We all like Netflix, so here’s a hypothetical. You want to watch "Orange is the New Black" on Netflix and your internet service provider is Time Warner, which is owned by Charter Spectrum. Charter Spectrum owns HBO, and since Charter Spectrum would make a lot more money if you watched one of their shows, such as "Sesame Street," what if he just made sure that Time Warner slowed down Netflix on your TV, or phone, or laptop? To such an extent that you were unable to watch "Orange is the New Black" and be forced to pick something else.

Suppose that Charter kept doing this to every show that was not created by a company that it owned, leaving you only with the shows they want you to watch.

In a simplistic sense, that is what destroying net neutrality would hypothetically do.

Net neutrality just means that your service provider does not have the legal authority to censor, favor, block or prioritize any content that you as the consumer see through the pipeline of their service.

It can make people pay higher prices to get the kind of free access that we have at the moment under net neutrality.

The great thing about the Internet has always been that it has been a platform on which all have had equal access and equal footing, and in the debate currently taking place about net neutrality the greatest fear is losing this equality that it has garnered. The TV show example is a tame one. Cutting net neutrality means giving internet service providers the authority to decide what information you do and do not have access to; the biggest fear being that this is in itself, and will lead to censorship, further down the road.

The issue is one that first came to the national stage in the United States in 2013-14, when the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) first considered regulating Internet service. This is what led to Article 1 of the Communications Act, a relatively tame legal document that did little to prevent large Internet providers from such rampant wrongdoing, but even these minimal restrictions were far too much for providers, and Comcast sued the FCC over net neutrality policies.

"The court ruled that the FCC couldn't regulate paid prioritization under Section 706 of the Communications Act, but that it could classify ISPs as common carriers and require them to abide by net neutrality requirements — specifically, the requirement that they wouldn't prioritize some traffic over others, creating Internet 'fast' lanes for premium subscribers and slow lanes for everyone else."

This is what created Article 2 of the act, which forced Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, to abide by net neutrality by classifying ISPs as common carriers.

The issue was solved, until the new FCC Chairman under Trump, Ajit Pai, decided that he wanted to get rid of Article 2 restrictions that forced ISPs to abide by net neutrality policies. Instead, he'd rather have ISP’s "voluntarily agree…to not obstruct or slow consumer access to web content in their terms of service"... which no one reads and are forever changing.

His argument comes from the side of infrastructure investment, in which he essentially argues, "the more heavily you regulate something the less of it you are going to get.". However, this kind of investment is very difficult to measure and Pai’s research is widely disputed. In fact, in 2014, after Article 2 was passed Verizon itself told its investors the following:

"I mean, to be real clear, I mean, this does not influence the way we invest. I mean, we're going to continue to invest in our networks and our platforms, both in wireless and Wireline Fios and where we need to. So nothing will influence that."

Therefore, his claims are ones that should be taken with some reservations.

But is losing net neutrality really going to have as large an effect as people fear it will? Or have we already gone too far down a monopoly hole for it to matter much?

At this point in time, there are a handful of ISPs that control the pipelines of Internet in the United States, and as bigger ones continue to acquire the smaller ones, this number is actively decreasing. Essentially, what this means is that web companies already have to choose between a very small pool of providers to go through, and as this number continues to decrease, "the Comcast's and the Verizon's may eventually have too much freedom to decide how much companies must pay for fast speeds."

While yes this is an issue that we all need to fight for, the hysteria that it is causing may be a little more than its implications warrant. Net neutrality is important, there is no doubt, but going back to the Netflix example, every company is owned by another; Netflix is owned by Comcast, the biggest telecommunications company in the United States. Due to this monopoly that ISPs have created, as the number of major ISPs decrease and their power increases, the inevitability of this kind of control is one that should not be overlooked.