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The Arrow

The student news site of Waxahachie High School

The Arrow

The student news site of Waxahachie High School

The Arrow

Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is a very important topic that few people know about. In theory, net neutrality is a huge freeway in which all of our internet connections run. From Billy John’s farm supply website to Google, all are put on an even playing field.

A non-net neutral society would be like if only the Ferraris could go in the express lane, while all of the toyotas and chevys are left with one less lane of traffic sitting bumper to bumper.

But staying net neutral is more than just faster internet for big companies. It’s the fact that greedy, money hungry companies will have control of another part of our lives.

Companies such as Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile will have the internet in the palm of their hands. And who says that if a company such as Bing pays AT&T copious amounts of money, AT&T won’t purposefully slow the connection to Google so much that your only choice is Bing.

This not only will happen against big companies, but to tiny family businesses. The american people would rather spend less time buying something on amazon when it takes longer to buy something maybe cheaper on a site that has less than 1,000 users a week. And who says that Amazon won’t skyrocket their prices when the only choice we have to shop on is Amazon?

To begin, the FCC is a group of five unelected bureaucrats, and the leader of this team of supervillains is Ajit Pai. Along with being appointed (not elected by the American people), Pai was- before appointed to the FCC- a lawyer for Verizon. Yes Verizon, the Lex to his Luthor, the Doctor to his Evil. This isn’t just a matter of fast and slow web access, this is a matter of monopolizing the internet.

In the end it’s the internet, but the way the government is dealing with this is frightening. The same tactics seem to be used in other circumstances of a totalitarian government.

The following for net neutrality is 60% Democratic and 54% Republican. I have yet to hear someone in favor of the repeal for net neutrality. People either know about net neutrality and are for it, or they simply don’t know about it at all. The government knowing about this purposely tries to keep this under the radar.

Overall, it isn’t just an argument over net neutrality, the argument is: is the government withholding knowledge that should be public.