The fear mongering and propaganda around NN needs to end

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Unfortunately, the unhinged understanding of "net neutrality" has since won the day. And it has fueled average people's nightmares about what the future of the Internet holds—even though it looks a lot like what we've always enjoyed. (After all, the OIO regulations were only proposed in 2015.)

The core of these fears is a future where consumers are forced to purchase tiered package for Internet access of specific websites, or face slow service or even a complete blackout. Consider this image macro, which is popular on sites like Reddit and Twitter. The meme evokes a world where ISPs would be free to filter traffic through various "fast" and "slow" lanes that could be accessed by special fees.

Of course, we did not see ISPs engage in this kind of behavior in the pre-OIO history of the internet—which is to say, for the entire history of the internet. But ironically, the OIO actually creates incentives for ISPs to do just that.

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The FCC makes the papers sound one-sided, when they are not. One paper in the American Economic Review in 1987 showed that discriminatory pricing (by an upstream monopolist selling to downstream competitors) would often tend to be against large successful incumbents—in this case, against established edge providers—not struggling new entrants, which is the opposite of the pro-net neutrality narrative. Moreover, the Commission ignored another paper of mine in Information and Economic Policy in 2007 that concluded net neutrality would harm applications that did not require high speeds and was more likely to harm welfare than improve it.

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FCC data show that as of 2016, 97 percent of census blocks had more than one provider offering at least 10 Mbps download speeds. I think people confuse provision of an idealized service at an idealized price with the actual provision of service.

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