Blog Post #10- EOTO (All About Net Neutrality)

 The internet has become a second world, next to our physical one. It's something that more than half the world has access to and it connects each and every one of us in an instant. The internet was the start of a new era of communication and technology; it completely flipped our world upside down, but in a good way. However, it was not a surprise when governments and companies began to place limitations on our internet access. Whether it be violations of our online privacy, restrictions on how and what we can access on the internet, or unfair discrimination online, these limitations should not exist. It completely ruins the experience of the internet for majority of people and discriminates against a certain population of our country. This is what net neutrality was meant to solve. 

You're probably wondering what Net Neutrality is; to put it simply, net neutrality is similar to an equality law for internet access. A more textbook definition is the following: The principle that ISP (internet service providers) should give equal access to content, applications, data speeds, and more without any bias towards specific websites or groups of people. Internet service providers control our internet access more than we know. They can see everything you access, control internet speeds, and prioritize data depending on status (for example, a corporation or business can pay more money to gain better overall access to the internet). This is exactly what Net Neutrality is aiming to fix.

Some people hear about Net Neutrality and feel like it doesn't quite matter to them or won't affect them. This could not be more false. Net Neutrality is something that everyone should be advocating for; without it, the way we experience and interact with the internet could be changed completely. As of right now, there are no Net Neutrality laws in place, but internet service providers claim to honor the principles of Net Neutrality. This is a good thing, but it is bound by a simple honor system. There is no way for us to know what these ISP's are actually doing behind the scenes and there are no laws to stop them from doing anything malicious. Without these policies, there would be unequal internet access for everyone. It is not unequal to only a specific race or class but basically anybody that cannot afford to dump money into the service providers pockets. 

When discussing an issue like unequal internet access, it can seem confusing and foreign which is not unexpected. The internet is fairly new and it may be hard to understand how there could be unequal access to something that we can currently retrieve in less than 10 seconds. This is why it is important to know about Net Neutrality and why we should be fighting for it. Currently, our internet access and protection is at risk, yet majority of users online don't seem to be worried. Our data could be analyzed, our speeds throttled down, and our website access restricted; for all we know, it's probably happening already.