“They Trusted Government”
It has been one year since the Trump Administration’s FCC overturned the Obama Administration’s FCC program known as “net neutrality.”
The concept of “net neutrality” was based on the tired, worn-out idea that government must control and regulate all industries. In all essence, ‘net neutrality’ was a government takeover of the internet. The Orwellian idea was that a massive new government bureaucracy was needed to make the internet “free”by regulating and licensing internet providers and speeds. Government trusters claimed it was needed to stop evil corporations from charging the poor more than the rich, or something.
When Trump’s FCC outvoted Obama’s FCC and gutted the two-year-old regulatory system, many voices predicted disaster. The front page of CNN.com called the FCC’s vote “The end of the internet as we know it.” But CNN.com is still there. The New York Times’ website declared that repealing net neutrality would be the “final pillow in [the internet’s] face.”
Like almost every other government claim ever, these predictions were bunk. “Internet speeds have increased by 40 percent during 2018, according to a recent report by Recode.”
TO BE FAIR, 2018 has seen some efforts by large internet-using companies to censor their own content. For example, pro-Democratic Party sites such as Facebook, Google, and YouTube began “shadow banning” some ‘conservative’content prior to the 2018 election, and outright banned some anti-government content such as Alex Jones’ Infowars (the most popular channel on Youtube at one time). But those decisions will almost certainly harm Facebook, Google and YouTube in the months to come.
In the words of Reason Magazine, “The next time you hear someone wailing about the need for new laws to save the internet, remember how stupidly wrong all the predictions about net neutrality turned out.”
