Google, net neutrality and the effects on the rc community

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
This is gonna be a live one so please stay on topic and be civil.

I have not been a fan of google EVER but that abhorration has recently been enhanced by google flexing its net netrality muscles recently.

I have had to cancel internet and switch to a walmart burner phone for communications. Straight talk is a crappy service on its best day but google has now put it on its non approved service list.

What this means is straight talk is not paying googles extrotion fee for access.

What it means for end users... in my case in recent weeks I went from watching a you tube video with one or two load stops.

Today it took over 15 minutes to load Foamys new 2 minute video which is how I found out about googles "approved" list. I thought it was tstorms the other night that caused me to take 7+ hours to upload a 435 meg video that should have taken less then 7 minutes.

Anyway the reason for the thread is to see how many people would be willing to step up and nip this crap in the bud by uniting in protest to these new buisness methods.

If people do not step up now this WILL trickle down to everyone in added costs to phone and internet services as providers will pass those added costs on to us the end users.

You all have seen how cable companies have jacked prices up with these very same tactics and buissness practices.

So if you want to keep watching video on the internet in general its time to gather our collective rubber bands in a mass army to go fight godzilla.
 

FoamyDM

Building Fool-Flying Noob
Moderator
Thank you for watching Bill. And sorry about the phone.

I've been watching smartereveryday YouTube on the power that platforms like youtube, Facebook, Twitter have on influencing the masses through their algorithms.

You phone is likely not part of this, but it brings up issues of net neutrality and freedom of information.

Good luck, hope to see you at FFO'19.
 

kdobson83

Well-known member
Playing devil's advocate for a second, how exactly does this impact the RC community? You stated that in the title but didn't explain the connect. Would it just be about watching and uploading videos? There are other video websites like Facebook and Dailymotion. Although none as popular as Google's/Alphabet's YouTube, Rome didn't fall in a day.

Now, as far as net neutrality goes, there are TONS of people pushing to repeal the horrible law that went into effect a year or so ago. I believe there have been MAJOR lawsuits filed as well. My guess, it'll be an election issue next year. You know how our government works. SLOWLY... My guess, as people wake up to what's happening and speak up as you have, it will be forced into the spotlight.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
Well.... lets see. As more and more isps get throttled less and less people will watch videos because its simply not livable nor captivating to wait 15 minutes to watch a 2 minute video or watch it in 3 second segments as they load.

A close to home and very obvious example would be Flite test videos which are all hosted on google property. At some point google WIIL not only go after isps they will go after big content providers like Flite Test.

In case you have not been paying attention google has been walking away from paying content providers for ad revenew generated and is working up to making youtube a paid service to host content by its users.

Another for instance they took over my free email service a few years ago and stuffed it so full of ads it barely loaded on my computer. Not to mention you got redirected twice to new pages of ads just to log in and another for every message you actually looked at.

I vote with my time and money.. just like the merge with amain I will delete my google provided accounts and unplug from the entire internet if necessary. I have already moved my browser over to samsungs browser, switched to bing for search engine and blocked chrome after I made this thread this morning.

#wont be gglefkt any more
 

clolsonus

Well-known member
Slow and unreliable internet is no fun at all. I got rid of my DSL a few months ago and switched to cable (just the internet part.) Cut my bill in 1/3 (at least for the first year) and my up/down speeds all went way up.

One thing I discovered with my Centurylink DSL ... they could increase my download speeds to be super high, but the upload speeds stayed pitifully low. This meant that if I ever was uploading something (like pictures from my phone when I walk in the front door, or a youtube movie) then my entire internet connection all but completely quit working ... the pipelining of my upload packets seemed to create huge latencies in the download protocols which led to time outs in the higher level communication protocols and it was just terrible. The bigger difference between upload and download speeds, the worse this problem gets (at least by my understanding.) For myself at least (between work and personal projects) I think I do more uploading than the average user so this hit me especially hard.

So when I switched to cable internet, my up/down performance seemed to both be really good and don't seem to affect each other. I've been way happier. Dealing with the cable company is about as terrible as dealing with the phone company, but at least I have solid and good performing internet for now.

I feel bad for the people that are stuck with two tin cans and a strings for their internet connection (either because of location or by personal choice.) But at some point you have to pick the google sphere, or the microsoft sphere, or the apple sphere, or the facebook sphere, or walmart, or amazon ... and if your favorite gigantic multi-national corporations aren't solving all your problems for you with all that quality competition going on between them, then we have quality gov't regulation to fall back on. <sigh> :)
 

kdobson83

Well-known member
Well.... lets see. As more and more isps get throttled less and less people will watch videos because its simply not livable nor captivating to wait 15 minutes to watch a 2 minute video or watch it in 3 second segments as they load.

A close to home and very obvious example would be Flite test videos which are all hosted on google property. At some point google WIIL not only go after isps they will go after big content providers like Flite Test.

In case you have not been paying attention google has been walking away from paying content providers for ad revenew generated and is working up to making youtube a paid service to host content by its users.

Another for instance they took over my free email service a few years ago and stuffed it so full of ads it barely loaded on my computer. Not to mention you got redirected twice to new pages of ads just to log in and another for every message you actually looked at.

I vote with my time and money.. just like the merge with amain I will delete my google provided accounts and unplug from the entire internet if necessary. I have already moved my browser over to samsungs browser, switched to bing for search engine and blocked chrome after I made this thread this morning.

#wont be gglefkt any more
Unfortunately FliteTest only uploads their videos on YouTube. There is no way around that. But trust me, no way YouTube will start charging to upload videos. People would flock to their competition. And their competition would seize on their mistake.
I am on the same boat as you, the internet should be 100% neutral. But there are ways around Google. Google doesn't own the internet.
Let me ask you this, why do you use Straight Talk? There are PLENTY of other non contract phone providers out there. I use boost/Virgin Mobile. Virgin Mobile specializes in apple phones. No need to use big name browsers either. Have you looked into others like Mozilla or the famous Duckduckgo? You'd still have to use YouTube to watch FliteTest tho.

As far as dangers to this hobby, this is LOW on the list of problems. I'd say things like Amazon lobbying for our airspace (400ft and below) to deliver packages is a bigger threat. Could you imagine a time where you couldn't fly on your own property or your local park/church field above tree top level? Could you imagine having to look for flying fields with an app or similar to find FAA approved zones? YIKES!
Well, I'm not trying to poke the bear, but there are ways around the Google machine. For FliteTest tho, your stuck with YouTube for now...