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The story of net neutrality as an Obama-led takeover of the Internet has been a key Republican talking point for months, a talking point which has been refuted by internal FCC documents obtained by Motherboard using a Freedom of Information Act request. These findings were made by the independent, nonpartisan FCC Office of Inspector General an Inspector General. However, the findings were not made public prior to Thursday’s vote.
[...] First, some background: The FCC is an independent regulatory agency that is supposed to remain “free from undue influence” by the executive branch—it is not beholden to the White House, only the laws that Congress makes and tells it to regulate. This means the president cannot direct it to implement policies. In November 2014, President Obama released a statement saying that he believed the FCC should create rules protecting net neutrality, but noted that “ultimately this decision is theirs alone.”
[...] Since 2014, Republicans have pointed to net neutrality as an idea primarily promoted by President Obama, and have made it another in a long line of regulations and laws that they have sought to repeal now that Donald Trump is president. Prior to this false narrative, though, net neutrality was a bipartisan issue; the first net neutrality rules were put in place under President George W. Bush, and many Republicans worked on the 2015 rules that were just dismantled.
What happened, then, is that Republicans sold the public a narrative that wasn’t true, then used that narrative to repeal the regulations that protect the internet.
Internal FCC Report Shows Republican Anti-Net Neutrality Narrative Is False
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday December 19 2017, @09:42PM (1 child)
Is this an honest difference of opinion, or did everybody pro-NN understand perfectly what it meant and those against decided they had to twist the definition and muddy the waters so they could lie about it and make it sound bad to the uninformed voters?
I'm betting the latter.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Gault.Drakkor on Wednesday December 20 2017, @01:24AM
When the first round of NN change proposals went around, I spent some time looking for/at definitions because I felt confused. Had to take a bit of reading just to find basic definitions because there was so much obscuring going on.
I believe it goes back to: the harder a group is trying to sell something/the more money they spend to sell it. The higher the profit they expect after making the sale.