What Losing Net Neutrality Means For Democracy
@TimKarr via Twitter Widespread public outcry and over a decade of growing grassroots activism wasn’t enough to stop the Federal Communications Commission from voting to kill net neutrality this week—which came down to a party-line 3 to 2 vote on Thursday. Amid coverage of the Republican tax reform, the #MeToo movement, the Alabama special election, the Mueller investigation, and the near-constant distraction of president Trump’s tweets, the FCC’s Ajit Pai saw an opportunity to dismantle net neutrality, knowing activists would fight back but would have a much harder time galvanizing public attention. Media watch group Media Matters looked at coverage of net neutrality from November 20 – 27th, the week following news reports of FCC commissioner Ajit Pai’s plans vote for reclassification. In 2014, led by popular online platforms like Reddit, Twitter, and Oliver’s call to arms, 3.7 million comments were submitted to the FCC, of which a New York Times analysis found only 1% were clearly against net neutrality, the rest were either for net neutrality or generally in support of a free and open internet. The glaring lack of public support for killing net neutrality, along with Pai’s refusal to contend with the FCC’s broken and corrupted comments system before voting sets a dangerous precedent for other Trump controlled federal agencies, make sweeping decisions without a working system for accounting for public comments and input.
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