Yet Another Thing to Worry About (Again): Net Neutrality
Back in 2014, just five episodes into Last Week Tonight, John Oliver produced a segment on net neutrality that buggered up the FCC website with complaints the following day. Back then, the FCC was considering weakening net neutrality by allowing internet service providers (ISPs) to push favored content through faster channels, a potentially un-democratic approach to internet access-"ISP fuckery" as Oliver called it. Instead, the FCC upheld net neutrality.
This year, Trump-appointed FCC chairman-and former lawyer for Verizon-Ajit Pai said net neutrality's "days are numbered," arguing that ISPs won't take advantage of unregulated internet, despite every obvious urge to benefit from the free market. Basically, Pai is urging internet users to simply trust in the benevolence of profit-hungry corporations, should the FCC ditch net neutrality. That's in line with Trump, who signed a bill rolling back privacy protections for Internet users in April, allowing ISPs to sell user information without permission-a big win for deregulation. Trump might not know what net neutrality is or does-understandable, as it isn't remotely sexy or simple-but he does speak the language of corporate interests.
Ironically, internet access is one of the few golden issues upon which most active human beings can agree. Net neutrality protects the most universally user-friendly version of the Internet we can have, and as Oliver said, every YouTuber, 4chan-er, and Reddit troll is on board with that.
The FCC will decide later this month whether it will deregulate under Pai or protect strong net neutrality. So once again, it's a grassroots problem. Go lodge a complaint with the FCC-Oliver made that easy with a custom url, gofccyourself.com. Or, call you representative, which won't take much time, unlike fucking around on the internet, which you can currently pursue endlessly without ISPs controlling the flow of content.
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