Net Neutrality is a lie. The name of Net Neutrality "sounds good" to you, me, or any other average person. But, hey, so does 'The Patriot Act' and the 'National Defense Authorization Act'. Didn't mean such things were not also severely unconstitutional, sliced into citizens' personal privacy, and helped provide a platform for the growth of central government to the absurd proportions we have today.

It's preferable to have less regulation and smaller government.

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oh nose, our free internet now costs money to access, it's gonna be $100 to access the entirety of discord, and I need to pick a side!!!

^The level of hysteria I've seen today.

Seriously. There's another level to go before anything substantial happens (congress, for what diddles it's worth), and then some time before it goes into effect, and then the question of how far ISPs would go before customers get pissed off.

While I don't have much faith in customer intelligence as a collective whole, the opinions of the people would have a much more pronounced effect on an ISP than the FCC. The FCC doesn't give a shit, is managed by a dumbass who fails to pose any real cause for himself, and will survive regardless of what you want. An ISP that pisses off customers by charging for Google is an ISP that loses business very quickly, especially if competition/alternative systems pop up that stand in direct contrast to piecemeal internet.

Looks like America is on the verge of an internet apocalypse. It has been fun memeing with you guys.

Exactly as @Dark Wind went on with, that "net neutrality" is a carefully packaged lie that was fed to the public with the intent of having them buy into something they knew nothing about. A few short, important details about are that the reason the Federal Communications Commission had to reclassify it as the infamous Title II was because of activist judges more or less saying that somehow they did not have an argument in court despite being the ones to write operational guidelines on it and be one of several avenues to start up a lawsuit for violations. In essence, the only reason it truly needed to be reclassified is because users lost protection, rather than gained any, under the ideal of "net neutrality".

The new system more or less enforces a standard on the providers that they have no real recourse for. If they conspire against consumers, say they all agree to start charging for services, they can be taken down by the Federal Trade Commission and broken up as a monopoly - which is already something on the table that is on the book to be done; breaking the giants like Google, Facebook, Comcast, and their fellow ilk. If a provider begins charging for varied services, as is their right, users can migrate to other providers and effectively weed out the competition who made such a foolish motion as others noted here.

Continued, I learned something novel today that more or less allowed the federal government, under the old "net neutrality" rules, to silence anyone who the Department of State determined to be a propaganda outlet. Apparently it was hidden away in the budget for 2017 and oddly its provision only lasts for eight years. Why is this important? Well, because with no trial or judgment, the government could at whim take away your internet usage directly through your provider because of Title II if they so much as thought you were an opponent. So much for freedom of speech there, am I wrong? Another unsettling fact was that the way they pursued "net neutrality" was through a set of obsolete rules and obscure rules. Why all the fuss when they could have just done so with a new provision? A bit odd.

The downside to this is that while we have gone back to pre-2015 rules, people are still not going to properly know how to pursue or even uncover unlawful actions by providers and it will always take quite some time to prosecute them.

I don't like entering political discussions or making comments on them, as I'm extremely naive and I don't fully understand how yesterday will affect my future. My biggest fear is that further controlling and monetizing the internet might extremely hurt a powerful creative outlet for storytellers and artists. I think it is too early for us to see how this will affect that, but if it does, I think it will be something crucial that we have to fight against, even if the vote has already passed.

@Scott Silverado

You do realize, regardless of net neutrality or not, so before and now, that providers and websites were legally entitled to retain their "editorial rights" against your usage, correct? In neither case has that changed. The reason providers do not do this, at least not normally, is because they would a great amount of customers, thus consumer confidence, and market viability. There is a reason that censorship you are actually seeing, such as infamously with Google, Facebook, Twitter and their ilk, is because they legally can do it; morally they shouldn't be, but laws do not really dabble in morality as the internet goes.

For the arguments about having only one provider, this goes back to the revocation of Title II protection and transfer of primary agency to the Federal Trade Commission. It is a motion toward consumer protection, meaning if you start suffering abuse and mistreatment by a provider who is the only provider, one who is not engaging in fair play, you can - assuming you can prove it, which is the difficult component - press for a civil suit, in addition to those backed by the Federal Trade Commission. Another added benefit of this change is that the Federal Trade Commission has a unique power they intend to use and have openly spoken about; their antimonopoly powers. A provider is too big and too controlling, abusing customers who have no choice? Not for long.

Going into the distant future, the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission have admitted their intent is to begin breaking down the major internet superpowers, both sites and providers. What this means or how they intend to do it they have not yet discussed in public to my awareness.

The important thing to remember in all of this is the following:

• The "net neutrality" rules we all know went back to pre-2015 standards.
• The Federal Trade Commission, no longer the Federal Communications Commission, is the new go-to.
• The Title II classification of the internet has been removed.

While I understand the argument for both sides, I would rather not have ISPs pick and choose which sites I can access or pick the speed at which I can access it. Yes, if they were smart, they wouldn't charge for sites like Google, but if your current ISP is the only one you can get in your location, you're kind of S.O.L. for choices.

Consider this: did you vote for Ajit Pai, or for his opponent?

The answer of course is "neither." The FCC is an unelected, poorly-regulated, non-representative administrative entity. If you're in the camp -- and full disclosure, I'm not -- but if you're in the camp that thinks Net Neutrality's death is the end of the world, well, you've kinda proven EXACTLY why the FCC should have nothing at all to do with it. You protested, you posted, maybe you even called your senator -- and it all meant precisely nothing, because you have no say whatsoever in what the FCC does. They do not answer to you, and they will never answer to you.

Net Neutrality placed more power in the hands of the FCC. You've seen what happens now, when the FCC wants to do something you don't like. The lesson here is, you really didn't want them to have that power in the first place, regardless of your thoughts on the hypothetical issue Net Neutrality was intended to address.