‘DAY OF ACTION’
Net neutrality protests have been subdued compared to those in 2012
Net neutrality defenders like Google and Netflix planned to hit hard against internet service providers Verizon and Comcast, among others, during Wednesday’s “Day of Action” protests fighting opposition to an open internet, but ultimately efforts appeared to fall flat.
As Team Internet faced off against Team Cable, a number of websites were urged to use pop-ups to explain the concept of net neutrality and their support of a 2015 Obamaera regulation on the internet — all with a symbolic, blue loading icon.
But most websites didn’t use the pop-up. They had their own plans.
While some websites such as Firefox and Vimeo took hard stances for the Day of Action protest — turning the home page into a public service announcement or sending out emails to those with a membership, respectively — other members of the “Battle for the Net” group hosting the protest defaulted to using banner ads and obscure blog posts.
Net neutrality, a regulatory framework that assures that internet service providers may not discriminate against particular online content by controlling bandwidth speeds, is being tested by a Republican-led Federal Communications Commission under chairman Ajit Pai, who was appointed by President Donald Trump.
Specifically, the FCC no longer wants the internet to be regulated as a utility-like service under Title II of Federal Communications Law.
According to Battleforthenet.com, the flagship site for Wednesday’s protest, internet service providers want to abolish net neutrality as it currently stands in hopes of seeing and controlling what users do online, or at least to turn a better profit.
AT&T says it supports an “open internet” and believes companies shouldn’t block web content or slow down videos from other providers. Rather, AT&T says it merely opposes the FCC rules that set it in place.
Comcast and Verizon joined AT&T in making that distinction. Internet service providers don’t like the FCC’s approach because it treats internet service as a utility and comes with more oversight. They worry about price regulation and say the rules hurt broadband investment.
That potential for bandwidth discrimination is why many popular sites agreed to coordinate Wednesday’s
protest, although the push felt a bit low-key.
Google sent an email to its “Take Action” network, a community focused on issues that are important to the future of the internet, which it copied over to a niche public policy blog.
The Silicon Valley giant stated, “Today’s open internet ensures that both new and established services, whether offered by an established internet company like Google, a broadband provider, or a small startup, have the same ability to reach users on an equal playing field.” But it was tucked away. Similarly, Twitter’s public policy manager Lauren Culbertson wrote a blog post Tuesday night calling for a free and open internet — without a pop-up or any noticeable change to the main website. The post did ask users to tweet under the hashtag #NetNeutrality, which spurred hot debate.
Netflix used a gray banner ad at the top of its site, reading “Protect Internet Freedom. Defend Net Neutrality” with a link to the Internet Association’s advocacy website that redirects to the FCC, where net neutrality advocates are directed to submit comments.
Monday evening, the more indie online forum Reddit illustrated its logo loading in snail-speed pixels, before a message stating “Monthly bandwidth exceeded: Click to upgrade.”
Internet activists and tech firms hope that the protest will pressure Congress and the FCC in the same way a highly visible 2012 online protest — which included the blackout of Wikipedia’s English-language site for 24 hours — helped kill anti-piracy legislation that tech companies equated to internet censorship.
In January 2012, the largest online protest in history included a widespread “blackout” wherein popular sites like Reddit “went dark,” and Google placed a huge censor bar over its namesake logo, which redirected to information about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).
Those efforts, ultimately, helped kill the bills.
Tim Karr, the campaign director for Free Press, an advocacy group that supports net neutrality, said that internet users have taken “hundreds of thousands of actions,” like contacting the FCC.
Time will tell whether Wednesday’s protest will amount to much, as each pop-up widget provides a form to submit concerns to the FCC or members of Congress.
There had been about 6 million filings on net neutrality’s overturn made to the FCC as of Tuesday night, both supporting and opposing the policy; that had risen to 6.7 million Wednesday afternoon.