I made an illustrated short story called “The Idle Divination”. or the tale of a lonely girl’s quest for wisdom. It was originally formatted for Twitter, but you can also read it here on itch.io.
🔥 With your help, we passed Title II net neutrality protections. Now we need to defend it.🔥
On December 14 the FCC will vote on Commissioner Pai’s plan to repeal Title II rules. This week he tried to justify that decision with a “myth busting” explainer where he makes a lot of sweeping claims he doesn’t think you’ll fact check.
So let’s go through his big points:
❌ Mr. Pai claims ISPs won’t block access or throttle content
These are the real facts. Before Title II, the internet was so “free and open” that…
AT&T blocked Skype from iPhones (Fortune) and, later, wanted FaceTime users to pay for a more expensive plan (Freepress).
MetroPCS blocked all streaming video except YouTube (Wired).
In today’s media market where the same huge companies make and deliver content, Commissioner Pai wants us to trust that corporations won’t use their dominance to bury competitive content or services.
❌ Mr. Pai claims Title II keeps ISPs from building new networks
Here’s another claim Commissioner Pai doesn’t want you to fact check, but:
AT&T’s own CEO told investors that the company would deploy more fiber optic networks in 2016 than 2015 when the FCC passed Title II protections (Investor call transcript).
Charter’s CEO said “Title II, it didn’t really hurt us; it hasn’t hurt us” (Ars Technica).
And Comcast actually increased investment in their network by 10% in Q1 of this year (Ars).
❌ Mr. Pai claims repealing Title II won’t hurt competition
As we mentioned above, ISPs tried to interfere with the services their customers could access and courts had to step in to stop them.
The FCC tried to craft net neutrality rules in 2010 called the Open Internet Order but the ISPs sued and won. The courts told the FCC that the only way to guarantee a free and open internet was using their Title II authority. Without those protections, any of these things would be legal:
Your ISP launches a streaming video service and starts throttling other streaming services until they’re unusable.
Your phone company cuts a deal with a popular music streaming service so it doesn’t count towards your data cap but lowers your overall data limit. If a better service comes along (or your favorite artist releases new tracks somewhere else) you can’t use it without incurring huge data fees.
A billionaire buys your ISP and blocks access to news sites that challenge their ideology.
Repealing Title II would be like letting a car company own the roads and banning a competitor from the highways.
❌ Mr. Pai claims there won’t be fast lanes and slow lanes
Let’s break this down: We won’t have fast lanes and slow lanes, we’ll have “priority access” and…non-priority access? Well gosh.
🚨 Please help us protect Title II one more time! 🚨
This week we co-signed a letter with more than 300 other companies—businesses Mr. Pai gleefully ignores—urging the FCC to retain the Title II internet protections. Now we need you.
Go to 👉 Battle For The Net 👈 to start a call with your representatives in Congress. Tell them to publicly support Title II protections.
The FCC votes on December 14.
We’re only powerful when we work together.
Oh, also: that post about automatically unfollowing the #net neutrality tag—it’s not true. It’s really not. That’s not who we are. Whatever happened, we haven’t been able to reproduce it. We tried. A lot.
But if it were true—which it’s not, we feel compelled to say again—THAT’S EXACTLY WHY YOU SHOULD CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES and demand a free, open, and neutral internet.
Having a little black friday sale! Some of my stuff are on sale. If you ever wanted to buy some of my charms, prints, pin, or bodypillows, nows a good (or anywhere between now and Nov 30th)
Hey! So from Nov 5th to Nov 30th I’ll be running one last pre-order for my McCree and Hanzo bodypillows! If you want to get one for Christmas or something!
The FCC decided to go ahead with the vote to remove the Net Neutrality rules that the Obama administration set up.
As you can see, this is what the major ISPs wants to do if they have their way. This can do a few things:
Stiff new innovations, making it harder for smaller companies to compete.
Silence independent voices.
Potentially putting up a “walled garden” on a wide scale.
Make distribution of information harder for low-income people.
Imagine this website, if you will, only working on Verizon networks while AT&T customers are charged a little extra, or have slower access to the same information.
Remember, your ISP owns content providers and may give top-shelf, VIP treatment to their own things while stiffing everyone else. We need to address this.
Now, some of you may recall earlier this year that John Oliver and a lot of other people, companies (and yours truly) did a rallying cry to tell the FCC to back off the Net Neutrality rules, which resulted in millions of comments on their proposal.
However, there’s been a few problems… in short, it seems that the FCC chose to not listen due to “inconsistancies”.
Sidenote: Tumblr isn’t the best place to talk “long-form” so if you’re interested in looking at these notes, here are some places to go to.
https://medium.com/@AGSchneiderman/an-open-letter-to-the-fcc-b867a763850a - “ Specifically, for six months my office has been investigating who perpetrated a massive scheme to corrupt the FCC’s notice and comment process through the misuse of enormous numbers of real New Yorkers’ and other Americans’ identities. Such conduct likely violates state law — yet the FCC has refused multiple requests for crucial evidence in its sole possession that is vital to permit that law enforcement investigation to proceed.”
4) Write a letter to your representative. Not an email, an actual, snail mail letter.
Let’s all band together and do something about this. Our future of sharing information, building innovation, nurturing voices and creativity depends on your actions now!
I know it may sound hopeless. Look at when they announced this (you probably didn’t know they announced this on Monday when you’re busy getting ready to for the holiday!). But if we say it with one voice to BACK OFF THE NET, we maybe able to make a difference.
Hi.
I’m the Original Poster and I did my best to keep this brief with sources you can see for yourself.
However, with misinformation being a thing, I decided to amend to this to give you some extra pointers as to why I was specific about these steps and not recommend things like strictly writing to the FCC.
1) Calling your reps and writing them is more effective than doing it via email. It’s been stated over, and over, and over again. Sadly, letters and phone calls are more effective.
2) Signing a petition can help, but without a way to verify you, it can be just as useful as shouting on Twitter (and will they look at Twitter? Nope.) It’s not totally useless, but it will not totally do the job.
See, if the FCC can use “bots” as an excuse (look at the sources in the original post), what makes you think a senator and representatives won’t? This is why “calling your rep” is the first action step and “writing your reps” is the last.
3) Regardless, the non-profit organizations’ job (the one I posted about) is to spread awareness BEYOND YOUR NETWORK. Think of them as a private army you’re recruiting for this one mission. You can only tell so many people and some of you don’t live in the United States, which makes it even harder!
4) BTW, you’re not just talking about this on Tumblr, are you? You have to talk to people on your other social networks as well. They are affected by things as well. Don’t want to talk? Post a link to here and let me do the talking for you.
5) While I have done the research for you, please do your own in conjunction with this. That way, you can be better informed, especially when talking about this to other people.
6) Oh and one more thing since I did neglect this in my last post. I forgot to post the “deadline” - the actual day they will vote. Well…
We have until December 14, 2017!
So, let’s mobilize! Organize! Transform and roll out!
Okay, maybe not the last one…
But make the calls to your reps! Scroll up and do your part, no matter which side you’re on!
That’s what is going to happen if we let Ajit Pai, the FCC chairman, go through with repealing Title II (AKA Net Neutrality).
Simply put, without Net Neutrality, Internet Service Providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T will be able to “bundle” websites much like cable ON TOP OF paying for internet connection. “Want access to Netflix AND Tumblr? Get the Entertainment Package! $40 a month. What about Amazon and Ebay? Add an extra $20 a month to get the Shopping Package.”
Not only will they be able to bundle websites and charge more, they will also be able to censor and block websites that they don’t agree with entirely.
THIS WILL BE THE END OF INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT.
For business owners, it will be even worse. Ex: Comcast will ask Amazon to pay high fees to be available in a low-cost package, fees that websites like Poshmark or Etsy will not be able to pay. Therefore, only Fortune 500’s will be available to web users at a low cost. Say goodbye to Etsy (unless you’re willing to shell out $70 a month for the “All-Inclusive” package).
To learn about Net Neutrality, why it’s important, and/or want tools to help you fight for Net Neutrality, visit BattleForTheNet (https://www.battleforthenet.com)
There are five people deciding the future of the internet, three men (Rep) and two women (Dem). The two women have come out as No votes. We need only to convince ONE of the other members to flip to a NO vote to save Net Neutrality.
There are many ways you can help:
WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE A LAZY TUMBLR USER WITH ANXIETY WHO TRIES TO HELP WITH JUST REBLOGS / LIKES:
Here are 2 petitions to sign, one international and one exclusively US.
(After you sign make sure to verify via email, it may take up to 30 mins to receive the email).
Text “resist” to 504-09. It’s a bot that will send a formal email, fax, and letter to your representatives. It also finds your representatives for you. All you have to do is text it and it holds your hand the whole way.
HERE ARE MORE STRAIGHTFORWARD ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE:
These are the emails of the 5 people on the FCC roster.
Blow up their inboxes!
Ajit Pai - Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov
Mignon Clyburn - Mignon.Clyburn@fcc.gov
Michael O'Rielly - Mike.O'Rielly@fcc.gov
Brendan Carr - Brendan.Carr@fcc.gov
Jessica Rosenworcel - Jessica.Rosenworcel@fcc.gov
You can support groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU and Free Press who are fighting to keep Net Neutrality:
Most importantly, VOTE. This should not be something that is so clearly split between the political parties as it affects all Americans, but unfortunately it is.
This is so terrifying and important to pay attention to. Imagine an Internet where your provider controls the news headlines you see based on which ones can pay.