I can't really say I'm against net neutrality, but like many Internet issues I think the debate is sloppy and full of assumptions. I think there are at least a few arguments against net neutrality.
1. The Internet isn't neutral to being with. To get connected to the Internet an ISP, especially a smaller one, will have to buy transit. But can also make peering agreements with other, often local, ISPs and large services like Google or Facebook. In reality, depending how things are connected, your connection speed will vary regardless based on business decisions. Net neutrality leaves those decisions up to, other, big players like large (tier 1) ISPs, cloud providers and big services instead of consumer ISPs.
2. The real problem isn't net neutrality, but competition between consumer ISPs. Net neutrality restricts the business model for ISPs even when there competition. Many consumers might actually just want news, social media, software updates, some streaming services and limited access to the open Internet. Yet, they are forced to pay for the rest of the traffic and infrastructure.
3. I used be a nice idea that the Internet was open and that most nodes where equal, but that isn't really the case anymore. There's a number big players with huge influence over Internet technology that makes a lot of money. While consumers pay just to access the Internet, don't get static ip addresses and limited upstream traffic. Internet protocols have not kept up with reality and hosting your own services are challenging with the prevalence of ddos, spam, ransomware, exploits etc. You can argue that the big services that makes a lot of money should today be, or at least have the possibility to be, paying more. Especially since they enjoy economy of scale.
> Net neutrality leaves those decisions up to, other, big players like large (tier 1) ISPs, cloud providers and big services instead of consumer ISPs.
Without net neutrality, the decisions are still up to tier 1 ISPs, cloud providers and big services. You just have to deal with one more type of decision-maker (consumer ISP) in addition to, not instead of, all of the above.
Come to think of it, I wonder how those deals will play out when net neutrality is gone. ISPs probably don't care enough to discriminate against individual domain names or small IP blocks, and most developers don't want to have to care about such things, either. So the prioritization deals will most likely be between large companies. Something like, host with Linode if you want fast connections to Comcast users, and host with DigitalOcean if you want priority access to Verizon users. AWS might start offering two types of elastic IPs, one that gets prioritized with all major ISPs and one that doens't, with different transfer rates.
>Many consumers might actually just want news, social media, software updates, some streaming services and limited access to the open Internet. Yet, they are forced to pay for the rest of the traffic and infrastructure.
But it's a level playing field because all ISPs face the same problem.
While I wouldn't necessarily say that it's a level playing field (as large networks have huge advantages), this particular issue is more about consumer choice. That you can't, essentially, buy a laptop without Windows isn't a problem for laptop manufacturers, but it is for consumers.
1. The Internet isn't neutral to being with. To get connected to the Internet an ISP, especially a smaller one, will have to buy transit. But can also make peering agreements with other, often local, ISPs and large services like Google or Facebook. In reality, depending how things are connected, your connection speed will vary regardless based on business decisions. Net neutrality leaves those decisions up to, other, big players like large (tier 1) ISPs, cloud providers and big services instead of consumer ISPs.
2. The real problem isn't net neutrality, but competition between consumer ISPs. Net neutrality restricts the business model for ISPs even when there competition. Many consumers might actually just want news, social media, software updates, some streaming services and limited access to the open Internet. Yet, they are forced to pay for the rest of the traffic and infrastructure.
3. I used be a nice idea that the Internet was open and that most nodes where equal, but that isn't really the case anymore. There's a number big players with huge influence over Internet technology that makes a lot of money. While consumers pay just to access the Internet, don't get static ip addresses and limited upstream traffic. Internet protocols have not kept up with reality and hosting your own services are challenging with the prevalence of ddos, spam, ransomware, exploits etc. You can argue that the big services that makes a lot of money should today be, or at least have the possibility to be, paying more. Especially since they enjoy economy of scale.