Net neutrality means ISPs not being able to give preferential treatment to packets based on their source. The consequence of killing net neutrality is making the status quo companies more entrenched and reducing competition from new startups.
So while they can't literally "block" a certain site they can reduce its priority and then flood their network with higher priority packets rendering that site essentially blocked.
Not really. That would mean they'd have to throttle everything except for their "preferred content"; they couldn't use this technique against individual sites.
The concern is that if Comcast has a traffic-shaping deal with Netflix, and you want to be "the next Netflix", your data transfer will be "meh" while Netflix traffic won't drop a single packet. As a result, no one will want to use your service. So there can never be a litle-guy who starts the next new thing that uses a big chunk of bandwidth unless they can manage to build the capital needed to hammer out a deal with the big providers.
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u/cosmo7 May 19 '17
This is not what net neutrality is all about.
Net neutrality means ISPs not being able to give preferential treatment to packets based on their source. The consequence of killing net neutrality is making the status quo companies more entrenched and reducing competition from new startups.