Digifesto

What do I think of net neutrality?

I think it’s bad for my personal self-interest. I am, economically, a part of the newer tech economy of software and data. I believe this economy benefits from net neutrality. I also am somebody who loves The Web as a consumer. I’ve grown up with it. It’s shaped my values.

From a broader perspective, I think ending net neutrality will revitalize U.S. telecom and give it leverage over the ‘tech giants’–Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon—that have been rewarded by net neutrality policies. Telecom is a platform, but it had been turned into a utility platform. Now it can be a full-featured market player. This gives it an opportunity for platform envelopment, moving into the markets of other companies and bundling them in with ISP services.

Since this will introduce competition into the market and other players are very well-established, this could actually be good for consumers because it breaks up an oligopoly in the services that are most user-facing. On the other hand, since ISPs are monopolists in most places, we could also expect Internet-based service experience quality to deteriorate in general.

What this might encourage is a proliferation of alternatives to cable ISPs, which would be interesting. Ending net neutrality creates a much larger design space in products that provision network access. Mobile companies are in this space already. So we could see this regulation as a move in favor of the cell phone companies, not just the ISPs. This too could draw surplus away the big four.

This probably means the end of “The Web”. But we’d already seen the end of “The Web” with the proliferation of apps as a replacement for Internet browsing. IoT provides yet another alternative to “The Web”. I loved the Web as a free, creative place where everyone could make their own website about their cat. It had a great moment. But it’s safe to say that it isn’t what it used to be. In fifteen years it may be that most people no longer visit web sites. They just use connected devices and apps. Ending net neutrality means that the connectivity necessary for these services can be bundled in with the service itself. In the long run, that should be good for consumers and even the possibility of market entry for new firms.

In the long run, I’m not sure “The Web” is that important. Maybe it was a beautiful disruptive moment that will never happen again. Or maybe, if there were many more kinds of alternatives, “The Web” would return to being the quirky, radically free and interesting thing it was before it got so mainstream. Remember when The Web was just The Well (which is still around), and only people who were really curious about it bothered to use it? I don’t, because that was well before my time. But it’s possible that the Internet in its browse-happy form will become something like that again.

I hadn’t really thought about net neutrality very much before, to be honest. Maybe there are some good rebuttals to this argument. I’d love to hear them! But for now, I think I’m willing to give the shuttering of net neutrality a shot.