What I Still Don’t Understand About Net Neutrality

So what is net neutrality?

No like seriously, what is it, and what is going on with it? Because no matter how much I read or watch about it, everything is saying something different. I know that we have net neutrality right now. It means that everything can be uploaded and downloaded equally over the internet at the same speed. It creates a level playing field for everyone online. So start-up companies are able to compete with bigger companies. It’s how Facebook overturned Myspace, for example. It also means that cable companies aren’t able to slow down the speed of specific companies. This was a big issue with the Comcast/Netflix feud. Comcast extorted Netflix out of money by slowing down their streaming speed significantly. To me, that doesn’t seem very fair. And that’s where things get confusing for me.

President Obama made a statement recently about net neutrality and how he’s for it. Which is great. It’s good that the president supports something that’s good. But there’s people who don’t like that he supports it and say that the government shouldn’t interfere with the internet. But no one would be interfering or changing anything. It would just be setting up rules to regulate and enforce net neutrality. At least that’s how I understand it. But then there’s other articles saying that President Obama is trying to end net neutrality and allow cable companies to charge companies to stream their content. So that’s why I’m so confused as to what’s going on politically with this. And it doesn’t help that I’m already really politically retarded. I think that’s why I like The Daily Show and Colbert Report so much, because they can explain confusing political issues really well. John Oliver does a really good job of explaining this issue.

I think that net neutrality is the best thing that we can have for the internet. If that means leaving it alone or changing it to regulate it, i don’t know. You guys work out all the stupid political stuff that I don’t understand. But get it done, and get it done right.