Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2021 October 15

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

October 15

What ever happened to net neutrality?

Hi, sorry if this is a bit of a naiive question, but I remember that when the entire Net Neutrality repeal situation was happening, there was a lot of media proclaiming that terrible things would happen following the disbanding of net neutrality (having to pay extra for certain sites, etc). Has any of that come to light in the years since? I personally have been seemingly unaffected so I was wondering if there was any major damage or changes that slipped under my radar/wouldn't really effect me personally.

Thanks! DrawWikiped^(talk) 00:46, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Probably fair to say that the confusion is ongoing! Lots of reading at Net neutrality or Net neutrality in the United States — GhostInTheMachine ^{talk to me} 11:34, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

From the latter article (a bit above the target anchor): On July 9, 2021, Biden signed Executive Order 14036, "Promoting Competition in the American Economy", a sweeping array of initiatives across the executive branch. Among them included instructions to the FCC to restore the net neutrality rules that had been undone during the Trump administration. Stay tuned, I guess.

As to the question of what happened in between... If I am to believe this article, litigation established that the FCC could not prevent US states from imposing their own net-neutrality rules, and therefore many states did so. According to the 2020 FCC as cited in this anti-NN editorial all major ISPs have made written commitments not to engage in practices considered to violate open Internet principles, including blocking and throttling. From those two points, I would speculate that ISPs decided that dealing with cross-state regulatory differences was too much hassle, and decided to just align on stringent NN rules and put a spin of "look at how virtous we are". Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 14:11, 15 October 2021 (UTC)