December 5, 2024

Where is Internet Congestion Occurring?

In my post last week, I explained how Netflix traffic was experiencing congestion along end-to-end paths to broadband Internet subscribers, and how the resulting congestion was slowing down traffic to many Internet destinations. Although Netflix and Comcast ultimately mitigated this particular congestion episode by connecting directly to one another in a contractual arrangement known as paid peering, […]

Why Your Netflix Traffic is Slow, and Why the Open Internet Order Won't (Necessarily) Make It Faster

The FCC recently released the Open Internet Order, which has much to say about “net neutrality” whether (and in what circumstances) an Internet service provider is permitted to prioritize traffic. I’ll leave more detailed thoughts on the order itself to future posts; in this post, I would like to clarify what seems to be a […]

Is There a Future for Net Neutrality after Verizon v. FCC?

In a decision that was widely predicted by those who have been following the case, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has invalidated the FCC’s Open Internet Rules (so-called net neutrality regulations), which imposed non-discrimination and anti-blocking requirements on broadband Internet access providers. The rules were challenged by Verizon as soon as they […]

Arlington v. FCC: What it Means for Net Neutrality

[Cross-posted on my blog, Managing Miracles] On Monday, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in Arlington v. FCC. At issue was a very abstract legal question: whether the FCC has the right to interpret the scope of its own authority in cases in which congress has left the contours of their jurisdiction ambiguous. In […]

The Next Step towards an Open Internet

Now that the FCC has finally acted to safeguard network neutrality, the time has come to take the next step toward creating a level playing field on the rest of the Information Superhighway. Network neutrality rules are designed to ensure that large telecommunications companies do not squelch free speech and online innovation. However, it is increasingly evident that broadband companies are not the only threat to the open Internet. In short, federal regulators need to act now to safeguard social network neutrality.

The time to examine this issue could not be better. Facebook is the dominant social network in countries other than Brazil, where everybody uses Friendster or something. Facebook has achieved near-monopoly status in the social networking market. It now dominates the web, permeating all aspects of the information landscape. More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook. Indeed, there is evidence that people are turning to social networks instead of faceless search engines for many types of queries.

Social networks will soon be the primary gatekeepers standing between average Internet users and the web’s promise of information utopia. But can we trust them with this new-found power? Friends are unlikely to be an unbiased or complete source of information on most topics, creating silos of ignorance among the disparate components of the social graph. Meanwhile, social networks will have the power to make or break Internet businesses built atop the enormous quantity of referral traffic they will be able to generate. What will become of these businesses when friendships and tastes change? For example, there is recent evidence that social networks are hastening the decline of the music industry by promoting unknown artists who provide their music and streaming videos for free.

Social network usage patterns reflect deep divisions of race and class. Unregulated social networks could rapidly become virtual gated communities, with users cut off from others who could provide them with a diversity of perspectives. Right now, there’s no regulation of the immense decision-influencing power that friends have, and there are no measures in place to ensure that friends provide a neutral and balanced set of viewpoints. Fortunately, policy-makers have a rare opportunity to preempt the dangerous consequences of leaving this new technology to develop unchecked.

The time has come to create a Federal Friendship Commission to ensure that the immense power of social networks is not abused. For example, social network users who have their friend requests denied currently have no legal recourse. Users should have the option to appeal friend rejections to the FFC to verify that they don’t violate social network neutrality. Unregulated social networks will give many users a distorted view of the world dominated by the partisan, religious, and cultural prejudices of their immediate neighbors in the social graph. The FFC can correct this by requiring social networks to give equal time to any biased wall post.

However, others have suggested lighter-touch regulation, simply requiring each person to have friends of many races, religions, and political persuasions. Still others have suggested allowing information harms to be remedied through direct litigation—perhaps via tort reform that recognizes a new private right of action against violations of the “duty to friend.” As social networking software will soon be found throughout all aspects of society, urgent intervention is needed to forestall “The Tyranny of The Farmville.”

Of course, social network neutrality is just one of the policy tools regulators should use to ensure a level playing field. For example, the Department of Justice may need to more aggressively employ its antitrust powers to combat the recent dangerous concentration of social networking market share on popular micro-blogging services. But enacting formal social network neutrality rules is an important first step towards a more open web.