Michael Coren

The net neutrality victory for the telecommunications industry may have just actually delivered them into a hell they’ve tried to avoid for decades: a balkanized regulatory landscape even more restrictive than the one they just escaped. In its repeal, the Federal Communications Commission preempted states from imposing their own net neutrality laws. “No dice,” the majority opinion responded. If the US government chooses to abdicate regulatory authority, the judges argued, it can’t simultaneously take that authority from states.

A Department of Justice spokesman said in a statement on Sept 5 that Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to convene a meeting with state attorneys over concerns tech companies like Facebook and Twitter are “hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free exchange of ideas on their platforms.” The Trump Administration is unlikely to prove specific charges, but that’s not the point, said Alex Abdo, a senior staff attorney at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute.

Network neutrality is dead. The rules governing today’s internet, known as the 2015 Open Internet Order, will be lifted any day now. It will mark the first time the US has gone without some form of net neutrality since the 1990s. What happens to net neutrality now? Despite the Federal Communications Commission giving internet providers free reign, immediate changes aren’t likely.

A consortium of public interest groups including Free Press report that at least 14 states have signed or introduced orders and bills seeking to enforce network neutrality, while seven states are considering them. Their first tactic has been to block Internet serivce providers wishing to do business with state governments. The governors of New York and Montana signed such executive orders this month blocking any ISPs that don’t meet net neutrality principles from publicly-funded contracts. Legislators in statehouses are drafting similar rules.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s strategy may be to use the repeal of network neutrality rules to force the hand of Congress. Those familiar with FCC deliberations say abdicating its net neutrality authority could pressure Democrats into cooperating with Republicans on passing a bill. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) has offered to hammer out net neutrality legislation with Democrats in the past. 

Lisbon-based telecommunications firm MEO has been rolling out packages that provide users with data plans limited to specific apps. Customers using apps outside the package will be charged more for data. “[That’s] a huge advantage for entrenched companies, but it totally ices out startups trying to get in front of people which stifles innovation,” wrote Rep Ro Khanna (D-CA). “This is what’s at stake and that’s why we have to save net neutrality.”

Resistance begins at home. For Silicon Valley, that means transforming an unprecedented protest movement against US President Donald Trump’s young presidency into something more than signs and slogans. To do so, software engineers and executives in the Valley are writing a set of civic values they hope will become the minimum standard by which companies are judged as a place people want to work.

“It’s not about workplace rights as much as what are some shared values related to government that we want our companies to endorse,” says Sam Altman, president of the Y Combinator seed fund, who sponsored a Tech Workers’ Values meeting to launch the process. The April 9 meeting, held in a swank startup office in San Francisco’s SOMA district, was off-the-record, but the results are being shared as a Google document among attendees. When ready, it will be circulated in the larger tech community. Paralleling pledges such as Never.Again, Altman plans additional meetings to agree on shared values broad enough to unite software engineers—a disparate, libertarian-minded crew—and specific enough to extract real action from major technology companies.

A Q&A with Rep Ro Khanna (D-CA).

Rep Ro Khanna (D-CA), a Yale law school graduate and former Department of Commerce official, ran his successful campaign for the US House of Representatives against incumbent Mike Honda on a quixotic appeal: deliver more tech jobs in Ohio, and everywhere across middle America. “I care about my district but we also have an obligation to the nation,” says Rep Khanna, 39, a Democrat who will represent California’s 17th district south of San Francisco. “My job in Congress is going to be to connect the tech leaders with my colleagues across the Midwest, across the South. How can we work together to make sure that you can participate in the global economy, in the innovation economy.” Rep Khanna, boasting endorsements from Bay Area liberal leaders, as well as executives such as Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, says he wants to rebuild the Democrats’ message that the party can deliver jobs, a message that Donald Trump used to gain the White House.