Net Neutrality RIP: Essential Parts of America's DNA—Independence and Privacy—Are About to Be Destroyed @alternet:
"Once net neutrality is dead at the hand of former Verizon lawyer and now FCC-chief Ajit Pai, do you really believe Comcast or Verizon will let people click through to sites like “ComcastSucks.org” or “VerizonSucksAss.com”? China locks down the internet to control politics, but here politicians are largely corporate-owned, so these big ISPs simply paid (er…”donated”) to put their guy in charge of the FCC. Soon, they’ll be able to block any protest activity you may be considering, particularly if it’ll hurt their profitability. And, of course, ISPs want to stay in the good graces of the politicians they’ve bought, so if busting you on behalf of the State ingratiates them to the political powers-that-be, all the better… Not only that, in order to lock down the internet and wring every single penny that can be wrung out of your identity and data, your ISP will, in all probability, radically ramp up their “oversight” (aka spying) of/on you so they can determine what you might want to buy, who and where you are, and what you might be able to afford. This intense profit motive, to extract the last penny from every one of us, in both fees and by selling our browsing/posting/email history, has all but wiped out the possibility of anonymity. As we can see with the J20 websites—where our government is demanding all the online activity related to protests against Trump on January 20, 2017—once your ISPs begin monitoring and collecting all of your information, there’s nowhere left to hide. Independence and privacy – the anonymity necessary to be able to participate in politics – are essential parts of the DNA of the United States. To destroy them on the internet, now that it has replaced the mail and the town square for communications of all sorts, will mean that there will be little or no protest in the future. If we are to preserve democracy—what little we have left—in our nation, we must fight Verizon’s lawyer Mr. Pai’s efforts to destroy net neutrality."
