Lana Del Rey once said, “It takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it, to know what true freedom is,” in her song “Ride.” In November 2017, the world was shocked when the media released that Congress would be deciding on repealing net neutrality. Net neutrality was a foreign term to most Americans until now. In 2017, it became the huge public policy issue it is today. Net neutrality “…ensures that you, not a corporate monopoly, choose how you access and use the Internet. It protects your ability to access and send any lawful information on the Internet. It prevents Internet Service Providers, such as cable and telephone companies, from preferring certain content, applications, or services over others.”

As of December 14, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission voted for regulating businesses that connect consumers to the internet which grants broadband expansion to companies which ultimately gives them the power to completely change Americans’ internet experiences, hence repealing net neutrality. Net neutrality should be reestablished because we need to be able to continue with our online freedoms, or the internet (as we know it) will vanish.

It would be difficult to imagine our lives without an open internet. The internet allows us to do so many great things. It allows us to research, shop, write letters, network with friends/family, find jobs, watch TV, and the list continues. Imagine this; you had a research project where you research panda bears and their history. You go to your search engine and type in “panda bears” and it takes 25 minutes to load. However, you type in “Netflix” and it immediately loads. This is absolutely terrible because it shows that FCC commissioners Ajit Pai, Michael O’Rielly and Brendan Carronly only care about profit, rather than people actually learning and researching what would benefit them as human beings and our world. Rather than binge-watching “The Office” on Netflix.

Furthermore, this current decision also allows the FCC and Internet Service Providers to censor content that they either disagree with or just simply do not like. For example, if there was a video posted on YouTube by someone who lists reasons why they did not like Donald Trump, hinder/block access to it, even if there was nothing exceptionally derogatory towards him in the video. Also, if there was a website that was displaying content that the FCC did not like, they could throttle the broadband and make it slower. This is going against the first amendment of the Constitution, freedom of speech. This completely knocks down pride and ownership in our opinions and beliefs. Our opinions would eventually become controlled by what the big companies want us to know, compared to what average people want other people to know.

As expected, people all over the nation are calling, emailing, writing, and protesting the FCC and Congress for this rash decision. The fight to overturn this decision is not over. If enough people in the United States contact Congress and the FCC, this decision could be overturned with a "Congressional Review Act" vote, the CRA vote is “…established expedited (or “fast track”) procedures by which Congress may disapprove a broad range of regulatory rules issued by federal agencies by enacting a joint resolution of disapproval." Unless Americans want their information being censored and throttled, I suggest that we all come together and fight for our online freedom.