WHOPPER® Neutrality (A Social Experiment)

[Harley]

Burger King Uses The Whopper To Teach A Valuable Lesson On Net Neutrality

The repeal of Net Neutrality is a hot topic in America, but it can be very difficult to understand. That’s why the BURGER KING® brand created WHOPPER® Neutrality, a social experiment that explains the effects of the repeal of Net Neutrality by putting it in terms anyone can understand.

[Photo: courtesy of Burger King]

What: A new Burger King ad that uses its signature burger to raise awareness on the issue of net neutrality.

Who: Burger King, David Miami

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ltzy5vRmN8Q

This effort aims to help people understand how the repeal of Net Neutrality will impact their lives. This effort aims to help people understand how the repeal of Net Neutrality will impact their lives.

The BURGER KING® brand believes the Internet should be like the WHOPPER® sandwich: the same for everyone.

Help keep Net Neutrality safe by signing the petition at Change.org/SavetheNet

"Actual Guests. Fake pricing for illustration purposes only. TM & © 2018 Burger King Corporation. All rights reserved."

Why we care: Back in December, the FCC repealed the open internet rules put in place by the Obama administration, and since then the debate over net neutrality has raged back and forth between those who want to see the internet remain open and those who want to see increased regulation. Earlier this week, AT&T weighted in, calling for a new “Internet Bill of Rights,” which included net neutrality. Now another, uh, less expected brand has taken its own stand on the issue.

Metaphor is often an effective way to teach and learn a lesson. And here that means the Whopper stands in for internet access speeds to raise awareness of what repealing net neutrality could mean for everyday people. If they get this heated over lunch, imagine how pissed they’ll be if it’s Netflix.

Oh, and extra trolling points to The King for his nod to FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s ridiculously gargantuan Reese’s coffee mug.

Sources:
FaST CoMPANY

BURGER KING (YouTube).

[RunningDeer]

It’s #2 on trending. As of this posting, it's over 366,000 views. Wow! already it's up to 392,038 views on this one video alone. There are over 4,730 videos discussing the Whopper Neutrality.

4,730 videos discussing the Whopper Neutrality

[Harley]

Posted by RunningDeer (here)
It’s #2 on trending. As of this posting, it's over 366,000 views. Wow! already it's up to 392,038 views on this one video alone. There are over 4,730 videos discussing the Whopper Neutrality.

That's Good!

Here's some more possible good news (We'll have to wait and see).

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Net neutrality comment fraud will finally be investigated by the government

January 24th, 2018

During the Federal Communication Commission’s open period of comment on its net neutrality repeal plan, the commission was flooded with over 22 million comments about net neutrality. Reports at the time, and subsequent analysis of the public data, shows that millions of those comments may have been submitted by bots, overseas persons, or even using stolen identities of real Americans.

At the time, the FCC refused to investigate the problem or remove the fraudulent comments from the record. The FCC also refused to comply with an investigation by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman into the fake comments.

But today, net neutrality advocates won a small victory, as the federal government accountability office, the GAO, has opened an investigation into the use of impersonation on public comments filed with the FCC. In a response to a request from Democratic lawmakers, the GAO said that it “accepts the request” to “review the extent and pervasiveness of fraud and the misuse of American identities during federal rulemaking processes.” The investigation is not expected to open for at least five months, so this won’t be a fast process.

Schneiderman, who is also leading a lawsuit against the FCC’s net neutrality repeal, is delighted nonetheless. “I’m pleased that the U.S. Government Accountability Office agreed to also investigate these comments,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “My office will continue our investigation into this potential impersonation – which is a crime under New York law. The FCC’s decision to move ahead with its vote last month – despite widespread evidence of corruption – made a mockery of our public comment process and rewarded those who perpetrated fraud in order to advance their own agenda.”

In the meantime, a bill to overturn the FCC vote under the Congressional Review Act is picking up steam. It’s just one vote short of a majority in the Senate, and has 110 co-sponsors in the House. However, even if the Democrats do get one more Republican to vote for the bill, and successfully pass it through Congress, the chances of preserving net neutrality via the Congressional Review Act seem slim. A bill would have to pass the House of Representatives, where Republicans have firmer control, and then be signed into law by President Trump. Given that he backed the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality provisions, the chances of that happening seem slim right now.

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[RunningDeer]

Now it's over a million views in 21 hours, and still trending at #2.

[Valerie Villars]

Do I really live in this world? I think I must have entered the wrong timeline.

[Satori]

Posted by Harley (here)
Burger King Uses The Whopper To Teach A Valuable Lesson On Net Neutrality

The repeal of Net Neutrality is a hot topic in America, but it can be very difficult to understand. That’s why the BURGER KING® brand created WHOPPER® Neutrality, a social experiment that explains the effects of the repeal of Net Neutrality by putting it in terms anyone can understand.

[Photo: courtesy of Burger King]

What: A new Burger King ad that uses its signature burger to raise awareness on the issue of net neutrality.

Who: Burger King, David Miami

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ltzy5vRmN8Q

This effort aims to help people understand how the repeal of Net Neutrality will impact their lives. This effort aims to help people understand how the repeal of Net Neutrality will impact their lives.

The BURGER KING® brand believes the Internet should be like the WHOPPER® sandwich: the same for everyone.

Help keep Net Neutrality safe by signing the petition at Change.org/SavetheNet

"Actual Guests. Fake pricing for illustration purposes only. TM & © 2018 Burger King Corporation. All rights reserved."

Why we care: Back in December, the FCC repealed the open internet rules put in place by the Obama administration, and since then the debate over net neutrality has raged back and forth between those who want to see the internet remain open and those who want to see increased regulation. Earlier this week, AT&T weighted in, calling for a new “Internet Bill of Rights,” which included net neutrality. Now another, uh, less expected brand has taken its own stand on the issue.

Metaphor is often an effective way to teach and learn a lesson. And here that means the Whopper stands in for internet access speeds to raise awareness of what repealing net neutrality could mean for everyday people. If they get this heated over lunch, imagine how pissed they’ll be if it’s Netflix.

Oh, and extra trolling points to The King for his nod to FCC chairman Ajit Pai’s ridiculously gargantuan Reese’s coffee mug.

Sources:
FaST CoMPANY

BURGER KING (YouTube).

How can we be certain that this apparently corporate-sponsored depiction of the ostensible effect of the repeal of net neutrality, so called, is an accurate depiction? It's an entertaining video, but I wouldn't bank on it providing a complete or necessarily accurate picture on the subject.

[christian]

Let me present some information to expand the conversation about net neutrality.

For most of the history of the internet, there were no laws to protect net neutrality. Nevertheless, the internet developed just fine and net neutrality principles were usually upheld.

The first country to formally introduce net neutrality legislature was Chile in 2014. Chile did it because some websites paid to deliver their content to users for free. This is also called zero-rating. Chile said no, no free giveaways, no preferential delivery of some websites, even if the websites pay for that. That same principle keeps websites like Wikipedia to deliver their content for free to people in countries like India and Egypt, by the way.

In the US, it was until 2015 that internet service providers (ISPs) were classified as communication services under Title I of the Communications Act of 1934 and regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC did not enforce any net neutrality principles, as it didn't have the authority to do so, just as it didn't have the authority to force newspapers to present all topics and points of views equally. Nevertheless, there were only few cases in which ISPs didn't adhere to net neutrality principles. In order to legally force ISPs to be bound to net neutrality, ISPs were reclassified in 2015 as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Now they could be regulated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) like phone companies, who have to connect all calls with equal quality and priority.

However, there's more to Title II. It allows the FCC to set prices and dictate the business activities of ISPs in a variety of ways. The FCC also maintained that they might fine ISPs for not adhering to vaguely formulated rules of "general conduct." In order to avoid fines, ISPs had to hire lawyers to double-check all their decisions. Especially smaller ISPs suffered heavily because of this. All in all, the increased authority over ISPs stifled investments in broadband infrastructure in the US. Who would invest in something, if the next day the government might change their mind over what you can or cannot do with it, or fines you for what you're doing?

ISPs had a good reason to believe that government agencies would finally drop the hammer on them and basically take them over. Some net neutrality lobbying groups, funded by George Soros to the tune of $196 million, demanded exactly that.

Donald Trump, like him or not, put a halt to all of this in 2017. Now ISPs are again regulated by the FTC under Title I.

In terms of free internet, what ensures access to information is access to broadband infrastructure and affordability of ISPs. The affordability of ISPs depends mostly on competition on the market place. To ensure this competition, a lot of European countries make use of forced local-loop unbundling (LLU). This means that the government forces the owners of broadband infrastructure to make their infrastructure available, in part or as a whole, to competitors, who rent it to offer their services as ISPs to customers. The rent that is paid by the competitors is determined by the government. While this leads to short-term increase of competition and reduction in prices for consumers, it may stifle investments in broadband infrastructure, for obvious reasons. Who would invest in infrastructure if the government tells you for how much you have to rent it?

To me, it seems the most practical solution is for communities to invest in their own broadband infrastructure. LLU is possible immediately then, which ensures competition on the market for ISPs. If one ISP would censor information, you could easily choose another one. There's also a business case for communities for making these investments, cause it pays off in higher quality of connection, cheaper prices for ISPs, and it increases the attractiveness of the community for companies and residents, which leads to higher tax revenues. There's an interesting study about this in Broadband Communities. Interestingly, there's already a lot of unused taxpayer-funded broadband infrastructure in the US today, called "dark fiber."

There's also a case to be made that abolishing net neutrality will lead to increased quality of data transfers via the internet. This is because companies would pay to be the first to have their sites delivered through newly built infrastructure that is faster than what is existing already. As the infrastructure is expanded in this way, the faster lanes eventually become more affordable to every person and every company in general, just as new computers and telephones eventually become affordable after being relatively expensive at the time of their release. The parallel existence of connections of different speeds also gives an incentive for those who use slower connections to develop better methods of data compression, which in turn would unburden and therefore improve upon the internet infrastructure as a whole.

[Ewan]

If it's trending someone in Silicon Valley wants it to. (-cynic)

[Harley]

Posted by Ewan (here)
If it's trending someone in Silicon Valley wants it to. (-cynic)

In other words, the Democrats?

[sanma]

Opposite of educational as far as I can tell.

Broadband customers already pay higher prices for faster download speed.
The mention of mbps is extremely confusing.
It could lead people to think that this is what it's about, leading to a reaction of, "So what, that's how it is already," or "That change must have already happened."

The video shows a 2-party transaction, net neutrality is about 3-party transcactions.
And net neutrality is not about treating all end-users the same, it's about treating all packets the same.
Ending it is about privileging corporate content above all else.

In my understanding an accurate analogy would be if your phone company were to grant differential access to different callers. If a call was made to you from a corporate call center or a robocaller, it would be put through right away, whereas if your aunt ethel or your friend next door phoned you they'd have to wait a half hour or more for your phone to ring or your voicemail to pick up.

Or, say, like having a roadblock on your street, where amazon delivery vans are let through right away, but if you try to drive out of your driveway to return some books to the library, then your car is stopped for some time before you're allowed to leave, and if you want to visit aunt ethel in the next town, you're denied access to the highway, which is now for delivery vans only.

Neither is a perfect analogy but I think they're both somewhat educational, unlike the video.
And both explain why net neutrality is important to people, especially those of us whose online activities are currently not limited to streaming disney movies and reading news from approved sources.

[Hervé]

Posted by christian (here)
[...]
To me, it seems the most practical solution is for communities to invest in their own broadband infrastructure. LLU is possible immediately then, which ensures competition on the market for ISPs. If one ISP would censor information, you could easily choose another one. There's also a business case for communities for making these investments, cause it pays off in higher quality of connection, cheaper prices for ISPs, and it increases the attractiveness of the community for companies and residents, which leads to higher tax revenues. There's an interesting study about this in Broadband Communities. Interestingly, there's already a lot of unused taxpayer-funded broadband infrastructure in the US today, called "dark fiber."
[...]

See this case: The new self-reliance: Ignored by Big Telecom, Detroit's marginalized communities are building their own internet

and this one: How to Keep The Internet Monopoly-Free