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posted by mrpg on Tuesday December 19 2017, @09:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the real-news dept.

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


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @02:31PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @02:31PM (#612294)

    are you serious?

    This place has such a conservative slant I had to laugh when you blamed leftists for the moderation.

    No, I think people are pissed. you don't have to wear a hipster che gueverra shirt for that.

    Starting Score:    0  points
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  • (Score: 2) by gottabeme on Thursday December 21 2017, @04:48PM

    by gottabeme (1531) on Thursday December 21 2017, @04:48PM (#612838)

    I don't usually respond to ACs, but let's look at the evidence here:

    1. Non-leftist comment gets heavily modded down.
    2. My comment pointing this out gets modded down.
    3. Your comment claiming the opposite is modded up.
    4. I observe more left-slanted stories posted to SN than right-slanted, such as this one.

    So, we could quibble over the ratio, but the point is that the leftist mob is trying to overrun the place, just like anywhere else.