When you head to your favorite websites today, you may notice some annoying popup graphics. Before you roll your eyes and click the little X, take a moment to note these are not ads—they’re pleas to help save the Internet from the death of net neutrality, and you can help.
Together, we can make sure the Internet remains a place where all sites are equal instead of allowing ISPs to charge bigger web services to have their content served to users at higher speeds.
Not so! The reason this activity is ramping up is the approach of the September 15 deadline for public comment on the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules, which leave room for ISPs to mess with traffic speed in exchange for money. The sites participating in the campaign against the rules all have links in their graphics you can click to quickly and easily take action without leaving the comfort of your glowing entertainment box/rectangle.
If you’d like to do your part, sites like Netflix, Reddit, Tumblr, Kickstarter, and more are participating, so you can head there and see what Internet-saving activities they have for you. Tumblr has even stepped up their game and added little loading wheels to actually (marginally) slow down the page’s loading to really give people an idea of the horrors of waiting an extra second or two for something to load.
Netflix
Kickstarter
You can also just go straight to battleforthenet.com and sign a letter to lawmakers and the FCC about how you want the Internet’s series of tubes to be treated equally. For webmasters, they also have tools to institute your own slow lane awareness.
If you missed the initial comment period, you also have until the 15th to leave a comment directly for the FCC, so go ahead and let them in on your feels (you’re looking for proceeding 09-191).
(via Deadline, image via Tumblr)
- John Oliver called on Internet trolls to tell off the FCC
- You can hate-read the full text of the FCC’s propsed rules
- A little history on the net neutrality debate
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