For all those that say that net neutrality does nothing, and doesn't matter, I ask this. If net neutrality never made a difference, then why is every ISP pouring a collective billions of dollars into stopping it? Why did they do the same thing about 5 years ago trying to kill it? Why did they do the same AGAIN 10 years ago trying to prevent it becoming law the first time?
If you can't see how net neutrality affects the internet, then you don't understand. As a general rule of thumb, if you don't understand something just look at what big money corporations are doing. You generally want the opposite of that. They are not here to be your friend. They are here to try to take every dollar they can from you.
Not every ISP! Where I live there's an awesome ISP, Sonic, which is pro-NN, and last I heard only offers "best effort" service --- which means there's no throttling your link, no paid tiers; if the fiber and hardware can support 10Gbps symmetric, then that's what you get.
Sadly, they're not the norm. And sadly, not offered at my address.
Great comment. We have the same thing here in Australia with tobacco laws. The most recent change was to ban almost all branding on cigarette packaging. They're not allowed to use fonts, slogans, logos, or colours, just the brand name in plain text on a standard brown-green box.
The logic being that branding makes a product more attractive to a consumer. Make it duller and less people will buy it.
Tobacco companies fought it tooth and nail. Kept arguing it wouldn't stop people from smoking. Well then why are you lobbying so hard against it? Obviously the only reason they will ever fight anything is because they think it will hurt their revenue. So whatever they oppose, I support.
Tobacco companies fought it tooth and nail. Kept arguing it wouldn’t stop people from smoking.
They are right, people will not stop smoking only because the packaging is dull.
Well then why are you lobbying so hard against it? Obviously the only reason they will ever fight anything is because they think it will hurt their revenue. So whatever they oppose, I support.
Because they lost advertising opportunity.
People recognize the brand by the packaging before even reading the brand name. This way your country just make any type of advertising for the cigarettes useless. And maybe as a collateral effect some younger people will not start to smoke since they will not see the advertising, but as far as I know people don't start to smoke because the package is cool.
It's more subtle than that. Obviously no one who already smokes is going to say "Oh, the packet isn't as pretty as it used to be, guess I'll quit smoking now."
It's about the big, long-term picture. Companies spend money on branding and advertising because it works. You create the perception that your product is for a certain type of person, which makes them more inclined to buy it. By making cigarettes boring, you make them less appealing, and on average less people will smoke.
The proof is in the pudding. Social attitudes to smoking in Australia have totally flipped within a generation or two. It used to be something that everyone did. It's now mostly seen as a gross habit.
That's true in pretty much every developed country over the past 2-3 decades lmao. The US still has branded packaging but the social attitude towards cigarettes has also completely flipped from being something everybody (including children) did to being seen as gross. I don't see how this arbitrary law is shown to have any effect whatsoever.
I literally just googled "cigarette plain packaging effectiveness" and there's tons of articles analysing it and they all conclude that it has made a difference 🤷🏼♂️
It’s about the big, long-term picture. Companies spend money on branding and advertising because it works. You create the perception that your product is for a certain type of person, which makes them more inclined to buy it. By making cigarettes boring, you make them less appealing, and on average less people will smoke.
Fine, but if that the point, a more honest (intellectually) thing to do would be simply ban cigarettes advertising. The way it is done seems to me something like "I want to ban this but I don't want to be the one that do it".
We're way ahead of you mate, all tobacco advertising was banned in Australia 30 years ago. Plain packaging is just the latest in a long line of moves designed to de-normalise smoking, and the tobacco companies have fought against it every step of the way.
