Donald Trump and Net Neutrality

When it comes to digital issues and policy, tech enthusiasts' worst fears have come true. The people of the United States have elected Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump, our newly minted President-elect, is a very controversial figure in the tech community. He often shows a complete disregard for regulatory principles in this sector. Instead of defending net neutrality and its implications, Trump seems more worried about entirely different priorities like the security of the conservative media and pleasing lobbyists.

Nowhere is this more clear than in his party's overall position on net neutrality. According to Ars Technica:

"Republicans in Congress have already proposed a variety of bills that limit the FCC’s regulatory authority, eliminate net neutrality rules, or replace the existing ones with rules that are less strict."

Donald Trump / CC by Gage Skidmore

So what is this net neutrality that Republicans seem to hate so much? It's the basis of the entire internet as we know it.

The internet, as provided to homes, workplaces and government buildings by internet service providers, moves freely through all pipes and cables the same. This means that Wikipedia loads just as quickly as Facebook, and the Drudge Report loads just as quickly as Vox. As fast as those servers can get the data to you, nothing slows it down or helps it speed up. All traffic is treated the same.

Many companies, specifically internet service providers, want this to change to open up a completely new avenue of control and, thus, revenue. This would mean Netflix would have to pay Time Warner Cable huge sums of money for it to load to Time Warner Cable customers as fast as it does now.

This is a giant problem, mostly due to how much the consumer loses in this scenario. In a world without net neutrality, most of the services that we love today could not have come into being. Facebook never would've come about if it had to pay huge sums of money to load well. Google started as a curiosity by Stanford students; do you think they could've gotten the capital needed to compete right off the bat? No.

Without an open playing field, we lose out on awesome products and services that benefit our life. It's as simple as that, and no amount of moneymaking by big corporations should make the consumer feel better about that. It's our job to let Donald Trump know that he shouldn't weaken the FCC and he should defend what is right in regards to what the majority of people want for the future of the internet.