A Year Ago, The FCC Killed The Internet. Or So We Were Told.

The following editorial from the Wall Street journal was published Friday, June 15, 2019:

"Last week marked a year since the Federal Communications Commission officially laid “net neutrality” to rest, ending the Obama Administration’s regulation of internet traffic. Miraculously, the free and open internet is still operating, making it easy to unearth all those doomsday forecasts that didn’t come true.

"Remember prophecies of a web slowdown? “If we don’t save net neutrality, you’ll get the internet one word at a time,” the Senate Democrats’ official account tweeted. Instead broadband speeds have gotten faster—a good thing given how many millions of people recently were simultaneously streaming “Game of Thrones.”

"Critics predicted high prices or new internet “fast lanes” for the affluent. “The repeal of these protections has corporate greed and corruption written all over it,” Elizabeth Warren said on the Senate floor. Meantime, socially conscious companies saw a marketing ploy. Burger King told a whopper with a web video that showed customers forced to wait for their food because they didn’t pay for faster MBPS—“making burgers per second.” 

"Killing net neutrality was also said to be an affront to America’s system of government. “This is an egregious attack on our democracy,” Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted. The ACLU, Reporters Without Borders and other groups decried it as a threat to free speech, saying it would give cable and telecom companies “unfettered power” and have “a chilling effect on our rights.” Interfaith religious leaders wrote in an open letter that “communication is one of God’s great gifts to humanity,” and “we can either adopt policies that promote communications rights or that lessen them.” 

"Naral Pro-Choice America proclaimed in a press release: “There is no Reproductive Freedom Without Net Neutrality.” Planned Parenthood tweeted an article arguing in its headline: “The FCC’s Net Neutrality Decision Is A Stealth Attack On Feminism.” Is that what they mean by “intersectionality” 

"Cooler heads suggested taking some perspective: The FCC didn’t adopt net neutrality until 2015, yet American web surfers had managed fine. The repeal didn’t revoke all oversight of internet providers but simply returned regulatory responsibility to the Federal Trade Commission. 

"The net neutrality hysteria began to subside after repeal took effect last June without incident. Still, Democrats continue to push legislation to reinstate the Obama-era rules. They’re calling their bill the 'Save the Internet Act.' Save it from what?"