
I have a ton of requests that have come my way for me to share my complete take on “net neutrality.” This is because the Federal Communications Commission is having a vote this December 14 about it. Many people have done a fine job sharing the term around while saying it is under assault and the fate of the Internet is at stake. Significantly fewer people actually understand what is really going on. Since I'm widely seen as an intelligent thought leader on these kinds of issues, people look to me to know the truth and I've sort of been avoiding writing an article on net neutrality for years, including ignoring the issue on this site when it came to prominence in 2015.
Why? It's extremely complicated, and to properly understand net neutrality, you need to know the history of the Internet and the technical details of how it works. I am going to do just that, and then give you my analysis on the net neutrality issue at hand, the scare-tactics people use, and why those scare tactics are effective. In the process of doing that, I will apply some much-needed CRITICAL THINKING to the discussion, which is sorely lacking right now.
If I am factually incorrect on anything I am writing in this article, please let me know in the comments section. I will reward you for correcting me for misstatements in this article, and almost every other article on this site, through KoopaTV's Corrections Corner feature. (More on that in the italicised footer at the bottom of this article.)
With that said, I will start my complete primer. Hover your mouse over each heading to figure out the url anchor, so you can hyperlink to specific article sections if you desire. Also, check out the comments section, since that has pretty good discussion and elaboration of some points from this article. This article has been updated as of December 14.