No, you're putting words in my mouth, or misunderstanding my point.

> you think Comcast should be broken up

I think efforts to break up tech monopolies should first be focused on telecommunication companies.

> because they lobby for things you don't like,

Not just me, but are objectively harmful to 99% of the people they would affect

> but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.

I'm mostly focusing on Google here, and yes, they at least occasionally lobby for things I like because sometimes their interests and the interests of the public in general happen to align.

With Comcast (and other ISPs), you have only one choice, and they spend tons of money and effort making sure you only have that one choice, and continue to have only that one choice. Comcast recently spent nearly $1M to prevent Fort Collins from creating a municipal ISP[1]. That is actively anti-competitive and monopolistic by definition.

[1]: https://muninetworks.org/content/totals-are-comcast-spends-9...

Isn't the point of government to represent the people? Sure, the parent poster is but one person, but on the whole, Americans were in favor of Net Neutrality.

Perhaps outright defending FANG is going too far, but the parent definitely has a point that ISP's should be looked into when we're discussing "breaking up" companies.

> What you're admitting here basically is that you think Comcast should be broken up because they lobby for things you don't like, but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.

Far from being a shocking "admission," it's the least surprising thing in the world that people support policy they like and oppose policy they don't. And ignore policy they're indifferent to.

(People may also at times support policy they don't like and oppose policy they do for various practical political reasons, but that's a different discussion.)

This might be more of an issue in areas where things people do/don't like are arbitrary matters of taste. I'm certainly not saddling up to lead a state-backed charge against the company that produces Peeps despite the fact that I think they're a terrible excuse for candy.

But net neutrality is not an arbitrary matter of taste.

Nor, really, are immigration, tax reform and antitrust issues.

> What you're admitting here basically is that you think Comcast should be broken up because they lobby for things you don't like, but FAANG is fine because they lobby for things you do.

The original point of anti-trust law was to make things better for the consumer. If Comcast is using their power to lobby for anti-consumer practices then they should be broken up. Naturally consumers are going to disagree with anti-consumer practices.

It's uncontroversial to say Net Neutrality is pro-consumer on HN because we're the people who know the technical aspects of the concept; it's uncontroversial anywhere people know what it's about.

But the point is well made. We can't be breaking up companies that don't do what we want, if they're playing by the rules.

The real answer is to change the rules. Warren is running on some populist anger, and that's a dangerous thing to praise.

OFC that is the measure. If they have lobbied for things that actually make our life better or make it worse. Lobbing is inevitable and Desirable too.

How so? If I don't like my internet provider, my only other option is dialup. If I don't like Google, there's multiple alternatives for all of their services that I use

That doesn't make sense - while Google may have a dominant position in a winner takes all ISPs can exclude others from the market far easier. If Google becomes grossly unreasonable it is easier to leave them - in a Geographic area your options are more constrained by physical availability and prices can be raised largely arbitrarily.

You have claimed that it's a stranglehold, but never explained what actually makes it so, given that any would-be Google and Netflix competitor would have access to the same pipes as those two, and on the same terms.

By "spent more money on congress people" @psadauskas is not simply just referring to "who spent more money last year", he's implying that the foothole that a Comcast or a Verizon has in the capitol goes much further than say a Google. And that makes since right? Especially from a government's perspective. If you can be chummy with an ISP, you hardly need the help of a downstream application builder (e.g., Google).

His statement still holds

That's one perspective. Another school of thought says that both the extent and duration of copyright protection is counterproductive if not batshit insane, and lobbying for copyright liberalization benefits almost everyone regardless of the underlying motivation.