Help, John Oliver: How the FCC Is Trying to Trick Us About Net Neutrality

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has a pretty savvy publicity team. The only problem? It isn’t exactly telling you the truth.

Net neutrality is an Obama-era policy designed to ensure that everyone has pretty much the same access to the internet — and that no company can pull strings to gain advantage over its competitors. The FCC points to public comments to suggest there is broad support for its plan to lift net neutrality restrictions — creating an unfettered free market in which providers could set whatever speeds they like — perhaps giving preferential treatment to companies that pay for it. But a closer look reveals the FCC’s plan is meeting stiff opposition by the same sectors cited by the FCC — the public and Silicon Valley.

Matthew Berry, chief of staff to Chairman Pai, recently sent out a series of tweets about broad support for Pai’s proposed “Restoring Internet Freedom” plan, which would dump net neutrality rules and allow ISPs like Comcast and AT&T to choke off traffic for some smaller websites in favor of large business partners. On May 11, Berry tweeted, “New @MorningConsult poll: 78% of Americans favor either light-touch Internet regulation or no regulation at all.” But Berry was a little selective in his choices about what elements of the poll to cite in his tweets. Though he didn’t say so, the poll also reveals that most of the people questioned lacked knowledge about “regulating internet access as a utility” – the legal underpinning of net neutrality. Sixty-four percent said they had knew “not much” or “nothing at all” about net neutrality. Once pollsters informed the voters that net neutrality “is a set of rules which say Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Time Warner [now Spectrum], AT&T and Verizon cannot block, throttle, or prioritize certain content on the Internet,” nearly two thirds of the voters – 61 percent – said they “strongly support (24 percent) or “somewhat support” (37 percent) net neutrality.