User:Achatty/sandbox

(This section would go under the heading "Rollback of Obama-Era Rules" which is under "Net Neutrality and the Trump Administration"

Public Opinion/Pop Culture
In June of 2014, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver created a 13 minute segment about Net Neutrality. The piece, which as of February 2020 has nearly 15 million views on Youtube, garnered incredible attention. In the segment, Oliver describes Net Neutrality as "all data has to be equal, no matter who creates it". The piece focuses on the 2014 Priority Lane proposal, which would have allowed larger ISPs such as Comcast and Verizon to create a "fast-lane" for their users, effectively shutting out smaller ISPs from having high-speed broadband. He cites an example where Comcast slowed their customers internet access to Netflix in 2013 when the two companies were negotiating, saying that this example shows that this proposed priority lane would unfairly favor huge cable companies. The comedian also cites President Obama's friendliness with top executives of the cable industry as proof that he is being influenced to make a poor decision. He ends the piece by asking viewers to go to the FCC website and comment to show their opposition to this proposal. In response, the FCC website was flooded with over 45,000 comments initially and then 300,000 comments in the following days causing the FCC website to crash.

In May of 2017, Net Neutrality was once again in the news. President Trump had nominated Ajit Pai as chairman of the FCC and Pai was looking to completely rollback all of the regulations meant to secure net neutrality. Oliver ran another segment, this one was nearly 20 minutes, and it focused on Pai and his attitude on net neutrality. Oliver mocked Pai's lackadaisical attitude and berated him for claiming that there was no proof that ISPs would take advantage of a priority lane. After his piece, the FCC website was flooded with 200,000 comments and Pai faced heavy backlash online. Support for net neutrality hiked with polls stating that there was 83% support for net neutrality, across party lines. However, Pai and the FCC still rolled back all Obama-era regulations.

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