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General Discussion

AJ Salmon
AJ Salmon
5,675 Points

Will the decision on net neutrality affect web developers?

Not trying to spark any debate, or anything along those lines. I'm just wondering if there will be a change in the process of getting sites online.

2 Answers

I can't imagine how it would directly affect web devs. If an ISP is going to throttle traffic for some reason, I don't know how web devs could take that into account in any way to avoid that. It's pretty much on the ISP's shoulders from what I can tell.

I also suspect that any traffic throttling would be based on one of two likely scenarios.

The first would be throttling traffic for financial and/or monetary reasons. For example, Comcast is part owner of Hulu, so they could (speculative at this point) throttle Netflix traffic as a means of encouraging people to use Hulu.

The second would be following the models of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook in throttling and possibly even blocking content they find politically unacceptable. For example, a left leaning company might throttle Breitbart or a right leaning company might throttle the Huffington Post.

Based on those two scenarios, as web developers, I fail to see how we could do anything to mitigate those outcomes.

It should also be noted that just because this vote passed, there are still options going forward. ISPs misusing their power could result in the FCC revisiting this issue. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could also intervene as a regulatory agency via anti-trust laws. And, the U.S. Congress could also become involved in codifying some version of Net Neutrality as well.

Would love to hear others input on this as well.

EDIT: Grammar

AJ Salmon
AJ Salmon
5,675 Points

Well said, thanks for the input!

Rixa Gregory
Rixa Gregory
18,633 Points

Well if it goes back to the days before net neutrality... Make sure your site loads fast on all connections because some will be a lot slower than others. Urban areas will have the fast internet. Rural areas will have slower internet so if you want your site to be accessible to all make sure it gets the point across without too many fancy videos/animations.