Photo by Sergey Zolkin on Unsplash
As the spring of 2020 turned from “two weeks off school” to a global health emergency, people around the world had to learn and adapt to new methods for almost every aspect of life. Schools went remote, people wore masks, work form home became ubiquitous, and services like InstaCart and DoorDash became staples in many people’s day-to-day lives.
Around this time, lawmakers were making a new push for net neutrality, the concept that internet service porviders (ISPs) should provide free-flowing traffic to their customers, not throttling or speeding up any one service or website differently than others for business purposes. The idea of net neutrality has been controversial since the term was coined by Columbia University law professor Tim Wu in 2003. Though it was established as law in 2015, the Trump administration repealed it in 2017 and we needed it back in a very real way.
Essentially, the argument is one of fairness vs profitability. The guiding principle of net neutrality is that increased access to the internet is crucial for users and online businesses alike, and that prioritizing one type of content over another creates an unfair scenario where smaller companies or sites can never compete with those who have sweetheart deals with ISPs. On the other hand, ISPs want the ability to control certain speeds to offer some customers better experiences and to create partnerships with media companies to increase profits. The argument is often that this profit leads to better scaling of services or more funding for innovation.
Net Neutrality in Public Life
While getting faster streaming videos on YouTube for paying a premium sounds relatively harmless in practice, consider other media scenarios and how they might affect public life, or even democracy. If a service like YouTube can strike a deal to prioritize their content over others, what’s stopping a social network from doing something similar? Imagine if Instagram made a deal with Verizon to make their new “X” competitor, Threads, work faster on Verizon’s network. This would create an unfair situation for X to try and compete with Threads. X owner Elon Musk no doubt would take issue with such a transgression.
Now imagine if, in response, AT&T struck a deal with X to prioritize their content on their services. Now we have two titans competing for a top spot that other networks simply can’t reach. Consider finally if Comcast, having missed out on the allure of a deal with X or with Instagram and set up an agreement with Truth Social, Donald Trump’s right-wing social network. (I know it’s highly unlikely, but go with me here.) Comcast users are getting lightning fast service to and from Truth Social and may end up preferring that over using X or Instagram, which feel clunky in comparison. They are spending a much higher amount of time on Truth Social, a notorious fountain of far-right propaganda than are customers of Verizon or AT&T.
Now ask yourself what effect net neutrality has in preserving democracy?
Net Neutrality as Law
As we spend more time ordering food, looking for rides, applying for jobs, and going to school online, a free and fair internet is more important than ever. We can’t allow special interests to serve us democracy-lite just to boost their “scalability” or “innovation.” Net neutrality is a the idea that we all get a chance, whether we’re websites, online services, or consumers.
Net neutrality as an enforceable principle has had legal battles for decades now, finally becoming law in 2015, getting repealed in 2017, and reinstated in 2022. With such a turbulent decade behind it, its future is uncertain. Will a more conservative future administration repeal the regulations again? If so, will it even be possible to put them back in place again?