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Today, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on and likely pass a policy called (put your tongue in your cheek here) “Restoring Internet Freedom.” That policy will repeal the Open Internet Order, a 2015 policy that preserved net neutrality, the principle that your internet-service provider should not be able to play favorites by slowing down (or, worse, charging for) access to certain sites and services. The new policy is short-sighted and illogical, and nearly every major internet company (that isn’t an ISP), along with a large selection of loud and angry internet users, have opposed it.
But maybe they just haven’t watched this video yet.
Last night, Pai appeared in a little piece of viral propaganda made by the Daily Caller’s Benny Johnson, who holds the world record for “number of times fired from bottom-feeding right-wing blogs.” The video presents “7 Things You Can Still Do on the Internet After Net Neutrality,” a sentiment not unlike “7 Things You Can Still Do After You’ve Been Tied to a Chair in a Basement Somewhere.”
Among the things you can apparently still do: Instagram your food (so long as your ISP doesn’t throttle Instagram); binge-watch your favorite shows, like Game of Thrones (not necessarily a given if AT&T merges with HBO owner Time Warner!); and drive memes into the ground (fair!).
But the most compelling argument in the video, as Gizmodo highlights, is the appearance of Martina Markota, a Daily Caller reporter who produced a lengthy video promoting the “Pizzagate” conspiracy. (Pizzagate operates on the theory that prominent liberal political operatives are running a child sex ring out of a D.C.-area pizza shop, and last winter a man brought a gun into the business to “investigate.”) But don’t take our word for it!
This is how the open internet dies: a desperate-for-approval telecom lawyer dancing next to an opportunistic conspiracy theorist in an effort to seem hip. It was fun while it lasted, I guess.