Net Neutrality Restored!

Hooray for a free and open internet!

Apr 26, 2024

Hey! Here’s some really good and happy news for everyone — the FCC has restored net neutrality, another thing that Donald Trump and his evil corporate minions (not even hyperbole) stole from us!

Net neutrality regulations were first implemented during the Obama administration and undone under Trump, as his appointees to the FCC hated nice things just as much as he did. These regulations being restored not only means that we will have a free and open internet where major players don’t get to pay our internet providers for a special fast lane, but also that as long as we keep Trump out of office, we don’t have to remember what net neutrality regulations actually do! (I kid.)

Of course, if you need a refresher, this John Oliver explainer is always helpful.

But, barring that — all it means is that, say, a site like Breitbart can’t pay a special premium and have their site load faster than ours. It keeps things relatively equal and allows smaller sites and startups to have the ability to compete with the big ones. Luckily, this didn’t happen much over the years without the official, national regulations because many states had their own net neutrality policies and because, frankly, websites and internet service providers didn’t want to deal with the public backlash.

The decision was made in a 3-4 split along party lines, with the regulation described by The New York Times as a “contentious partisan issue” and a “move that will reignite a long-running battle over the open internet.”

This is interesting if only for the fact that, pre-Trump, it wasn’t really the partisan issue it was now. Maybe among internet service providers and the politicians they financed, but not among voters. The divide, among us regular humans, was primarily between those who understood what it was and supported it, and those who did not know what it was and didn’t have an opinion either way. Opposing net neutrality literally only became a stance that regular people had because they wanted to support Trump in every way.

Allow me to take you back eight years ago, when people in the Reddit AskTrumpSupporters forum regularly argued that “He is clearly for net neutrality” despite coming out against it, because he doesn’t understand what it is but would support it if he did.

Here is what I make of this tweet:
Trump is against what he thinks net neutrality is (which it isn't)
Trump (at this time) doesn't know what net neutrality is (I interpret he thinks it is similar to the fairness doctrine - which it is not)
Trump would be in favor of net neutrality if he knew what it was because he is against the fairness doctrine (which was a power grab to dictate equal airtime to opposing sides of a debate) and against government power grabs (which keeping the net neutral means no power grabs as bandwidth cannot discriminate between users and content.)
Net neutrality is incredibly important and could almost be seen as so important that people should be a single issue voter on keeping the net neutral.

Even a year into his presidency, most were still saying they supported net neutrality even if he didn’t. This is very much no longer the case! By a few years into his presidency, most — at least on that forum — decided they were against it.

I bring this up because it’s really a fascinating case study in how Trump has influenced his followers to support terrible things they actually might not have otherwise supported or even cared about — almost purely out of loyalty to him, in order to ensure that he looks good and that it looks like his terrible, unpopular policies are popular.

Donate Just Once!

Regardless of who supports net neutrality, it’s a win for everyone who doesn’t want their internet experience degraded in order to funnel power and speed to sites they may not even be interesting in using, or anyone who might want to try to get their own thing started on a level playing field.

PREVIOUSLY: