Comment by user____name 4 hours ago
Not only RAM. I've recently been thinking about how much better things could be if ISP had data limits again. No doomscrolling, no multigigabyte patches, less slop, less spyware, less datacenters, less clickbait. All those things would become less profitable when transfers are limited.
Isn’t “paying for what you use” the ultimate expression of personal responsibility, though? Is unlimited high-speed internet a basic human right? (I’d argue _access_ is, given its necessity in participation in modern society, but not unlimited data).
The point may end up being moot, however, since the dark patterns feeding the social media-data harvesting pipeline are driven by keeping most people hooked on algorithmic infinitely scrolling feeds, and that attention-selling system will fight any attempt to rein it in, whether cultural or governmental.
> Isn’t “paying for what you use” the ultimate expression of personal responsibility, though?
The value of bandwidth is negligible until you start to work with 100s of TBs. Bandwidth is basically free on a consumer scale. It's the infrastructure you're paying for, but once purchased, it has minimal upkeep compared to how much use you get out of it. It'd be one thing if bandwidth were subsidised; then we could raise pricing up to where you're actually paying for what you use. We're already at that point though. Raising pricing further, either directly or through rationing, is just rent-seeking.
Responsibility is not inherently good. Imposed responsibility for no good reason is in fact bad.
ISP limiting bandwidth would effectively be killer for streaming services like Netflix.
The only one of those that would potentially disappear would be the 100 GB patches and games. Tiktok and Facebooks still works with 360p video, so doomscrolling would likely continue. Same goes for clickbait. The slop is what's being doomscrolled though in many cases, and all the slop that isn't in video form barely takes any bandwidth to begin with. Spyware doesn't take up much bandwidth, neither when first downloaded, nor during usage.
Yeah, and obesity would be solved if we had government-sanctioned food rations.
But I deeply dislike that solution. Personal responsibility beats authoritarive control in almost all cases.