Don’t be surprised if a lot of people think this comes off as condescending.
Cheers!
(“Condescending” means it looks like you’re talking down to us.) 
A lot of the older Trumpists don’t really use the internet except for things like Facebook, Yahoo, and the occasional YouTube video, and out deep in Trump’s America, a lot of them don’t use the internet at all. Those who live in the cities and voted for Trump can probably afford whatever rate increases they see anyway. Again, it’s the urban and suburban working class that will eat it.
But like you, I don’t see this as a threat. As someone who has loved watching sports on television but hates paying for special sports channels, I remember the days when all major sporting events were in prime time and free. Now they’ve got Monday and Thursday Night football on cable. A lot of the best college football games are on cable. THe bowl games are on cable. Most baseball’s on cable. Very few free options anymore. And I’ve gotten completely used to it. Americans are used to screwing themselves.
I think the real threat -and what concerns me the most and the real reason telecoms want net neutrality dead- is that they’re going after cord cutting and cord cutters. Things like Chromecast, Roku, Tubo, and other streaming services are going to be impacted in a big way. In a way, I understand the perspective of the telecoms. Internet companies are using their infrastructure to provide the services that they offer for free or at cheap rates. It’s going to be up to Silicon Valley to think of a different kind of infrastructure. But even if Google finds ways to deliver services via their own wireless net, that just takes power from one powerful corporation like AT&T or Comcast and gives it to another like Google.
Just like that ancient Latin seafood dish, Oh, tempura! Oh, morays!
What can we do to keep net neutrality?
There is no free market when it comes to Internet Service Providers. And removing neutrality online specifically harms the online free market.
It’s not that I don’t believe that opinion exists. But I do not believe it is remotely significant. I’ve been around the net. Besides this post, the only such posts I’ve seen have been by obvious trolls. And the only business people who seem to be for it are the ISPs, which raises huge red flags for anything.
Any time the only people who seem to be happy are the ones who make the most money, that’s a sign that it’s going to screw over the rest of us.
Do those polls ever ask the question “and on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you really give a shit about it?”
Emphasis added. How do you pronounce it?
Write/call congress. Congress could solve this by enshrining NN into law. Writing/calling the FCC couldn’t hurt either.
[ˌkɑndəˈsɛndɪŋ]
Counter-point: We live in hellworld and our masters are more out of touch than medieval aristocrats.
I doubt much will happen politically, but it’s amusing to imagine the defining cataclysm that makes the populace stand up is a decline in their porn and game experiences. Messing with the circus/spectacle does seem pretty short sighted.
I think at first Netflix, Hulu, Steam, Amazon and the other big bandwidth users will get dinged for more money to get priority and max speed and smaller companies like Pluto[sup]TV[/sup] and illegal streaming sites will get throttled. For startups like Pluto this will be a bad thing for the consumer but barely noticed at first. For the illegal streamers, well hard to bitch about it, isn’t it. I guess a throttle on Porn will be bitched about, but hard to organize for that one I think.
Net neutrality isn’t going to bring people out to the polls because at the moment, nobody really knows that it’s bad. Even if the telecoms raise prices on some services, so what? Nothing new about that - this is more of a customer service issue between Verizon / Comcast and its customers.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the end of net neutrality in and of itself isn’t the problem; it’s the current president and congress and their ideology that represents the bigger danger. They will use consolidation to concentrate economic power, and they will use the levers of power to reward and punish certain types of communication, or ‘data’. And sadly, I predict that the companies will eventually fall into line, because they will gradually lose their ability to fight back against government power. Their richer, more powerful shareholders won’t let them.
Let’s see if they still feel that way when MSNBC-owner Comcast decides that Fox News video doesn’t need to be carried on their network. There is no way that this elimination of “over-regulation” to carry everything, equally, doesn’t lead to the same morass of regulation that has been historically present in the telecommunications industry. What do you suppose is going to happen when an ISP decides which political ads will and will not pass through their networks?
I think the Nay sayers had it right. I am already seeing the rank and file conservatives defend the FCC online. I do think the more techy reddit conservatives that flocked to Trump will feel betrayed by this because they understand the implications better but they probably would have drifted away eventually anyway.
Breaking News. The NRA Just Awarded FCC Chair Ajit Pai With a Gun for His ‘Courage.’
I’m really lost, why is this an issue to the NRA and why would they side with the doing away with Net Neutrality?
“I scratch your back, you scratch mine.” This lays to rest the idea that the HUGE power of the NRA is just due to arms makers’ money. It’s basically a front for the right-wing in general.
Because the NRA is an arm of the Republican Party.
Don’t think of this substantively. CPAC is just like a big right-wing orgy where everyone is blowing everyone else because they’re so drunk on being angry whites all in the same room.
Next year, maybe Sheldon Adelson will give the FCC’s Golden Telephone Award to Operation Rescue for their contributions to exposing Secret Muslim Presidents involved in gun walking scandals. None of this shit has to actually make sense.
Nope. The modern gop is kept aloft due to white nationalism and ego. That’ll keep it going for at least another 50 years.