The hypocrisy is striking. Big Tech companies and their allies in Washington are once again promoting the idea that the Federal Communications Commission should bring back “net neutrality” to crack down on internet service providers. Meanwhile, those same Silicon Valley companies argue that they should remain unencumbered by any sort of regulation — free to censor content and restrict access to the digital public square as they please. Neutrality for thee, but not for me.
Net neutrality advocates argue that ISPs, if left to their own devices, will deliberately slow down the internet, restrict certain content, and charge consumers exorbitant prices for high-speed access. Therefore, they say, the federal government must be granted the power to step in and force ISPs to treat all data equally. When the FCC started to consider rolling back the regulation, net neutrality advocates argued that it would spell the end of the internet as we know it. But when the FCC did repeal the rule, these dire predictions failed to materialize. In fact, the opposite occurred.
In 2016, during the height of net neutrality, the FCC estimated that 34 million people in the United States lacked access to broadband. That figure is down to 18 million today. Meanwhile, broadband investment from the private sector is up significantly — $80 billion alone in 2018 — after declining in both 2015 and 2016. And during a pandemic where millions of people were forced to work from home and internet connectivity was paramount, broadband networks held up while internet speeds only increased.
The same can’t be said for Europe, which has some of the most heavy-handed net neutrality regulations in the world. Unable to handle unprecedented internet congestion, the European Union had no choice but to allow ISPs to throttle speeds while also limiting video services. In other words, the greatest fears of net neutrality proponents came true in Europe — precisely because of net neutrality.
But let’s not allow facts to get in the way of politics. While the FCC is currently split with two Republicans and two Democrats, President Biden is likely to nominate another Democratic commissioner soon. When that happens, expect a deluge of propaganda from the usual suspects demanding that the FCC act to reimpose net neutrality on ISPs — and only the ISPs.
But why only the ISPs? Shouldn’t net neutrality be neutral? If the concern is that we should have a free and open internet, shouldn’t cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services, which recently used its market power to all but destroy an upstart social media platform, be subject to the same regulations? The same question might apply to Big Tech platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. Should they be allowed to work in concert to ban people and opinions they don’t like? And don’t forget Google. Is it acceptable that its search engine “algorithmically” promotes some news outlets and blocks others solely on the basis of whether it approves of the content?
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr recently made this argument brilliantly: “If people do want to revisit this … then I think it’s time we looked holistically at all the actors in the internet ecosystem. If you look at entities that right now are engaged in actions that are blocking access to content — it’s not your mom and pop ISP. It’s Google. It’s Apple. It’s Amazon Web Services.”
Carr is right. If the FCC is going to go down this road again, and that certainly appears likely based on acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s public commitments, then we need to acknowledge where the threat to a free and open internet really comes from. We have to be honest about the “ecosystem.” Who’s restricting access to content? Who’s discriminating against their customers? It’s not the ISPs. It’s market-dominant cloud service providers and social media platforms.
In a way, the hysteria over net neutrality was warranted. Internet freedom is indeed in perilous danger, but our politicians keep going after the wrong target. Maybe one of them should ask the obvious question to one of the Big Tech CEOs testifying before the House this month: If we must classify ISPs as common carriers, shouldn’t we do the same thing to Big Tech companies that are actually guilty of restricting access to content and engaging in systemic censorship? After all, it’s only fair.
Jon Schweppe is the director of policy and government affairs at American Principles Project. Follow him on Twitter @JonSchweppe.
