Dem
51
GOP
49
Of the many things that Donald Trump did as president that were bad for the country, one of the worst was appointing people to the FCC who eventually abolished net neutrality. This is the principle that Internet providers must treat all content equally. By way of analogy, the USPS operates under "postal neutrality." It would be illegal if Postmaster General Louis DeJoy were to decide that all mail destined for the DNC or election boards in Michigan were to be intentionally delayed for a week. All mail of equal price must be treated equally.
After the FCC, under the leadership of Trump appointee Ajit Pai, eliminated net neutrality, it would have been legal for some Internet provider to slow down all traffic to DailyKos.com and speed up all traffic to FoxNews.com, possibly in return for a monetary payment from Fox to the provider. Also, a provider could legally speed up videos from Amazon Prime while slowing down streaming traffic from Netflix (or vice versa), in return for some moolah. The absence of net neutrality allows Internet providers to pick sides in many matters, from commercial to political, based on money and the CEO's politics.
However, under the leadership of the current FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC will vote on April 25 on whether to restore net neutrality. Rosenworcel wants to restore it and has the votes to pass it, 3-2. The ruling will take effect 60 days after it is published in the federal register. The next time Republicans have a majority on the FCC, they will probably abolish net neutrality again. The only way to stop this ping-ponging is to have Congress pass a law establishing Internet providers as common carriers. Neither party is against that, per se, but the telephone and cable companies are wildly against it because it makes it impossible for them to squeeze money out of Amazon, Facebook, Google, CNN, and other major websites in return for top-quality service. As far as the phone and cable companies are concerned, they would be happy to provide good service to the 500 most-popular websites on the Internet and turn off the other 200 million.
A related issue is freedom of speech. Nothing about net neutrality deals with that. What Facebook puts on its website is up to Facebook. Net neutrality merely says Verizon and AT&T can't speed up or slow down traffic from Facebook, for example, because some company is paying them either way.
One other issue is that classifying the Internet as a common carrier will give the FCC power to order Internet providers to take certain measures in the name of national security. That could include keeping Chinese telecomm firms completely out of the U.S. and beefing up U.S. infrastructure against foreign, terrorist, and other attacks. (V)