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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: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @12:15PM
You're out of your mind.
1. Net Neutrality doesn't hurt Google, Facebook, Twitter, or Netflix. They're multi-billion dollar companies with recognized names, they can push back when Comcast or Verizon try to squeeze them or their end users for extra money. Net Neutrality fucks the next Google, Facebook, or Netflix, by letting the ISPs bleed it dry. "If you want to reach more than 30,000 customers at full speed we require an extra $0.01 per GB of traffic, otherwise we will throttle your connection speed onto our network by 60%." That's what they can do now, and it will stifle competition on the net. Congratulations, the Google you hate just got an even stronger lock on its market position.
2. Your "as long as we work to exclude straight white males" comment is beyond ridiculous. Straight white men are still the overwhelming majority of state governors, senators, representatives, Fortune 1000 CEOs, CTOs, and engineers in the country. "Maybe we shouldn't shit on people who are not straight white males" != "mistreat straight white males". Get over your martyr complex. I'm a straight white male, I'm doing just fine, and I've been contacted by recruiters from Amazon and Google within the past year. They're not about to kick us all to the curb - or put us in concentration camps.
3. And Joe Sixpack doesn't know or care whether Google is partisan. He'll use Google on his Android device for the same reason 99.9% of Windows PC shoppers never replace the operating system on the computer they buy - consumers tend to use the defaults. We always have, we always will.