The Hypocritical Dishonesty Of The Net Neutrality Campaign

Mozilla (and many others) are building their case for net neutrality around the fear that other, bad corporations are going to impose “censorship” that is so much worse the benevolent speech patrols of the corporations they like. The Federal Communications Commission’s attempt to turn Internet service providers into regulated utilities, which the Trump administration has just reversed, was never about stopping them from controlling content. It’s actually about money. It’s about who pays for all of that bandwidth we’re using. To be more specific, it’s about trying to make certain unpopular companies (like Comcast) pay for it, so that other, more popular companies (like Netflix) don’t have to. This is a dispute over who should bear the cost of the Web’s considerable infrastructure, and net neutrality was the government coming in to put a thumb on the scales and dictate the winners and losers.