Set aside the Chicken Little fears about the internet dying.
Andrea O’Sullivan
The left is in a veritable state of hysteria as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) moves to vote on Chairman Pai’s deregulatory “Restoring Internet Freedom” (RIF) order on Dec. 14. It’s gotten so bad that incensed supporters of so-called “net neutrality” have taken to harassing commissioners’ children and even threatening to kill a congressman.
It’s a nasty state of affairs, and it’s one unfortunately driven by a lot of false rhetoric and outright fearmongering over how policy is actually changing. Telling people that a policy change will “end the internet as we know it” or “kill the internet” can agitate troubled people into doing crazy things.
In truth, the Obama administration-era “Open Internet Order” (OIO) that the FCC is overturning has little to with “net neutrality” at all. In fact, the OIO would still allow internet service providers (ISPs) to block content—to say nothing of the many non-ISP tech companies that can and do openly suppress access to content.
Furthermore, repealing the OIO does not mean that the principles of “net neutrality” will not be upheld, nor that ISPs will be “unregulated.” Rather, the RIF will rightly transfer oversight of ISPs to other regulatory bodies in an ex post fashion.
