wrote a letter.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  And this is weird, right? Like, so yeah, there were like 800 like startups, investors, and like Y Combinator organized them, and they wrote this letter being like, "Net neutrality, it's great, don't change it." And then there's this group called the Internet Association, they represent like Netflix, Google, Facebook, there's 40 different big web companies. And they were like, "Don't change anything, net neutrality is great, dah dah dah." But the interesting thing is that a lot of the, in a lot of these statements, I'm not seeing the words title to.

• 47:01Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  They're just saying net neutrality. And the thing is, I think they might prefer Title II, right? But I think they know that it's not going to happen at this point. So they're just fighting for net neutrality, saying, "Give us something." And I think it's going to be interesting to see how strongly they come out. Because right now, there hasn't been a preemptive fight. This has been, Pi has been telegraphing this for months. It has been very clear this is going to start. And if they had wanted to make this harder for him, they could have been out there fighting back against him for months now. But they largely haven't.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Well, so this is the thing, though, is that they've been fighting about a million other things. Like, I really wonder if this has been easier than it would have been otherwise because they're fighting H1B, they're fighting the immigration ban, they're fighting any number of other things that have happened in the first 100 days of the administration. That, like, there are protests for absolutely everything. If you protested net neutrality, no one would even notice.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, there's an extent to which I'm wondering, I mean, so much of the, the last net neutrality debate was propelled by just individuals who were pissed off that their internet was getting meddled with. But now, I feel like, I wonder if people will have the energy to fight for net neutrality on top of all of these other things that feel so much bigger.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  And that also, the converse of your saying that, like, Trump people are being split by net neutrality is also true, which is that net neutrality people can no longer count on, like, this bipartisan support. Because it is like, now, if you're part of the Donald, you have to, like, stand your ground and not say stuff.

• 48:40Nilay Patel?

  I don't know if that's true.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it could still happen. People could still cross the aisle, but I think it's not reflexive anymore. I think you don't reflexively have Reddit on your side opposing, I mean, Reddit as like-

• 48:51Speaker 01

  It feels more dangerous.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Like, it doesn't, yeah, it feels like it is partisan.

• 48:54Nilay Patel?

  You know, I've had this conversation a few times with a few different people, and I think ultimately it comes down to me is, it doesn't matter what side of the aisle you are on, or your politics, or whatever, it, you have a shitty relationship with your internet service provider. That is just a truth of the American experience. Like, you pay for some internet- And you get some of it and mostly you get bad experiences and high prices, right? And that, I think that is why it's a third rail issue. It, it just crosses outside the boundary of your particular politics and it comes down to, how do you as a consumer have a relationship with this company that mediates so much of your life, right?

• 49:37Nilay Patel?

  If you want to talk to your family on Facebook, you gotta go through your internet service provider. If you want to start a small business and sell stuff online, you gotta go through an internet service provider. By the way, Squarespace is a great way, I'm kidding. They, they didn't pay for ads this week, so they get nothing. Literally, if you want to watch some YouTube, if you want to cut the cord and save some money on TV, you gotta pay for your internet service provider. If you, there's just nothing that doesn't involve that relationship. And if you want to get a job, you kind of need an internet connection in America. And by that, I mean like, you need to email your resume to employ, like, very basic stuff requires you to have an internet connection. I think that, I don't think people have great relationships with these providers. I don't think they feel like they have an extraordinary amount of choice.

• 50:18Nilay Patel?

  I don't think they feel like they can, like, you can delete Uber if you're mad at Uber, you can go use Lyft. It's a thing you can do, no matter how woke or unwoke you think Lyft is. But you can just delete Uber and go somewhere else. If you hate Comcast and you live in Chicago or Philadelphia, wherever Comcast is, you can't, you can't, you just can't, you're trapped in that relationship with them. And I think most people feel that intuitively. And I think the question does come down to, how much more energy do you have to like, fight a political battle, right? Even though your politics might not matter here. And I, that, I think it comes down to, is a company like Netflix gonna be able to rally all of its customers? Cause that's what, they really did a good job of that in 2015.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  And will they? Especially, we're talking about Netflix.

• 51:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  And Netflix is much more comfortable than it, you know, today than it was in 2014, right? It is, it is huge, it is expanding in a big way, it is global. And I, and I don't, I don't know.

• 51:19Nilay Patel?

  I mean Netflix now has the power where it knows that if Comcast starts throttling Netflix, like Netflix can just like point at it and be like, you're screwing us. And people will get very mad at Comcast. They, that power has been expressed so hard that Comcast finally broke down and put Netflix on the cable box. Right, so Netflix is just in this different position, but that is the argument for neutrality. Because Vimeo is not in that position. I think you talked to Vimeo's general counsel.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, just like an hour ago, and they, you know, they called it, the person I spoke with called it a gift to internet providers. Because the thing is like, it's just pure deregulation for the sake of, you know, they don't want to follow these rules. They want to, you know, these put Vimeo at a disadvantage, because right Comcast owns NBC. It could, you know, make it easier to get to NBC programming instead of Vimeo's programming. And Vimeo is not big enough to fight back, not against YouTube or Netflix or something like that.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  I feel like the sort of elephant in the room is zero rating, though, that like, we've had these rules, like Title II has been in place, and zero rating is still happening, and sponsored data is still happening. Like, how much of that is going to change? Do they just take all the stops out now? Or was this kind of a mood issue already?

• 52:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think that's like a really, that is, I think, where the argument really got complicated for me, was zero rating. Because there's the way that T-Mobile was doing it, which is, you could just, if you were Spotify or whatever, you could just use the T-Mobile API and like, it would zero rate the data. So it was open, it was free, they just wanted, they wanted some technical constraint amount of data setting to phones. So if you ran YouTube, like YouTube could just use the API, and they could detect, like, you're going to a T-Mobile phone, and they would downrise your thing and whatever. The way Verizon did it was like, you just paid Verizon the money, right? And like, then Verizon zero rated your data. Like, those are different approaches. I think T-Mobile's approach, and this is basically what the FCC found as well, was,

• 53:18Nilay Patel?

  T-Mobile's approach is like, interesting because it actually makes it cheaper for customers without, and it's open. Like, any startup could just like, go use T-Mobile's system. Verizon's approach was just like, cost, passing costs around. And that is like, a little bit more, I don't know, I don't want to say malicious. It's just a little bit less like, we're making the internet happy for everyone, right? It's just more, it's more Verizon.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Not very uncarrier?

• 53:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's not very uncarrier, right? Um, God, everything about this conversation is horrible.

• 53:54Nilay Patel?

  But so like, but that was an argument worth having. I think now the question is like, you get rid of all these rules and you say there's not even authority to impose similar rules. You really do come to a point where AT&T is like, well, we own Time Warner. When you sign up for AT&T, all the Time Warner family of channels are free, high quality. And if you would like to watch Viacom channels, you owe us another $5 a month. That's out there. Now, they're all saying we're not going to do that. But that temptation, I think, for them is all going to be very real.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  They're, they're committed to an open internet, but they're not specific about anything. That's the thing, right? Like, so long as these things are just like guidelines that they can kind of commit to but aren't legally bound to. Like, this is the reality that we're facing, right? Like, there's nothing to stop them from at least experimenting with these things, if they want to, right? I, I think they know that they're, that they face backlash if they go too far. But the thing is like, i-if it's these things that are a little more insidious, like, we will give you this for free and you may not realize it, but that disadvantages a bunch of other parties. Consumers aren't going to have as

• 55:11Speaker 01

  much of an outcry, I think, because that feels good. You're getting something for free. It's just, and it's not clear who that's hurting.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  I mean, that's the thing, is I think throttling is dead. Like, first of all, because BitTorrent is not a gigantic thing anymore the way that it was in like 2008. But second of all, because you can do the same-

• 55:29Nilay Patel?

  I disagree. I don't know how you get your movies. No, I'm kidding. I don't pirate anything ever.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  No, it is. Yeah, maybe I'm just getting old and so I don't recognize it anymore.

• 55:37Nilay Patel?

  It's too hard.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  But no, like streaming media actually did change a ton of things.

• 55:41Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Like, it is not nearly as endemic as it was. Like, it is, there are ways to get things that are not downloading them. Anyway, that's a side note, but that it's much easier now to say, like, we can just make other things free. Especially because so many people have mobile broadband now and so it's not really speed that's the problem, it's data.

• 55:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it's dumb thing like.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  I mean, it's part of it's dumb because if you speed other stuff up, other stuff is slow by default.

• 56:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the argument breaks down on two, I think on two fronts. One is like the user experience is bad. So if you don't have Verizon, it doesn't matter how much money you pay for like NFL Sunday ticket. You can't watch it on your phone because Verizon owns the mobile rights to the NFL. Like that's just annoying, right? And more and more slicing up of the internet in that way will just become more and more annoying. So that's one part of it. Then the other part of it is the much more sort of ineffable, we're going to harm innovation in the internet ecosystem because the cost of access will get higher. And by access, I mean the cost of accessing every customer because you have to pay for prioritized access in order to compete on a level playing field.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  I mean, I mean it less in a sort of this will harm the internet less way and more in that the optics are going to look a lot better. Like when companies were just blocking Skype or something or like throttling BitTorrent traffic, that was a thing you could point out and go, you as a consumer, this really, really sucks for you.

• 57:04Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  It is harder to point at something and go, you as a consumer are getting that for free and that is hurting you in a larger economic sense.

• 57:10Nilay Patel?

  You know, but that was like the T-Mobile versus Verizon zero rating problem, right? To the consumer, all of the strategies, the end goals look the same, but the means by which T-Mobile was accomplishing zero rating from a policy perspective, much better than how Verizon, AT&T were accomplishing zero rating. So like, it's great that Go90 was free on Verizon. Great. It really helped Go90. It's like every Verizon customer is like, I love that free Go90 video. I, literally, to my last day on this earth, I will love making fun of Go90. Um, we're all gonna end up working for Go90 someday. I know that's gonna happen.

• 57:52Nilay Patel?

  But, the way that Go90 was free for Verizon customers was Go90 is a separate subsidiary inside of Verizon that paid Verizon Wireless for that access.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Oh my god, that was it.

• 58:01Nilay Patel?

  Right, so they're, they're just moving money around inside of Verizon. Like, that is bad. Like, that, from a policy perspective, you don't want anyone to, like, pay Verizon for that access. From the customer perspective, it all looks the same. Like, Spotify is free to stream on T-Mobile, that's great, you really like it. Go90 is free to stream on Verizon. Please, god, use Go90. We really want you to use it. But, like, the methods are important here. I, I think us not pushing through to the underlying method of that customer relationship is, like, the big problem here. And I think that's where all these companies are saying, "We believe in the open internet." Well, the question is, are they rules? Are they just suggestions? Is there authority

• 58:46Nilay Patel?

  behind them? And all of that, right now, I think is up for grabs.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you're completely right. The, the proposal we're looking at, there is basically no guidance. It could go absolutely anywhere. And the thing is, it's probably going to be very lenient. And I think the FCC wants to give internet providers a lot of options. I think it likes the idea of them trying out these different business models and seeing how they go. We're, I think we see the obvious flaws in them, but they're going, "But what if that turns out okay?" Like, how bad could it be?

• 59:21Speaker 02

  If there were multiple broadband competitors, that would, that argument would have some merit.

• 59:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:26Nilay Patel?

  Like, right, that would be competition.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Right, that would, yeah.

• 59:29Nilay Patel?

  That'd be great.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  In a world where we can all, you know, switch between, uh, four different wired internet providers too, that would be, I mean, I don't think we would really be having this debate. We would be saying that the stuff that Verizon's doing-

• 59:41Speaker 02

  Maybe sort of, but we're having it with wireless.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  That, that's true. That, right. Uh, right, but here, right, we're saying, like, Verizon is being sketchy here, but like, what T-Mobile is doing, like, they're onto something. That's, that's, you know, that's good for consumers. Something worked out here.

• 59:56Nilay Patel?

  But, the way Verizon responded to it was by zero rating everything and giving it unlimited data. Right, like that, it, they just landed back at the thing that you want. Like, it just circled it all the way back around. And they said, "Well, we'll just zero rate everything," and now it's unlimited.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Which is a separate issue about how all these data caps are just complete nonsense.

• 1:00:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's unlimited, but like, they throttle you after a number, right?

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, that's true, yeah.

• 1:00:19Nilay Patel?

  It's always there. Somewhere in Verizon is like, "But we built this throttling system. We should use it. We can't let it go."

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Their new prepaid unlimited plan is throttled from the first byte.

• 1:00:29Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:30Nilay Patel?

  It's incredible.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Know why?

• 1:00:32Nilay Patel?

  Everything is just Verizon. Like Verizon to me is the one, they're the ones who filed the court order against the first open internet rules. When all the other carriers are like, "This is probably fine." Like, basically, like, in 2014, 2010, like, that area. AT&T, Comcast, all the big ones were like, "We'll deal with these rules, just don't give us Title II." And Verizon's like, "We're going to court. If you're gonna do this, you're gonna do Title II." And that is the root of this moment.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  My favorite thing is that in every statement, they'll always say, "Oh, these FCC rules create regulatory uncertainty." What they actually mean is that they are suing to stop them, and they don't know if they're gonna get overturned or not. They could just not sue.

• 1:01:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Problem solved.

• 1:01:17Nilay Patel?

  No, no, what are laws? They're just ideas. What is the nature of government? I mean, that's where we are.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, whatever, we just keep it in flux for an infinite period of time, and then they can just do whatever they want in the meantime.

• 1:01:30Nilay Patel?

  It's gonna be great, the internet.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  We're gonna have to build a post-apocalyptic mesh network soon, anyway. So, we're gonna have to deal with that.

• 1:01:35Nilay Patel?

  Eero should have sponsored the show. So, I'll build Squarespaces on Eero, everybody. Okay, that was an hour where I think we just, we're basically, what we've decided is that governments are good ideas, but not necessarily good in practice.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  I think we just decided everything is that.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  And also, what are laws?

• 1:01:49Nilay Patel?

  What are laws? So honestly, what happens next? What's the timeline?

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Don't know the exact timeline, but next month, they're gonna vote on this thing. Then there's gonna be months and months and months where you'll be able to file a public comment and call the FCC and yell at them and say how crazy they are and how you're so much smarter than them. And you should probably do that if you are angry about this. Because the thing is, they are held to, they have to listen to you. On some level, they have to listen to you. And it makes their life harder if, like in 2014, 2015, they have this massive outcry of public support that makes it harder to ignore, which is kind of part of what happened last time, right? There were so many people saying, "Do Title II," that they had really good reason to go and switch course and do Title II.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Right, people literally knew the words "Title II."

• 1:02:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  Which was absurd.

• 1:02:40Nilay Patel?

  But that comes back to this fundamental thing, which was, at that time, the only way to get the rules people wanted was to use the authority of Title II.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  That is still true.

• 1:02:50Nilay Patel?

  It's, we think.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's-

• 1:02:53Nilay Patel?

  What are laws?

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  It is definitely still true, and they want to make it a mess, because then-

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  Well, it wouldn't be true if they passed a law that was literally, "This is a special thing that is net neutrality," and it's purely Congress-based.

• 1:03:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that's super gonna happen.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  I'm just saying, technically, it could happen.

• 1:03:11Nilay Patel?

  And a lot of people think Pai is gaming his way towards that, where he's thrown it all into disarray, people are gonna, screaming it mad, and then something will happen in Congress.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  I don't really see any incentive for them to make any rules if they can get rid of all the rules.

• 1:03:25Nilay Patel?

  I mean, there's a line in here that's like, "We love the idea of no blocking, but we, I mean, what, how could we possibly use our authority when we have none?" Like, that's in here explicitly, almost. Like, "We love this, we just don't know how we could possibly impose this rule."

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that part's actually-

• 1:03:41Nilay Patel?

  Given that we've taken away our authority to impose any rules.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  That part's particularly weird, because it says, "We love no blocking, we think it's great, but codified rules, eh..."

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Like, it's like, what other kind of...

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  They explicitly say also, like, this is going to hurt, you know, rural Americans with broadband, because people won't invest if you can't block stuff.

• 1:04:03Nilay Patel?

  I wonder if Pi's kids have strict rules at home. I guess he has adorable children. He's always tweeting about his kids. They're always saying, like, the craziest things. But like, you have to wonder if he's like, if he's like a put his foot down parent, or if he's more like, "These are suggestions. And if you break these suggestions, everyone will be very mad at you, but nothing will happen. You will feel shame in your corporate arts." All right, that was Vergecast. It's been an hour. It's been emotional. I've enjoyed having both of you here with me. This is just gonna keep going and going and going. It's not gonna stop. And the debate, like, so much of this debate is the same debate, that we have like, a rich library of pieces that Addy wrote to draw on. We have, a lot of the characters that we talked to are back.

• 1:04:46Nilay Patel?

  So there's a lot here for us to do and to get into. I think, like I said, it's a particular point of passion for me and The Verge, because it, we cover the internet. Our whole point of our publication is the internet has like, changed the world, so we should probably pay attention to it. So we'll be doing a lot more. I suspect we'll have many more special episodes of the show. I would like to get Ajit Pai on the show. He only talks to people who don't, who don't disagree with him.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  Can we hire somebody new?

• 1:05:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like a hardcore conservative telecom analyst?

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, that seems like a good use of money.

• 1:05:21Nilay Patel?

  Baron Sokka, here on the show. We'll see what we can do.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  I love Baron Sokka.

• 1:05:25Nilay Patel?

  He's great. I suggested it in all sincerity. But tweet at him. He's at Ajit Pai, A-J-I-T-P-A-I-F-C-C. Tell him to come on The Vergecast. We'll be nice. I said, we said nice things about him. What does he love?

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Getting tweets. Right, he favors, I know he reads his Twitter.

• 1:05:45Nilay Patel?

  I know he reads his Twitter.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  He reads these comments.

• 1:05:47Nilay Patel?

  I'm assuming I'm muted at this point.

• 1:05:51Nilay Patel?

  But what are you gonna do? But we'd love to get him on the show. Walt has offered to interview him. Kara's offered to interview him. Whatever he wants. I think he should show up and answer some hard questions. Particularly like, what are laws? Like, I would just like to start there with him and see where we go. But we'll be covering way more of this. We talked about it. There's other stuff to listen to if you don't want to just do an hour of this. Walt and I talked about it a little bit yesterday on Control+Delete. Listen to that. That's great. Lauren Good has Too Embarrassed to Ask, which is wonderful. Peter Kafka has Recode Media. And Kara Swisher has Recode Decode. All wonderful shows on iTunes. Go rate, review them. You can talk to us. You can tweet at us. Jake, you're Jake underscore K.

• 1:06:28Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:28Nilay Patel?

  Addie is at the dextrarchy. Yep. Which I can't spell. It's a joke. It's a good... Yeah. Just tweet at her. It's great. I'm at Reckless. We love your feedback. Come talk to us. We'll be back next week here on The Vergecast. It's gonna be fine. Rock and roll. Paul.