If Trump Fans Love Freedom, They Should Love Net Neutrality

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Imagine a world where Comcast slows video streaming from Fox News’s website to a pixelated crawl while boosting Rachel Maddow—who happens to star on Comcast-owned MSNBC. What if Verizon, which owns the liberal Huffington Post, charged you more to visit right-wing Breitbart. Or maybe Google Fiber bans access to the alt-right social network Gab.

Today, it’s illegal to impose tiered pricing on any internet content, thanks to the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality rules. But if Republicans have their way, those rules will soon disappear, leaving companies like Comcast and Verizon free to block, throttle, or charge a toll to access your favorite websites and apps. Republicans may find trying to unwind net neutrality less popular than they think. Americans tend to see internet access as an extension of their First Amendment freedoms—they can say and see what they want online. If they have to start paying more for one kind of political speech over another, they likely won’t stay neutral at all.


If Trump Fans Love Freedom, They Should Love Net Neutrality