"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Respectfully, I feel this isn’t unrelated or generic. I live in WA and the situation here politically IS really that skewed. If I feel there is a threat to my ability to use the Internet freely and exercise free speech emerging from the state’s political powers, who may soon be entrusted with operating this service, how else can I broach the topic? It is something that has to be discussed and planned for in my opinion.

Any comment that goes "municipal broadband" -> "gender ideology, critical race theory" -> "progressive activism" has almost by definition gone on a generic ideological tangent. That's exactly what we ask people to avoid here. It leads to generic ideological flamewar, which is the sort of thing that will kill this place.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Your account seems to be using HN primarily for ideological battle. Would you please not do that? We've had to ask you about this multiple times before. Regardless of what you're battling for or against, it's repetitive and inflammatory and destructive of the curiosity HN is supposed to exist for.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

(I understand if you don’t have time to engage on this, but if you have time for one more response I would appreciate understanding this better)

Why is that chain a generic ideological tangent? My argument is that one sided political ideology has come into every level of WA state’s government, and it will therefore find its way to whichever government groups implement municipal broadband. The same political side has shown itself to be intolerant of free speech/differences of opinions on certain matters. So for those who stand on the other side of controversial and current topics like those I listed, they may need to be wary of this development and how it might be used against them, since the Internet is so fundamental to exercising our right to speech today.

From my observation censorship, tracking, surveillance, government control, and so on are regular topics in HN. For example there have been recent articles on FLoC, Tor, privacy issues with WhatsApp, cryptocurrency, and various decentralized services. To me it seems that these topics involve politics and ideology, which are almost inseparable from the existence of a technology like the Internet. This is why to me my comment feels directly related rather than a derailing tangent. Do you see it differently, and if so what’s the nuance I’m not seeing?

> We've had to ask you about this multiple times before.

I acknowledge you’ve mentioned this to me a couple times before. I thought I had adjusted, and have tried to engage on a number of different topics here. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do at this point to not be characterized in this way. It feels like I am being asked to not participate or to artificial skew my participation a certain way (avoid certain topics or not introduce certain opinions). I saw from your search link you previously mentioned a burden of the minority view, and the need for patience. So is this something that I could discuss if the tone were different or if I explained my train of thought in a lengthier, more thoughtful comment?

The problem is that (a) you fired a bunch of hot buttons on a generic ideological theme. I mean what does municipal broadband have to do with critical race theory? That's practically the definition of a generic tangent;

(b) your comment was completely speculative - what specific reason is there to believe that use of municipal broadband might be restricted ideologically? or that alternate ISPs would cease to exist? I don't see any substance here.

(c) flamebait like "one-party state", which is language that has specific historical meaning and is highly inflammatory when adapted to other contexts.

Widening the topic to something vastly broader and divisive, not adding any specific relevant information, plus tossing in flamebait, makes it a generic ideological flamewar comment. It's not going to lead anywhere good, and by the 'expected value of subthread' test, that makes it a bad HN comment.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Municipal broadband cam be organised as a charity. If 'private' get outcompeted by a charity, they deserve to die

I live in Washington state and already under a single provider, Comcast, and it sucks, I pay $120 a month for unlimited gigabit which tops out at 400Mpbs if I'm lucky, and often cannot support a zoom call with video. I, for one, am thrilled this law passed. Anything that can force a broken monopoly to be more competitive is a win in my book.

I pay a similar amount for 1/20th of your advertised speed and get roughly the same of your actual, and consider it decent.

I do have a fiber line through my yard and someday will bother getting hooked up to it.

A Zoom video call can be supported on less than 10 Mbps, so it’s hard for me to accept this claim that your gigabit service can’t support a Zoom call. I have Comcast (at a much lower tier) and have never had issues with steaming from multiple devices while video conferencing as well. If you have CenturyLink as an option for gigabit (available in several WA cities), they provide symmetric gigabit service for $70. In many parts of Seattle both providers are an option.

In terms of affordability, I find the current providers to be VERY affordable. Comcast provides 25 Mbps service for $20 a month - more than enough for typical use. CenturyLink has cheaper tiers available as well, depending on location.

As for choice - I would support laws that require sharing of last mile cabling and things like that. But if a public provider has unlimited funds and can run at a loss, that’s going to cause private providers to exit or stop investing at least, leading us back to square one - a single provider, except now it’s a slow bureaucratic government service.