How Donald Trump could dismantle net neutrality and the rest of Obama’s Internet legacy

President-elect Donald Trump could eviscerate some of the most significant tech policies of the 21st century, all but erasing President Barack Obama's Internet agenda and undoing years of effort by lawmakers, tech companies and consumer advocates to limit the power of large, established corporations, analysts say. In particular danger are key initiatives of the Obama years, including network neutrality and a pivotal series of Internet privacy regulations that came along with it.

During the campaign, Trump vowed to “eliminate our most intrusive regulations” and “reform the entire regulatory code.” He has singled out net neutrality as a “top down power grab,” predicting it would allow the government to censor websites. Congressional Republicans have taken aim at net neutrality as well, setting the stage for a concerted effort by President-elect Trump and his House and Senate allies to undermine the policy. And because the government’s consumer privacy policies draw their power from net neutrality, they are likely to fall as well if conservatives successfully gut the rules. At first, President-elect Trump's FCC may simply decide not to enforce the rules. But soon they would take formal steps to strike the rules from the books, said an FCC official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak more freely. Trump is expected to appoint a Republican FCC chair in 2017 who could vote to roll back Wheeler's decisions with the support of the agency's two other conservatives, Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly. (Both declined to comment.) It is still unclear whom Trump may nominate as chair, and a Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment