this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services (slrpnk.net)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by ellie@slrpnk.net to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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(Sorry if this is too off-topic:) ISPs seem designed to funnel people to capitalist cloud services, or at least I feel like that. And it endlessly frustrates me.

The reason is even though IPv6 addresses are widely available (unlike IPv4), most ISPs won't allow consumers to request a static rather than a dynamic IPv6 prefix along with a couple of IPv6 reverse DNS entries.

Instead, this functionality is gatekept behind expensive premium or even business contracts, in many cases even requiring legal paperwork proving you have a registered business, so that the common user is completely unable to self-host e.g. a fully functional IPv6-only mail server with reverse DNS, even if they wanted to.

The common workaround is to suck up to the cloud, and rent a VPS, or some other foreign controlled machine that can be easily intercepted and messed with, and where the service can be surveilled better by big money.

I'm posting this since I hope more people will realize that this is going on, and both complain to their ISPs, but most notably to regulatory bodies and to generally spread the word. If we want true digital autonomy to be more common, I feel like this needs to be fixed for consumer landline contracts.

Or did I miss something that makes this make sense outside of a big money capitalist angle?

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[–] HiTekRedNek@lemm.ee 13 points 4 days ago

The big issue is that your network provider is also the physical provider, and there's no real competition as a result.

When most people got their Internet service over telephone lines, your ISP didn't need to also own the telephone lines, they just needed some telephone numbers.

When the telcos themselves got into the business of providing internet access, they pushed out the competition.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act, written by a Republican Congress, and signed into law by a Democratic president (Clinton) is largely responsible for the current state of affairs.

The "Information Superhighway" is a toll road, built by taxes, but owned by private corporations.

What's crazy is that the government paid these corporations to build this infrastructure.

When your government pays, say, a road building company to build roads, one doesn't then grant the ownership of those roads to that company.

But that is EXACTLY what we did with our communications infrastructure.