Net Neutrality

Our discussion of the internet in class made me think of the net neutrality rule and how if Congress decides to abolish the bill, then the "rich get richer" phenomenon will be even more divisive. For anyone who doesn't already know, Net Neutrality is the idea that unlike cable television where people pay to have access to different kinds of channels. Currently, one pays to have access to the internet, and there is not an ability for large companies with lots of money to make their website more prominent, and one does not have to ask for permission to create something on it. In other words, the internet should not be able to give preferential treatment to people who will pay more money to get their websites to pop up first in search engines and to have their content load faster than other websites. As we discussed in class (and in the article), the current system shows that there are few websites that are very popular and many websites that get little to no traffic.

However, if net neutrality were to be taken away, the few prominent websites would become fewer and change to be websites that are sponsored by companies or people with a lot of money. The divide between the "rich" websites and those that are not paid for would become increasingly huge. Like fortune 500 companies versus little businesses, people would probably compete with money to get their site into the top rankings, further enlarging the disparity. The myth of site equality would be no more, and the study of social networks via the internet would mean much less because it would be less of a natural selection process.