Argumentation and reason are timeless, but propaganda never ages well. This is certainly the case when it comes to the battle fought a few years ago over the now-repealed Title II regulations for what is commonly known as net neutrality.
One of Joe Biden’s campaign working groups has endorsed a return to the heavy internet regulation that was briefly attempted during the Obama era. So, it is worth going back to look at the hysterical, unhinged, and utterly false predictions that came thick and fast in 2017, when Title II net neutrality was abolished in favor of the old, lightly regulated system that has characterized the internet for nearly all of its history.
In 2015, the Obama Federal Communications Commission imposed upon the internet the rules that had been developed to regulate landline telephones in 1934. If that sounds a bit incongruous or anachronistic, it’s because it always was.
Prior to this rule, the internet had grown and thrived for more than 20 years under the oversight of the Federal Trade Commission as a lightly regulated “information service.” It developed with all the freedom and functionality that consumers enjoy today. The era of websites and blogs and e-commerce moved forward into social media, streaming, and the internet of things. There was never any indication that the internet was broken, but the do-gooders came to fix it anyway.
When the Trump administration moved to undo their handiwork in 2017, a coalition of hysterical, shrieking activists convinced large segments of the population to panic. Their rhetoric was reminiscent of Y2K. And it was lost on most of them, including some of the most computer-savvy tech YouTubers, that the argument for Title II regulation was being driven by a handful of powerful corporations such as Netflix, Google, and Amazon seeking a free ride on networks paid for and maintained by others.
The activists loudly claimed that service providers would react to the repeal of Title II by raising prices and slowing down service. One of the dumbest claims of all came from the American Civil Liberties Union, which told people they may soon be unable to order Domino’s online because Pizza Hut could just pay their internet service provider to prevent it.
Did that actually happen? Of course not. Even if service providers are evil, they’re not stupid. ISPs are now luring customers with cheap, unlimited 5G data plans that are faster than ever. Thanks to advances in technology, cable and fiber companies must now compete with cheap cellphone plans that allow for practically unlimited tethering and free subscriptions to Hulu, Amazon, and other streaming services.
The truth is that internet providers would be shooting themselves in the head were they ever to throttle traffic or violate net neutrality in a way that actually harmed consumers — which is why it has never really happened. It is telling that, whenever the scaremongers try to illustrate that the threat is real, they either have to explain why it’s bad that you have unlimited data to watch Hulu on your phone or else they describe obscure, ancient incidents that are highly unlikely to recur.
For example, yes, there was an incident in 2007 when Verizon briefly blocked a pro-abortion group from using its text message service to spam supporters. The decision, born of a dumb corporate policy of avoiding controversial topics, was reversed almost instantly once it became clear that it was backfiring, forcing the company into an abortion controversy. So much for net neutrality — problem solved.
What’s more, if service providers were to start throttling certain services in the way the fearmongers suggest, Congress could pass a new law that actually made sense for the internet, not for Ma Bell in the Depression Era.
A lot of people said a lot of dumb things back when Title II internet regulation was being repealed. They cried out that the sky was falling, and it wasn’t. Under normal circumstances, they would be apologizing now, explaining that they were wrong to spread hysterical propaganda about a subject they knew much less about than they let on. They would acknowledge that the repeal of Title II internet regulation hasn’t hurt anyone — to the contrary, it has made possible immense investments in the internet that are improving its performance and utility.
Biden, who is about as tech-savvy as you’d expect, now wants to restore the harmful and restrictive Title II regulation of the internet. It’s a terrible idea that will hinder the expansion of tomorrow’s better, faster internet. The Title II version of net neutrality is simply the wrong way. It is a solution in search of a problem that never was and never will be.
