For those of you who are unaware of what net neutrality is, it is a system utilized by Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) to give you fair and equal access to the internet in terms of speed. Think about a standard highway. There are three lanes with one being the slowest speed, another being intermediate, and the last being the fastest. With net neutrality, all lanes become the same speed. This is especially good for upcoming businesses who need the internet to capitalize on opportunities for consumers. Net neutrality also gives an even playing field for small companies to climb to the top and topple its competitors. Thus, the reason why a social media app such as Facebook defeated its former competitor MySpace. The public who utilizes the internet generally gets equal access to the speed of the internet as well, depending on the provider.
However, with the recent repeal of net neutrality, another problem is being created. Imagine being the CEO of a company, and you want any possible advantage to get ahead of your competitor. To do this, you provide an ISP more money for you to stream web content faster. If you offer online sales, images, loading screens, payment pages, etc. will load more quickly, causing the consumer to want to buy more things on your site. If you’re a company who focuses on video content such as Netflix or Youtube, the faster internet access will provide better streaming, which in turn will grant the consumer more quality videos to binge-watch.
There is also a deeper issue here concerning the consumer. “Free internet” will become a relative term because the people who cannot afford to pay ISP’s the top dollar will, unfortunately, be at the bottom end of the “social totem pole.” This change in hierarchy means slower internet for those who don’t have the financial means to pay. For those who do have the necessary funds, they will have the means to take total control on what you view or access. If the economic structure of our economy wasn’t already unfair, this change might turn detrimental. Enterprises such as tobacco industries can commercialize their products solely in urban areas, causing higher rates of death and school dropouts due to addiction. Online education systems can eventually choose what content to stream based on the economic status of certain areas with those with higher status being granted more access and those with lower being given less.
The potential danger to the repeal of net neutrality can cause more of a dividing line between socio-economic classes. For an example of what our classes already look like, imagine a graph depicting three bars. The first bar is the lowest, which would be the lower class. The middle bar is the middle class, and of course, the highest bar is the upper class. Most people think this would have a natural curve upwards if one were to draw a line connecting the tops of these bar graphs. Unfortunately, if you were to draw this out on a chart and draw a line, you would see the upper class already has exponentially more wealth than the lower class and middle class combined. The only class able to move from its current position to the upper class is middle class. If the middle class keeps paying more to be in the upper class, such as taxes, internet, etc., it will eventually be non-existent. Only the two classes upper and lower, would remain.
What this potentially could mean for you as an individual, striving to make a future for yourself, is you cannot advance and try to economically build a better life for yourself no matter how hard you try. Internet is a fabric now interwoven in the very niches of our society. Without equal access to it, those lacking wealth to begin with, no longer have a chance to be on top. In the future, the repeal of net neutrality can cause a spiral into dictatorship to where only the wealthy rule and the poor stay at the bottom.
Reginald andah 