I thought you were being sarcastic. Thanks for the info.
To demonstrate the impact of removing Net Neutrality, this extension slows your internet connection and blocks several websites
With the FCC preparing to remove Title II restrictions on ISPs and destroy Net Neutrality, it is important that every citizen of the United States understands what the removal of Net Neutrality would entail. This extension shows you what the ramifications of this decision would be by slowing all websites except for “sponsored sites”, and blocking content those sites’ competitors’ websites.
To learn more about Net Neutrality and the fight to keep it, please visit keepournetfree.org and marchfornetneutrality.org.
Love to hear people’s thoughts on this as it is new to me.
And it’s a pain in the arse.
Article from Forbes on Net Neutrality
In their net neutrality fairy tale, internet service providers (ISPs) are the ‘big bad wolf,’ bent on creating paid ‘fast lanes’ and blocking the websites of entrepreneurs (who invariably work out of their garages). It sounds like a frightful tale, except that ISPs have never offered paid fast lanes or blocked small business owners’ web sites (run out of garages or otherwise). Meanwhile, the biggest baddest wolf the world has ever known — Google — swallowed the internet ecosystem whole and spit out its bones.
According to Democratic leaders in the Senate, net neutrality is the principle that “what you read, see or watch online shouldn’t be favored, blocked or slowed down based on where that content is coming from.” Google became the world’s largest corporation by trampling on this principle while the Left cheered (or turned a blind eye) .
For one, Google uses its monopoly position in internet search markets to systematically favor its own products in its search results. People might think that Google’s search service uses an objective algorithm that gives them the most relevant responses to their search inquiries. What really happens is that Google shows its own products in the most prominent positions on the screen in order to artificially divert traffic from rival services to Google’s own. As former Google designer Tristan Harris describes it, “if you control the menu, you control the choices.”
Second, Google uses its monopoly position in mobile operating systems (Android is dominant worldwide) to preserve and strengthen its dominance in general internet search and over consumer data collection by:
Forcing manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google’s Chrome browser and set Google Search as the default search service on their devices as a condition to licensing Google’s proprietary apps,
Blocking manufacturers from selling mobile devices that use competing operating systems that are based on Android’s supposedly “open source” code (like Amazon’s Kindle Fire), and
Giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices (a form of paid prioritization).
Google uses these tactics to ‘control the menu’ on the vast majority of the world’s mobile devices like Google controls the menu on its search products themselves.
Third, Google uses its dominant position in internet advertising to favor its own search and advertising services. A substantial portion of Google’s revenue from search advertising comes from a limited number of third-parties with whom Google has exclusive deals. For a decade, these deals required third-parties to:
Refuse to source search ads from Google’s competitors,
Take a minimum number of ads from Google and reserve premium space for Google search ads, and
Obtain approval from Google before making any changes to the display of competing search ads.
None of these Google practices are consistent with the Left’s net neutrality principles or fair competition. In 2012, staff at the Federal Trade Commission concluded that Google’s anticompetitive conduct had strengthened its monopolies and caused “real harm to consumers and to innovation” that “will have lasting negative effects on consumer welfare.” Yet the Obama administration decided to focus its energy on ISPs while letting Google run wild. Obama appointees at the FTC gave short shrift to the findings of the agency’s professional staff while the Obama-led Federal Communications Commission exempted Google’s monopolies from the current net neutrality rules.
The results were predictable: Google is now the largest company in the world and has unprecedented power to control what we read, see, or watch online. Rather than reign Google in, the net neutrality rules the Left wants to preserve have served to strengthen Google’s control over the media.
The current net neutrality debate is just “fighting the last war.” It’s time to have an honest conversation about today’s real internet monopolies and the future of a free media in this country.