Net Neutrality

By the time this post is published, net neutrality is on the way to its death and there really is only one person to blame for all this.

Ajit Pai.

What? Did you seriously think I was going to blame John Oliver? No. I'm going to blame the person who championed the cause of dismantling net neutrality regulations so that internet service providers can police themselves.

He claimed that internet service providers can be trusted to look after themselves and not screw over small businesses in favor of big ones or themselves and that any hypothetical reasons are just that: hypothetical. There is no way that they will show any form of bias if they were left unchecked.

Except that they did. Here's one from 2011 in which Verizon blocked Google Wallet in order to support its own payment app (hilariously called Isis before being renamed as Softcard and before being killed off in 2015) and there's this piece of news about Netflix's deal with the devil.

It is already a proven fact that companies cannot be trusted to police themselves. Take for instance, Wells Fargo and its fake account scandal. Whistleblowers were punished for calling the ethics hotline and complaining about what was going on. That is certainly not a good case of policing so why does Ajit Pai insist that this won't be the case with ISPs?

Because he was a lawyer who was under the employment of Verizon, one of the aforementioned ISPs. Hence his already suspect motivations when he brought up this ruling. The worst thing about this is I suspect that he was prepared for the internet's reaction to all this and used it against them in order to enforce the idea that his plan is for the best.

So does this mean goodbye internet in all of its fucked glory? It's possible. Small companies will not be able to put up content, products and services that directly compete with the big companies and we will lose out a lot of creativity and ideas because big companies will want to channel revenue to themselves.

I have restrained myself for the most part in this entire post but here's one bit of profanity left at the end. Fuck you, Ajit Pai. You have destroyed the best part of the internet for the sake of your employers and you can pat yourself on your back for that because I certainly will not.You are a villain and you are right disliked for it.

It's just that too bad you turned that dislike for your policies and yourself into a weapon. Now, that is some grade A super-villainy there.