Losing Net Neutrality scares me, and it should scare you too
Last Thursday, the Trump Administration’s FCC began the process of ending “Net Neutrality” a phrase that, while rather boring sounding, is vitally important.
As you read this, you are connected to the internet (unless you’re not, and are somehow reading this internet post anyway). Personally, I absolutely love the internet, it’s allowed me to express myself through words and has given me a opening into the career I want to have, a window that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Every major assignment I do for college is turned in online, nearly every word I write is done online, my entry into the career I want is a job running a Twitter account for a website. My entire future relies on the internet, and yours probably does too. The internet is an amazing place, it connects the entire world and has brought fame, fortune, and even freedom to people that would have not had the opportunity for any of those things otherwise, and Net Neutrality is the reason for almost all it.
As things are currently constructed, internet Service Providers (ISPs) are forced to treat all websites equally, meaning your connection to the page you’re reading this essay on is the same speed as it would be if you decided to load up Netflix or Amazon. Even if Comcast, for example, had a deep economic tie to Netflix and Amazon but not to Medium, the three sites would all load equally. That is not the case with the loss of Net Neutrality.
A non-Net Neutral world would mean that ISPs can (and certainly will) try to control which websites you can visit. They’ll slow your connection to the email service you use so that you have to use the email service they own, they’ll make you pay extra to access certain websites, and you’ll be given overall lower internet speeds for higher prices.
Essentially, ISPs want to turn the internet into the new Cable TV. They want you to have to sign up for website packages like you sign up for channel packages, they want to cap the speed and the amount data you can use quite low in order to force you to pay for a higher tier internet plan, they want to take away your internet-ing freedom. They want buying an internet package to look like something resembling this:
What Trump’s FCC did Thursday, raising the Net Neutrality transparency threshold from 100,000 to 250,000 customers, was just the first step into a non-Net Neutral world. By raising that threshold, ISPs with under 250,000 customers are no longer required to give detailed information on prices, speeds, or additional fees to customers. They did this because the 100,000 customer limit was apparently too restrictive, and they made the change in order to “relieve thousands of smaller broadband providers from onerous reporting obligations” according to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. (Because I guess allowing potential customers to know how much an internet plan costs and the speed that they would get is “onerous”). All of that may not seem like a big deal if you’re with a gigantic ISP, but consider one more thing. A larger ISP can own a much smaller ISP, and the smaller ISP still doesn’t have to disclose that information. So if Comcast owned 20 smaller ISPs, all with 249,999 customers, then that’s just a shade under 5 million people that no longer get vital information when purchasing an internet plan. And this rule change is just the first step.
If Net Neutrality falls, it not only stymies growth of smaller websites and puts a stranglehold on innovation from non-industry leaders, it opens the door for people actively suppressing information. If an ISP doesn’t like a company, they can just slow the connection speed to that company’s website so that no one can easily reach it. For example, let’s say some super-rich person is president, and that super-rich person also hates the media. Said super-rich person can call their best buddy that owns a gigantic ISP and ask them to slow internet speeds to the media companies that are saying negative things about the super-rich person and speed up connection to the media companies that are saying positive things. Essentially silencing all dissenters from being heard, but without taking away their ability to speak. The power to do that shouldn’t be given to anyone, even if they are supremely popular.
All of this absolutely terrifies me to no end. Normally I try to be as unbiased as I can when presenting my own opinions, partially due to fairness and partially due to fear of being called out for it, but I will not back down from my stance here. If Net Neutrality is overturned, my entire future is essentially overturned with it.
I will not allow some 75-year-old CEO, looking down at me and seeing only a pawn to extract money from, to ruin my life. I will not go quietly into a world in which the internet is not an equal place, and I will fight as long as it takes to stop that world from ever existing.
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November 2017 update: FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announces plan to vote in December on a repeal of Net Neutrality protections.
