this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 60 points 11 months ago (3 children)

How about passing internet privacy laws? Or stopping the enshittification and commercialization of the internet? Or passing laws to protect youth from social media companies? Or curbing the reach of advertising companies? How about passing laws to keep our data from being sold to advertisers?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago (1 children)

All cool, but not what the FCC can do.

To pass laws, look to Congress. Remember to vote for the candidates you think will help accomplish those sorts of things.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Congress is broken. Unfortunately a bunch of geriatric old fucks who care about corporate money are in charge. But yeah, the govt needs to do its fucking job.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You could run, but you would probably want them to raise their salary first. DC is expensive in of itself, let alone dual living residence.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, DC is expensive, but not unreasonably so. This article claims it's about 50% more expensive than US average. A US Congressperson, without any leadership positions, makes $174,000, which is ~2.5x higher than the average household income (~$71k as on 2021).

So income shouldn't be what stops you from running, it's more than sufficient for living in DC. However, for maintaining two residences, that depends on where that other residence is.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I mean the median income is like 90-110k depending on how you classify DC, thats hardly a huge pay bump for having to deal with national nonsense and the stress of the job. In my opinion minimum should be 250k. If we want to be real about rooting out corruption and voting for the public interest we need to pay them the appropriate wage to do so. We are talking about some of the most important people in the country, and they are making way less than easier jobs in other industries, given the education.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That may be a good idea.

However, you claimed that OP would probably not want to run because of the compensation, as in, they wouldn't be able to afford living there on that salary. $174k is plenty to live in DC (as you pointed out, it's kind 50% higher than the median income), so in terms of being able to live and work there, the income is plenty. It may not be enough to discourage corruption among other members of Congress, but that's not necessarily a concern here (OP didn't seem to be worried about becoming corrupted).

Compensation is set by Congress, so if OP found compensation issues leading to corruption, OP could be part of that solution.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Don't you still have to maintain another residence back home? Still confused on how thay works.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

You say this like restoring net neutrality prevents these things from happening. They're not mutually exclusive.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Blows my mind how many conservatives think net neutrality is a bad thing just because the TV told them it's bad.

None of them can even tell me what the hell net neutrality even is.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They hear the basic description and call it internet communism.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

Most I've seen haven't even gotten that far. They hear "neutrality", think it has something to do with the Fairness Doctrine, and panic that they might have to step outside the echo chamber.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah, I don't get it either. All it means is that ISPs can't discriminate based on the site you're visiting, which is pretty important for individual freedom. Am I really free if all if my customers get throttled visiting my online store unless I pay ISPs to treat my site the same as my larger competitors? That's like saying it's fair for large companies to pay the police to make traffic on other roads slower so getting to my store is more convenient.

This really shouldn't be a partisan issue. Net Neutrality helps reduce the monopolization of the Internet, and it does that without making any top down rules, it just says you can't make anti consumer rules.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago

at the very least constant whip-lash from changes might see ISPs not being able to sign long-term contracts and businesses not being able to plan around availability of things like “fast lanes”, which might make them uncommon even if net neutrality keeps getting repealed

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

See y'all when it gets rolled back if/when the Republicans take office again.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Cool it only took them 4 years