I suppose that means that Verizon would have to hire a crew of forum moderators, and pay them enough to deal with the complaints they will surely receive about moderation decisions. And then figure out how to produce enough revenue to pay for all of that overhead. I'm not sure anyone has figured out how to monetize forum moderation well enough to make it pay well enough for moderators to enjoy it. I write this as someone who has been a forum moderator since 1992 (starting out on the Prodigy proprietary online network) and who still has volunteer moderation responsibilities in various places today. What compensates me for moderating in the places where I do it is a good atmosphere of informative discussion, and the chance to do something about making the atmosphere better. But if have an Internet service provider account, I might very well like knowing that the service provider disapproves of off-topic messages, but I wouldn't like to be the person enforcing that, because anywhere I visit on the Internet will still have visitors from other ISPs, and thus the place I visit may still be full of off-topic messages, but if I work for Verizon I have to deal with all the people complaining about my decisions who visit all the sites I don't care a whit about. My best single way to get the atmosphere I want now is to visit only sites (like HN, for instance) where somehow there is a culture in which contributors outnumber pests. No one has to pay me to help preserve that culture, and no one COULD pay me to attempt to build that culture somewhere where it has already broken down.