By Dagen Gilbreath, Design Editor

Net neutrality is something that everyone has heard of in some way or another. Whether it be rumblings in the news or the torrents of panic flooding Twitter and Facebook, everyone knows that it’s kind of a big deal. The problem is, many people don’t know what losing net neutrality will do, or what net neutrality is in the first place.

Net neutrality has been a principle that has existed since the inception of modern internet. However, in the last few years it’s come back to the public’s eye with the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) controversial decision to remove regulations that protect net neutrality.

But before we dive into that, we actually have to understand what net neutrality is: more specifically, Title II of the Communications Act.

During the big internet streaming boom of the early 2010s, multiple Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Verizon, Comcast and AT&T were accused of intentionally slowing down or “throttling” customer access to certain sites.

This went on for a few years and led to the introduction of Title II, a bill implemented under the Obama administration in 2015 that reclassified broadband as a common carrier, and through this reclassification forced ISPs to treat all data equally. Among other regulations, this banned ISPs from throttling user access to certain websites.

This bill — Title II of the Communications Act — is what protects net neutrality. Service providers hated this. From a business perspective, this makes sense, as it imposes heavy regulations on a previously lightly regulated industry. The justification on the government end is that we value our internet freedom over the profit of our providers.

Since then, internet users have enjoyed non-discriminatory internet. Without net neutrality, high-bandwidth sites like Netflix, Facebook, Google and Youtube would run the risk of being throttled by ISPs in order to cut costs and potentially be blocked by a paywall to drive further profit.

But now, only two years after its inception, Title II was overridden in a 3-2 vote by the FCC. Of course, this vote has to be approved in Congress, and even if it does make it through all the hoops it won’t go into effect for the next few years. But it still is very bad news, as it sets a precedent for our internet freedoms to be further eroded in the near future.

Without net neutrality, our ISPs would potentially have full control over what we see and do on their services. To many, this alone is concerning, as it allows corporations to control users’ information and what they view. ISPs would also be able to charge users for certain access to the internet, and in some cases might outright block user access to sites that might not comply with their best business interest. This change might not be directly noticeable, especially at first, but we have to realize that letting ISPs gatekeep what users see and don’t see is an awfully giant responsibility to put on corporations that clearly only care about profit.

One of the arguments against Title II, from FCC Chairman and former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai, is that the internet wasn’t some awful, lawless dystopia pre Title II, so the removal of Title II will simply restore the internet to how it was. He promises that the internet will be free from constrictive government regulation, and will become a better consumer and corporate space without any compromise.

What this rationale fails to acknowledge is that the internet was getting pretty bad leading up to 2015, with ISPs being charged and accused left and right for throttling and blocking specific websites. This, coupled with mounting security concerns and controversial business practices of ISPs, made for a potential disaster for the internet. The only reason it didn’t become the lawless dystopia Pai was talking about is due to the implementation of Title II that was placed in order to prevent it.

It’s clear that there are two very different sides to this argument, and neither of them see eye to eye. This dissonance comes from the perspectives of the two sides: the business and the consumer.

On the consumer side, people simply want free, easy access to the internet. As consumers, they want fast, equal access to everything without too many hoops to jump through. Consumers feel like they already pay enough to access the internet, and that net neutrality will only make the internet worse as both a customer and user.

On the business side, people want profit and growth in investment. Title II was devastating to the ISP market, dropping it down by upwards of $200 billion. Title II also makes ISPs less competitive, as there is not a lot to offer due to the constrictive regulations. This makes it nigh impossible for new ISPs to emerge in the market, and it stagnates the current giants.

This is a problem from a business perspective, but we have decided as the public that the internet is a service that should be treated equally in order to maintain freedom of speech and information. Corporate influence within the internet is a scary thought.

The removal of net neutrality will not affect everything immediately. It’s not an apocalypse that will immediately lead to the internet becoming an Orwellian corporate nightmare. But if Congress doesn’t shut down the FCCs profit-oriented decision to repeal net neutrality at the expense of the public, slowly but surely, ISPs will begin to erode their customers’ freedoms they once enjoyed.

People will have to start paying for faster lines to access the internet, packages that allow access to certain websites will start cropping up, not unlike your conventional satellite TV package. Online startups and businesses will suffer as they do not get the attention or bandwidth larger sites get, and larger sites will suffer as they will be discriminated due to their success. Free speech would be threatened as ISPs may censor or outright block websites that do not agree with their opinions or are in competition with their services.

Giving these powers to ISPs in a perfect world would be good. Most of the anti-neutrality arguments would hold true, like improvement for investments and budgeted packages at a cheaper cost that allow users to only access a few essential sites as well as a more competitive, innovative market.

But we know our ISPs and we know that allowing them this power to exploit a service that in modern times has become an essential tool as well as an unparalleled luxury is dangerous. As companies, they want to profit on the internet they provide, but this profit will come as a cost to users as well as society.

Senior Dagen Gilbreth can be reached at gilbreathda0518@daretolearn.org.