Net Neutrality

Imagine sitting down binge watching your favorite show on Netflix only for it to start buffering. This is exactly what could happen if your Internet Service Provider (ISP) decided you were using too much bandwidth using Netflix. Net neutrality is needed in this instance to keep customers from getting their internet throttled. Under no net neutrality your internet service provider would be legally allowed to slow your internet down if they thought you were using too much bandwidth. According to nytimes.com On June 11th 2018 Net Neutrality was repealed and internet consumers are no longer protected.

What is Net Neutrality? According to publicknowledge.org “ Net neutrality is the principle that individuals should be free to access all content and applications equally, regardless of the source, without Internet Service Providers discriminating against specific online services or websites.” As of June 11th 2018, Net neutrality was repealed by the Federal Communications Commission. In turn, it raised internet service providers annual incomes by 50 billion. With Net Neutrality being repealed, internet service providers have an option of throttling your internet, charging you more for sites you access and blocking site access entirely. Internet service provider companies love to tell their customers they won’t throttle or try to mess with your internet access. Yet they don’t support net neutrality and want to have the ability to legally tinker with your internet service as mentioned above. Individual states have started to take a stance with California passing the “California Internet Consumer Protection and net neutrality act of 2018” The law was specifically aimed at saving net neutrality for residents of California. 34 other states have introduced some kind of net neutrality legislation to protect the citizens of their state from extra fees and other implications that come along with no net neutrality. 

Other examples of what might eventually happen without net neutrality would be having to pay for access to individual websites and popular apps as shown in figure two. Imagine having to pay just to access Facebook to see some family photos, and on top of that paying to upload pictures and videos. According to freepress.net ISPs would also be able to block political content online for example. You can easily say that Net Neutrality is equivalent to freedom of speech but for the internet.

We conducted a survey and got people ages 18 to 20 to respond. 100% of survey participants use the internet daily but only 60% thought they would be personally affected if net neutrality is gone. The longer everyone lives without it the more likely it will be that things will change and the ISPs will start playing in their own favor. 16.7% Don’t know if they support net neutrality, and this is why we need to educate people on what net neutrality is and how it affects everyone. 

All in all, if you use the internet at all or care about not having to pay extra to use internet then net neutrality applies to you. It is in everyone’s best interest to vote for it and apply it again. Everyone’s daily lives could be changed by it. No more binge watching Netflix, YouTube or downloading movies. It keeps everyone on an even playing field no matter what you do for work or what you do in your free time.  To fight this everyone has to contact their local lawmakers and urge them to bring back net neutrality. Without net neutrality everyone’s daily lives will eventually change. Internet service providers will eventually become more power hungry and decide to charge you more, block sites, and not treat you as fairly with the net neutrality act in place..

Written by Glen Jakober

Edited by Josh Goodreid