Did the image above give you a little bit of a dystopic shiver? It should. This Thursday, December 14, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai plans to roll back the Obama-era Title II regulations governing net neutrality.
We can’t let that happen.
You’ve no doubt heard the words “net neutrality” a lot in recent months (including on this blog), but maybe you still feel like you don’t quite get it. That’s okay. Here’s what you need to know:
The internet as you know it so far is “free and open.” It was designed that way by its creators and it should stay that way. The fact is, you already expect net neutrality every time you use the internet. When you type in any web address– whether it’s Netflix, or Amazon, or NPR, or Al Jazeera, or FOXNews, or the White House, or porn— your expectation is that the content you are trying to access will arrive at the same speed regardless of what it is. That is, you expect that your ISP (internet service provider) will be “neutral” to the content of your internet use, and that it will not slow down, speed up, or block any content for ideological or political or profit-based reasons. That’s net neutrality!
Right now, ISPs are required by law to be neutral. In 2015, proponents of net neutrality campaigned to ensure that the internet remains free and open. They won that battle for all of us when the FCC reclassified broadband providers as “common carriers” under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. In short, Title II gives the FCC the authority to regulate ISPs, to guarantee that the internet remains a level playing field, and to ensure that companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast can’t slow down, block, or otherwise interfere with web content. You know who wants to destroy that? THIS GUY:
Ajit Pai plans to (in his words) “take a weed wacker” to net neutrality regulations on December 14, 2107. What that means for you is that your ISP will no longer be required to be neutral in the delivery of web content. And what that means is that companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast will be able to effectively take a weed wacker to the level playing field of the internet. Those companies, because they are driven by profit and not a commitment to equality, will inevitably stratify our access to information by creating “fast” and “slow” lanes, prioritizing what information you can have access to and what information you cannot. How will they decide which sites to prioritize? You guessed it: whoever pays the most for your attention gets to travel in the fast lanes. (Check out this tweet from the ACLU.) Access to all other information will look like this:
It’s not rocket science. The ONLY people who stand to benefit from the rollback of net neutrality are the executives and shareholders of megacompanies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast. All the rest of us will be screwed, because we will lose the last truly democratic, truly free, truly open, and truly borderless space on the planet.
But wait, it gets worse… Paid prioritization of internet content is the most obvious and predictable consequence of Ajit Pai’s rollback of Title II, but it’s not the most frightening. What we should really fear is all the other excuses to restrict or block content that will no doubt be successfully deployed to stratify access to information once the first hurdle of guaranteed net neutrality has been cleared. Why not slow down or block access to subversive or revolutionary political speech? Why not slow down or block access to scientific research and findings you don’t like? Why not slow down or block access to alternative histories? or non-canonical texts? or places where otherwise oppressed, underrepresented, and disenfranchised people gather to commune, to trade information, to pool resources, to comfort and encourage each other? Why not slow down or block access to arguments for a free and open internet?
And there’s the rub.
Once we lose net neutrality, it will be almost impossible to get it back.
Why? Because the rollback of net neutrality does not only restricts who gets to speak but, more importantly, whose views get read and heard and shared and disseminated. Ajit Pai and the FCC want to hand over absolute power to profit-driven attention merchants like the main three ISP companies. Those corporations only have two interests: (1) to make the most money possible off the capture of your attention and (2) to eliminate anything and everything else that might draw your attention away from what generates profit for them.
THIS IS A BIG F*CKING DEAL, PEOPLE. Rolling back the rules that guarantee net neutrality, as FCC Chairman Pai is proposing, will effectively negate any liberatory potential for the internet, arguably humankind’s most potentially liberatory technological innovation, Worse still, the effects of this rollback will ripple outwards to impact the kinds of information-sources that are accessible– and, thus, the kind of insights that are considered— in the development of future technologies. This can only reinforce and sediment the already-extant, oppressive socio-economic stratification generated by the (socio-economically manufactured) digital divide.
You have two days left to put up a fight.
Call your Congressional representatives (202-759-7766). Then, call them 10 more times.
Share this post on Facebook.
Tweet @AjitPaiFCC and tell him what a monumentally regressive decision he’s making.
Talk to everyone you know about #NetNeutrality
Visit www.battleforthenet.com for more ways to act
Let’s do this.