As FCC chairman Ajit Pai marches forward on his quest to permanently destroy net neutrality and hand the reins of the internet over large telecommunications companies at the public’s expense, he’s now using ridiculous and downright offensive analogies to bolster his already weak argument.
On Tuesday, Pai accused tech companies — most of whom are vehemently opposed to eliminating net neutrality — of being hypocrites because they support continuing the current neutral policy but “block or discriminate against content they don’t like,” especially if that content happens to be of a conservative political stripe.
As an example of his specious claim, Pai singled out Twitter, which he accused of a “double-standard when it comes to suspending or de-verifying conservative users’ accounts as opposed to those of liberal users.”
What Pai failed to disclose is that the so-called “conservative” users that Twitter blocked were neo-Nazis and white supremacists who were finally banned from the social media platform on November 16. As Think Progress notes:
“Among those accounts were people like Jason Kessler, who organized the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that left one counter-protester dead; neo-Nazi Richard Spencer; and the far-right founder of the English Defense League, Tommy Robinson. Twitter also permanently banned far-right troll Baked Alaska, who tried to return to the site using a new account.”
The elimination of net neutrality, ironically, is also opposed by fans of right-wing websites such as Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and the Blaze. Most commenters on those sites have slammed Pai’s move as “a heist and a hijacking” of the internet. The plan is also opposed by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who sent this tweet to President Trump:
Dear @realDonaldTrump: 'net neutrality' of some form is important. Your opponents control most internet companies. Without neutrality they can make your tweets load slowly, CNN load fast and infest everyone's phones with their ads. Careful.
— #FreeAssange! (tweets by campaign)⌛ (@JulianAssange) November 21, 2017
Tech companies, meanwhile, sent an open letter to the FCC Monday in which they argued:
“[The repeal] would put small and medium-sized businesses at a disadvantage and prevent innovative new ones from even getting off the ground. An internet without net neutrality protections would be the opposite of the open market, with a few powerful cable and phone companies picking winners and losers instead of consumers.”
Republicans love to say they’re in favor of letting the free market decide everything. If that’s true, why have they insisted on the licensing of radio and TV frequencies for decades? Their hypocrisy is showing.
Featured Image Via VOA News
