Honestly, this is one convoluted topic right now. No matter where I look, there are biased accounts and misinformation. I have tried my best to sort through it all, and this is what I think. I have been dubious of both sides of this debate, because it is hard to buy into anything you see plaguing facebook. I did a bit of research, and found some convincing stuff! there are some points and questions I want to make. It may as well fuck people over and that in itself will force innovation. However, in the end, I figure time is what will tell us how this turns out.

It needs to start with a definition: "Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication." -wikipedia. That seems like a good thing to me, but are looks decieving? Now, I am not so good with the legal mumbo jumbo, but it seems that it all revolves around ISPs being classified as title 2 'common carrier' under the telecommunications act. It was placed there in only 2015! What was the internet like before that? There are some interesting things and controversies that went on. Anyways....

First off, what is so good about government regulations in the first place? On the side of abandoning net neutrality, the main arguement I see is that it will open up the 'free market' and allow for small Internet Service Providing companies to flourish, because the old regulations will make it easier for them to do so. Honestly, I can not find what the requirements are for making your own ISP company legally. Physically you need a lot of space and equiptment. Although we may not want to government regulating our internet, is it better to allow the companies and corperations to control our internet access? I think not. However I would like to know more about how the internet functions in places without Net Neutrality, especially in the US before the laws were put in place. Also, this telecommunications act is entirely under the control of the five members of the FCC. The main Pai guy who everyone is talking about actually wants more investigation into the economic implications of abandoning net neutrality, but his words are convoluted. You can find all of the FCC members statements on the issue here: https://www.fcc.gov/document/protecting-and-promoting-open-internet-nprm.

I also figured that I good way to figure out what happens without or with net neutrality is to look at other countries. As we can see on this website : https://www.thisisnetneutrality.org/
China, Russia and the US, among a few others, have abandoned net neutrality. In my mind these are once powerful countries who are in a lot of social regression and revision right now, and they do not pop into my mind when I think "free speech" or "unregulated freedom".

So, on the other hand, if we look at the countries who I would consider progressive, mostly those european ones like sweden and finland, they are for net neutrality. Honestly, we can see that these people (although not as free as we may want), live the happiest lives and innovate the most in modern times. This is good evidence to me that net neutrality is important.

I think the 'economic growth' that getting rid of net neutrality supposedly would create is a lie, because there is little evidence for it that I can find, not that I claim to understand economics whatsofrikin ever. What innovation are we seeing from Russia and China? None that I know of, I wonder why? Honestly, are there even people from Russia and China on Steemit? Are they blocked from accessing such prograssive sites? It is common knowledge that China is fond of internet censorship. Whereas there are lots of Japanese people, people from India and people from South America that I see on here that do have net neutrality! This is actual evidence in my mind, partially conjecture but not just conjecture.

As much as I think having the government regulate shit is lame, having the corperations completely in control seems like even worse. At least the government may have some desire or facade of helping its people, at least that is the original idea lol. Corperations we know serve themselves in a capatilism, its a dog eat dog world for them and they would love to squish competition.

These are my findings, I think at the end of this research I have realized that its more then just hype, that net neutrality is probably very important. I would prefer that internet not be controlled by such companies or by the scheming governments, and we can work towards that with or without net neutrality in the US. A solution may be inevitable now that it is such a public issue around here. Innovation is bound to occur. Maybe everything will go to shit and people who are addicted to the internet will revolt or get out of their houses or maybe they will innovate a way to get around the companies in control.

Whatever the answer is, time will tell!