This is something that is very important to pay attention to, and if you are an American I implore you to do everything that you can! Contact your representatives, research your ISPs, and keep a vigilant eye on this! The FCC is likely to make this ruling close to Thanksgiving in an attempt to squeak it by without anyone noticing.
Net neutrality is the reason why you can visit any website confidently. It’s why you don’t have to pay a premium to be able to access YouTube. It’s why you don’t have the internet bundled into different packages like TV is.
If they remove net neutrality protections, then there is no benefit to the consumer. Put simply, your ISP could choose to charge you more in order to visit specific sites, and not every town in the United States has the option to switch to a new ISP because some ISPs hold a monopoly in some areas.
This is what the internet looks like without net neutrality:
They’re trying to fatigue public resistance by trying to repeal net neutrality as often as possible. We have to stay vigilant. Motivate yourself by assuming no one else is calling/writing. Don’t assume other people will do it.
Without net neutrality:
Your ISP could charge you more to access certain services and sites than others. For example, if your ISP is not Verizon, they could charge you more to use sites Verizon owns–like Tumblr.
Your ISP could make sites they don’t like load more slowly–porn, sites advocating for net neutrality, etc.
Your ISP could make sites that don’t pay them a fee load more slowly–say goodbye to independent content creators.
Without net neutrality, everything good about the Internet dies. It becomes just a place to watch streaming TV shows (if you pay the premium fee to your ISP on top of the service charge to the streaming site, and only on the services your ISP owns, because the others will be just too slow) and buy shit.
