Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is over and has taken with it the voices of countless Americans. Net neutrality ensures that the government and broadband providers cannot prioritize certain data over others. This way, users can have equal access to all of the information they want and sites like Netflix don’t have to pay extra money so that their content can get to the consumer much faster.What makes the Internet such a great place is that it is an essentially even playing field for all businesses. Companies like Etsy fiercely argued that their companies would have never reached their full potential if they were forced to pay for unaffordable "fast lanes." This control of information strips away the rights of the consumer to access the Internet without interference from his or her broadband provider. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) demolished these rights when it proposed a policy that would allow cable companies to charge content providers for faster service.People were quick to respond to this issue. The public made their outrage clear, especially when people sent FCC more than one million comments about this proposal in the short time span of 120 days, which is the most the FCC has received about any policy matter. The only suspects who support the FCC’s proposal are cable service companies. Unlike these corporations, even large sites like Netflix, Etsy and Foursquare participated in Internet Slowdown Day, a demonstration to simulate the Internet without net neutrality and to raise awareness of the effects it might have. Facebook, Google, Netflix and Amazon all signed a collective letter supporting net neutrality. All of these efforts, however, failed as the FCC’s proposal for connectivity control passed.The strikedown of net neutrality means much more than the loss of equal internet accessibility—it indicates how little the public’s voice amounts to in the world of corporate funded politics. Cable companies are a few of the largest spending companies on government lobbying. Although the general public is united in support of net neutrality, these millions of voices were apparently not enough to change the minds of politicians during their evaluation of the proposal. Even though the largest corporations in America such as Facebook, Google, Netflix and Amazon support net neutrality, politicians continue to only listen to the companies that fund their own campaigns. The situation illustrated another instance in which politicians listened to their wallets instead of their conscience.The monopoly of cable companies has already caused America to have some of the highest internet rates, compared to its rates of service in the world. It doesn’t make sense that they should have more power to prioritize data based primarily on money. John Oliver put it best when he explained how the words "net neutrality" are so fundamentally boring, it’s hard for the public to see how egregious the situation is. Currently, there are still petitions to bring back net neutrality, which the public can sign. It is easy not to care about net neutrality, but there is no doubt that America will be debating this issue again and again as long as the Internet remains prevalent. ​

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Unreasonable Advantages

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Publicly Private