[Plura-list] Fighting fiber was the right's dumbest self-own

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* Fighting fiber was the right's dumbest self-own: "We don't have to
care. We're the [phone company|social media monopolist]."

* This day in history: 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2020

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current
writing projects, current reading

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🐐 Fighting fiber was the right's dumbest self-own

With the deplatforming of forums where trumpists and right-wing figures
congregate, there's a lot of chatter about whether and when private
entities have the right to remove speech, and what obligations come with
scale.

The most important - and overlooked - area of this discourse is the role
that monopoly plays, and the role that anti-monopoly enforcement could play.

In short, the fact that being removed from Twitter and the app stores
and Facebook and Amazon is so devastating is best addressed by weakening
those companies by spreading out our digital life onto lots of platforms.

Not by strengthening them by giving them formal duties to either carry
or remove speech based on its content. These duties will justify all
kinds of anticompetitive activity, because only a very profitable
company can afford to fulfil them.

It also turns the same companies that failed horribly to craft and
uphold moderation standards into private-sector arms of powerful state
actors (like domestic surveillance agencies) who defend their right to
monopolize the digital sphere as necessary for national security.

(Recall that the Pentagon intervened in the DoJ's breakup of AT&T in the
1950s, successfully arguing for a stay of execution on the grounds that
the Korean War could not be effectively persecuted without AT&T's help -
the company stayed intact for 30 years after that)

Competition in the platforms is important, but it's not the whole story.
The First Amendment was drafted for newspapers, and most contemporary
communications law comes from broadcast and cable regulation. The
internet is not a newspaper or a TV station, after all.

The discussion of the difference between the American revolutionary era
(or the heyday of broadcast TV) and the present moment focuses on
technology, but there's a much more important difference to take account
of: the presence or absence of a public sphere.

The First Amendment contemplates both a diversity of speech forums
(newspapers, cafes, halls) alongside of public spaces that are *truly*
public, owned by the people through their governments and tightly bound
by 1A as to when and whether rules about speech can be enforced.

So if the Masonic Lodge won't let you give a speech from its stage, and
the cafe throws you out for arguing, and the newspaper won't let you
publish an op-ed, you can stand outside of those establishments with a
sign or a bullhorn, leafleting and speaking your piece.

The government can still restrict your speech on the public sidewalk or
in a public park, but not according to its content - only according to
"time and manner" (for example, enforcing a noise ordinance after 9PM or
ticketing you for blocking traffic).

The biggest difference between a world where we are locked indoors and
connect to one another via the internet and the world we left behind is
that there are *no public spaces* on the internet.

If a cafe kicks you out for your speech, you can picket the public right
of way out front. If Twitter kicks you out for your views, you have no
constitutionally guaranteed right to stand at its digital threshold and
tell everyone who enters or leaves that you got a raw deal.

Now, the state provision of digital services isn't an unmitigated good.
US governments at all levels have proven themselves to be utterly
surveillance-addled, in thrall to the fallacy that spying on everyone
will make us all safer.

But surveillance fears aren't why we lack democratically controlled
tech. For that, you can thank the same right wingers who are so
exorcised about deplatforming today, who, for a decade, have been the
useful idiots of telcoms monopolists in the fight over public broadband.

American cable and telco monopolists have divided up the country so that
the best most of us can hope for is a duopoly, while many others are
burdened with monopoly carriers, and millions live in broadband deserts
with no high-speed internet at all.

The poorer you are, the more your broadband costs and the worse it is.
The more rural you are, the worse your broadband is and the more it
costs. Homeowners with good broadband see their assets appreciate. If
your home is outside a monopolist's profit zone, its price drops.

The internet barons like it that way. When Frontier went bankrupt last
year, we got to see its internal docs. Guess what? If you have no choice
other than Frontier, it treats you as an "asset" because you will pay
more for worse service.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

Frontier cares about its share price (its execs are mostly paid in
stock, not cash), and share prices are rigged by influential analysts
who downrank any company that makes a capitol expenditure that takes
more than five years to pay off.

That's why Frontier decided to walk away from the $800,000,000 in
profits it would realize on a ten-year investment in fiber for three
million households who currently make do with Frontier's failing copper
network, which often consists of wires draped over trees.

We've been here before. For decades, you had to live in an urban,
affluent area to get electricity; your country cousins burned coal for
dinner and used oil-lamps to read by. The New Deal electrified the
nation, extending universal service regardless of the business-case.

Electricity became a human right, and the US government extended it
across the nation (though structural racism meant that it arrived late
for majority Black settlements).

Long before covid, underserved towns realized that their very existence
depended on decent broadband.

The initial experiments with municipal fiber were incredible,
jaw-dropping successes. Towns that invested in fiber saw a vast
expansion of job opportunities, access to global information and
services, and new blood from telecommuters who relocated from big cities.

The telcos fucking hated this. How can you sell flaky access to copper
wires draped over shrubs for $80/month when the city is wiring people up
to networks that are *1,000-100,000 times faster* at a lower price?

In a competitive market, companies would have improved service and
lowered prices to compete. Luckily (for monopolists), there's a cheaper
solution: buy off state legislatures so they pass laws banning municipal
broadband.

These laws were promulgated to GOP-dominated statehouses across the
country, passed by right wing lawmakers who told their constituents they
were "keeping government out of the internet."

This is a line that their footsoldiers dutifully parroted during the
Obama years, then signed up to Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's order that
reversed a late-term-Obama FCC order banning state laws that interfered
with municipal fiber projects.

Unfortunately (for the right), reality has a well-known left-wing bias.
700+ US towns and cities have municipal fiber. They are the only
Americans who consistently express satisfaction with their ISPs. Most of
these towns vote Republican!

https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

Woe betide the rural "red" town that lacks municipal fiber. These have
been mostly abandoned by cable companies, so their cable/DSL duopoly has
become a DSL monopoly, with prices rising and quality of service falling.

https://ilsr.org/monopoly-networks/

Which brings me back to the First Amendment and public sidewalks. All
those people who are trying to find a way to support the "free market†"
and also justify demanding that dominant platforms be ordered to carry
their speech are living in a hell of their own making.

†Adam Smith popularized the term "free markets" to describe markets free
from "rentiers" who collect money without adding value...such as cable
monopolists. He *definitely* didn't mean "markets free from government
regulation."

Because here's the thing: your ISP - and Twitter, and Facebook, and
Amazon - is a private company. It is not subject to the First Amendment.
It can have any rules it wants about which lawful speech it will
tolerate. It can sling your ass out the door on a whim.

You know who's bound by the First Amendment? You know who can't suppress
your speech based on its content? You know who has to answer public
records requests about why you got booted out of its service?

Your local government.

If you had a $70/month, 100GB fiber in your rural house, you could run a
kickass P2P messaging server, and while you'd be right to worry about
(covert, illegal) government surveillance (use encryption, kids) on that
line, you would 100% have recourse if you got booted off.

It's not an automatic home run. The First Amendment has exceptions, even
beyond "time and manner," and has been substantially eroded by GW Bush
and his successors, in the name of fighting terror, animal rights
activists and water defenders.

But a lawsuit against your town council for nuking your Turner Diaries
fanfic server is a hell of a lot more likely to succeed than griping
about Twitter mods failing to grasp the "irony" in your Auschwitz jokes.

The right's war on municipal broadband was its biggest self-own of the
2010s. And while it's not true that "a conservative is a liberal who's
been mugged," it might be true that "a municipal broadband activist is a
conservative who's been kicked off Twitter."

And this is one of those causes (like shutting down private prisons, or
opposing foreign wars of aggression) where a substantial slice of the
left and the right can come together (at the most local of levels!) to
really Get Shit Done.

Because the other great victims of America's monopolized broadband are
people of color, poor people and working class people (often the same
people). They live with digital redlining, where they pay 2X for 1/100th
the speeds of their affluent neighbors a block away.

They're the ones whose kids are doing homework in Taco Bell parking lots
(and getting flunked on their tests because creepy remote proctoring
services penalize them for taking their tests in a beat up hatchback and
not a private room).

The ones who can't videoconference with dying relatives in ICUs or
doctors for telemed consults. Who can't apply for work-at-home jobs, or
just play games and watch movies and upload their fun Tiktoks and
Youtube videos.

The current system serves about 300 senior execs at telco monopolists,
and a few thousand investors, and savagely fucks over everyone else.
Even rich people in big cities usually can't buy fiber at any price.

It's time for our four-decade Atlas Shrugged LARP to end. It's time for
a bipartisan fiber consensus.


_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🐐 This day in history

#20yrsago The writings of “Red” Emma Goldman, collected with old Hearst
newsreels, letters, and criticism https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/

#15yrsago Octavia Butler’s “Fledgling”: subtle, thrilling vampire novel
https://memex.craphound.com/2006/01/17/octavia-butlers-fledgling-subtle-thrilling-vampire-novel/

#10yrsago Suzuki Beane: lost 1961 beatnik kids’ book from Louise
Fitzhugh and Sandra Scoppettone
https://www.scribd.com/doc/24325132/Suzuki-Beane

#5yrsgo Suspicious, photo-taking “Middle Eastern” men were visually
impaired tourists
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-mall-video-men-1.3406619

#5yrsago The Electable Mr Sanders https://robertreich.org/post/137454417985

#5yrsago Jeremy Corbyn proposes ban on dividends from companies that
don’t pay living
wageshttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/16/jeremy-corbyn-to-confront-big-business-over-living-wage

#5yrsago Oregon domestic terrorists now destroying public property in
earnest
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/16/oregon-militias-behavior-increasingly-brazen-as-public-property-destroyed

#5yrsago Trump Casinos lost millions every single year that Donald Trump
ran it (but he’s still rich)
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/donald-trump-was-a-stock-market-disaster-2015-07-22

#5yrsago Revealed: the hidden web of big-business money backing Europe
and America’s pro-TTIP “think tanks”
https://thecorrespondent.com/3884/Big-business-orders-its-pro-TTIP-arguments-from-these-think-tanks/855725233704-2febf71a

#1yrago Inventive students detach IoT car-immobilizers, use their SIMs
to power free wifi hotspots
https://www.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/comments/e541r4/new_type_of_parking_enforcement_on_my_campus/

#1yrago Fast-tracked South Dakota bill will felonize doctors who offer
gender-confirmation therapy to trans kids
https://thegailygrind.com/2020/01/16/republicans-introduce-bill-to-make-it-illegal-for-doctors-to-treat-transgender-children-in-north-dakota/

#1yrago Ars Technica’s dunk on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Netflix series is the
best dunk of all
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/goops-netflix-series-its-so-much-worse-than-i-expected-and-i-cant-unsee-it/

#1yrago Imagining a “smart city” that treats you as a sensor, not a
thing to be sensed
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/17/the-case-for-cities-where-youre-the-sensor-not-the-thing-being-sensed

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🐐 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel
about truth and reconciliation. Friday's progress: 516 words (99972 total).

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 27)
https://craphound.com/news/2021/01/11/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-27/

Upcoming appearances:

* Keynote for linux.conf.au, Jan 22 (US) 23 (Australia)
https://linux.conf.au/schedule/

* Evening with William Gibson, Jan 25,
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/william-gibson-cory-doctorow-agency-tickets-132831910821

* Boskone, 58, Feb 12-15, https://boskone.org/

* Keynote, NISO Plus, Feb 22-25,
https://niso.plus/cory-doctorow-to-keynote-at-niso-plus-2021/

Recent appearances:

* Monocle Reads
https://monocle.com/radio/shows/meet-the-writers/monocle-reads-87/play/

* Hedging Bets on the Future (Motherboard Cyber):
https://play.acast.com/s/cyber/hedgingbetsonthefuturewithauthorcorydoctorow

* Applying the Pandemic Mindset to Climate Change:
https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/12/applying-the-pandemic-mindset-to-climate-change-with-cory-doctorow

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially,
provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link
to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are
included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the
basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🐐 How to get Pluralistic:

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/web/accounts/303320

Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and
advertising):

https://twitter.com/doctorow

Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic

*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla* -Joey "Accordion Guy"
DeVilla


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 195 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://mail.flarn.com/pipermail/plura-list/attachments/20210117/5c961d71/attachment.sig>