The Case for Comprehensive Net Neutrality

One of the many unmistakable messages coming from voters after the Parkland massacre and the heroic protests that have followed is that Americans are tired of leaders putting politics ahead of the common good. Members of Congress would be wise to heed this canary in the coal mine.   

We see the same dynamic unfolding in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, with Americans now demanding to be protected online. While internet regulation does not, rightfully, stir the same passions as protecting our children, the unfolding debate over tech regulation illustrates the same dysfunction in our politics.

Part of the solution is comprehensive net neutrality, the idea that no internet provider or tech company should be permitted to discriminate against internet traffic in order to benefit some competitors, viewpoints, or ideas over others. This issue has been a political hot potato for decades, as federal regulators, companies, and successive administrations have jockeyed for position. Regulators have tried to shape policies to strengthen the open internet without harmful unintended consequences, such as driving away investment in new networks or undermining internet providers’ ability to manage their networks efficiently and securely.

But as the internet has become ever more central to our daily lives, net neutrality has emerged in recent years as a white-hot policy question in Washington. Both the Left and Right have come to agree on the need for clear and lasting rules ensuring openness. In the “fake news” era, the risk of big media platforms manipulating our access to data and information has become all too apparent. And the corresponding call for action on broad-based net neutrality has grown from a steady murmur to a deafening storm.

Will our representatives heed their constituents and put real legislation in motion? Or will we get yet another round of empty rhetoric and hide-the-ball tactics, with members taking credit for minor half measures and putting off hard policy decisions? 

It’s an open question. One camp in Congress, led by far Left activists, is pushing an incomplete solution that would use the “Congressional Review Act” to reinstate the Obama administration’s approach to net neutrality and ask Trump’s FCC to enforce it. They hail it as the only “pure” solution to net neutrality. But this actually a limited and ineffective shortcut.  

Using the CRA is a temporary measure because it leaves the issue in the fickle hands of this or any future administration, failing to make net neutrality the permanent law of the land. While administrative rules change from administration to administration; statues endure. The CRA approach thus fails to solve the problem by leaving the solution to the whims of the executive. 

It’s also an incomplete solution, since the Obama regulations restored by the CRA only apply to internet access providers. This leaves the giant platform monopolies, such as Google and Facebook, free to manipulate and prioritize the information and websites we see online — in the service of their bottom lines, rather than consumers’ best interests. We have seen with the Cambridge Analytica crisis the damage these platforms can do if left unchecked.  

In the wake of the Parkland shooting, for example, YouTube awarded its top “trending” spot to a conspiracy video claiming that one of the student activists was a paid “crisis actor” — an appalling distortion of public discourse and debate.  The Mueller investigation’s indictment of Russian bot farms and intelligence operatives exposes a similar need for meaningful oversight and a genuinely open and transparent internet environment. But the CRA solution takes a pass on all this. 

Congress has a better path available: a real net neutrality law that establishes strong, permanent, and comprehensive rules of the road for cyberspace that protects users from anticompetitive manipulation or prioritization of their data or other informational attacks. 

With both Left and Right agreeing on the need for such protections and lawmakers in both parties facing pressure to prove they can put the common good over politics, the moment is ripe for action on this issue. 

Americans are tired of both parties cravenly playing to the almighty “base,” while paying lip service to the peoples’ business. It’s time we ostracize the amped-up partisans who play to increasingly fringe views and instead demand that our representatives take the tough votes that will really make a difference in protecting Americans.

Patricia Ford is a Former Executive Vice President of the Service Employees International Union.