Here’s to free, equal and open

It was just a regular day in which I decided to check my Twitter. It was bombarded with the one topic: net neutrality. The majority of the Tweets were in favor of net neutrality and agreed that it should remain.

I didn’t really care for the topic until this Tweet captured my attention: “Wow I pay bills and now I will have to pay to rant about it on Twitter? What a joke!” It engendered my curiosity and once I researched the topic, I became angry.

The internet is a beautiful thing with an abundance of information on any topic and used by many people today. Now that net neutrality has been repealed, it will affect many consumers, including myself. This decision will impact social media because it will start a competition between companies like Twitter and Instagram for the fastest speed available.

Since every company will be competing to have the highest speed they will be paying more money to ISPs which would definitely result in us paying to use social media sooner or later. Social media, for some, has become the only way in which people can contact their loved ones who live far away. It has also become a way for people to advertise their business, or show their skills.

For example, an aspiring photographer can commence a photography page on Instagram in order to gain a much wider audience. This becomes beneficial for the people because it gives anyone the opportunity to do what they want and accomplish what seems to be an impossible dream. Without net neutrality, the United States, a country known as a country filled with opportunities, becomes stagnant and limits the creativity of its people.

No one should be able to control what I see and how I see it. Today, YouTube is very popular amongst teenagers and it has even become a job for others. I’d hate to have to wait for a video to load for hours just because YouTube didn’t pay for faster speed, or to find out that in order to compete with other providers, they had to charge the consumer for what they are watching in order to be able to pay for that faster speed. I don’t want to pay for something that’s on the internet when I’ve never had too.  

Net neutrality is fair because every company gets the same amount of speed and consumers are able to enjoy that website or media for free. With it, the internet will remain a service that is free, equal and open. Now it has been repealed, I fear that individuals will have to start paying sooner or later.