 Wait, we're making another Net Neutrality video? Oh, okay. So, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is on a huge crusade to repeal Net Neutrality, the very popular law that says your internet provider can't slow down your connection or give special treatment to websites they own, like Verizon's Go 90, which is a pile of garbage, but everywhere. Ajit Pai likes to say things like, the internet was not broken in 2015 when he argues for the repeal of Net Neutrality. I think that's hilarious because in 2014, I literally wrote an essay called The Internet is Fucked. In 2014, Verizon was blocking apps on phones, Comcast was excusing its own apps from data caps, and AT&T was asking startups to pay for sponsored data for better access to customers. This was a mess, and the FCC didn't seem to have the juice to stop it until President Obama got involved, and the FCC finally passed Net Neutrality rules in 2013. And we all cheered. But now Pai wants to repeal Net Neutrality, and all of the ol' arguments are back. There's a huge day of action happening online. Google and Facebook and Amazon and Netflix are all doing stuff on their websites, but look, you know what? We don't have to do all of the exhausting activist stuff. We can just say true, obvious things about the state of internet access in America, and then we can demand to know why the government seems determined to make it worse. It's not really about policy. It's just about whether or not you are getting what you paid for. Are you ready? Number one, the broadband market in America is not competitive. 51% of Americans only have one broadband provider. 38% of Americans only have two choices of broadband service. Add it up, that means 89% of Americans have at most two choices of ISP, and one is often much slower than the other. That is terrible. America is not in the top ten when it comes to average speeds. America is not in the top ten when it comes to lowest prices. And you can argue that the United States is huge, because it is, but the problems are the same whether you live in New York City or the middle of Montana. And when there is competition in America, even just a little bit, things get better. So there's only four national wireless carriers, but T-Mobile is furiously competitive with AT&T and Verizon, and that means prices have gotten lower and unlimited plans are being offered again. But mobile isn't a replacement for wired broadband. It's more expensive, it's less reliable, and you can't run your smart home and stream Netflix and 4K off of fucking MiFi. We need wired broadband competition, and we don't have it. Second, broadband competition is dominated by a tiny handful of corporations. So this is Ajit Pai's big argument. He says that net neutrality regulation holds back internet investment. And he has to say it, because the government isn't allowed to just change policy on a whim. He has to offer substantial evidence that market conditions have changed, and the number he's banking on to provide that evidence is something called capital expenditure, which is the amount of money the carriers spend to invest in the networks. But if you really look at it, what Ajit Pai is saying is that AT&T should dictate U.S. internet policy. Here's a chart from USA Today. The total broadband investment from 12 largest carriers was down $3.6 billion from 2014 to 2016, but $3.4 billion of that drop was AT&T all by itself. Why did AT&T go down? Because the company had just spent a ton of money on network investments, and they had told investors it was going to slow down for a bit. Let's not forget that most people in 2016 thought Hillary Clinton was going to win the election and net neutrality would stay on the books. What were all those big companies saying to their investors in the SEC during that time? In December of 2015, AT&T's CEO told investors the company would deploy more fiber in 2016 than it did in 2015, and that Title II would not impede its future business plans. In December 2016, Comcast's chief financial officer said to investors that any concerns it had about net neutrality were based only on the fear of what Title II could have meant instead of what it actually meant. By the way, disclosure, Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, which owns The Verge. Hi, Comcast, always good to see you. Look, that same month, Charter's CEO told investors, Title II, it didn't really hurt us, it hasn't hurt us. It's illegal for these companies to lie to their investors in the SEC, so you have to assume they're telling the truth. Ajit Pai is saying that if you let ISPs squeeze more money out of their existing networks by charging for fast lanes and blocking services that don't pay up, they will dump that money back into expansion. But remember, there's no competition, so it's way more likely they're just gonna take the profits and walk. Right now, net neutrality protects against these monopolies screwing you because you don't have any choices. Pai wants to take away that protection and hand these companies more profits without spelling out exactly how his plan will increase competition. It's definitely like that scene from Ferris Bueller, only this time it's voodoo broadband policy instead of voodoo economics. Third, the more successful a company becomes, the less it cares about net neutrality. So net neutrality is important for two big reasons. One, it protects you from monopoly ISPs. But second, and more importantly, it makes the market for apps and services on the internet fair so the best products have the opportunity to win. In 2014, Netflix really, really cared about net neutrality. They were super loud, they had a bunch of lobbyists, they made statements, they went to war against Comcast, the worst. But now Netflix is huge, and as they've gotten bigger, they've backed off. We made an entire chart. As Netflix subscriber count grew over the years, their statements on net neutrality got more and more lukewarm. And then at the Code conference in May, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings just up and said, We think net neutrality is incredibly important. It's not narrowly important to us because we're big enough to get the deals we want. The pattern is clear. Net neutrality is great for the little guy and not really that important to big companies. Doesn't that seem like a rule we need? Okay, so here's four. It looks like FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has already made up his mind. Like I said, he can't just change net neutrality on a whim. He has to have evidence. But it's pretty clear he's going to ignore the evidence he doesn't like. So the process is open right now, and you can go to the FCC's website and leave a comment. And millions of people support net neutrality, and mostly only big ISPs want it gone, so the comments are pretty much in favor of net neutrality. But Pai keeps saying things like, What matters most are the quality of the comments, not the quantity. Yeah, it turns out that corporate lawyers for ISPs leave higher quality comments than regular people who just don't want to get screwed on their bills. When Pai and his team say things like, We have to make a decision based on the facts, and then also say things like, Make no mistake about it, this is a fight that we intend to wage, and this is a fight that we are going to win, it's pretty clear dude has already decided what the facts are, and this process is a huge sham. And that's just kind of bullshit. Look, this fight is still on, and the truth is still the truth. We live in an uncompetitive broadband market. That market is dominated by a handful of giant corporations. The big internet companies that might challenge them are doing it half-heartedly, and Ajit Pai seems determined to offer up a massive corporate handout without listening to everyday Americans. But you can still participate, and you should. You can go leave a comment at the FCC website, and you can call your representatives and ask exactly how Pai thinks his plan will work to make our prices lower and our speeds higher. And you can demand that our government's policies reflect the concerns of actual Americans. Because I gotta tell you, right now, it really sounds like the internet is fucked all over again. Oh, and Sprint just found enough money to buy 33% of Tidal, give it an additional $75 million in marketing money, and buy a million copies of Jay-Z's 444, which guaranteed it would go platinum. That doesn't seem like the smartest use of money if your network sucks, does it?