A newly-released survey from the non-partisan Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates that Americans are using the internet more than ever before to get diverse sources of information to make political decisions.
The article on Wired notes, "The survey found that the internet is becoming an increasing part of the norm of political participation -- people are using it to read the news, share their views, or to participate in some other process to get others to take political action. "
But how would this be impacted by the loss of net neutrality?
Without net neutrality, the big telecom companies would charge a premium for the "fast lane" of the internet and the rest of us would be on the slow lane. If you could afford it, you would be able to get your message out, whether you were a candidate or a person with an opinion. but if you weren't wealthy, the information you would be offering would come up more slowly. That would mean it would slip back on any search engine's rankings. and that means fewer people could know about it.
Without net neutrality, the viewpoints of the already rich and powerful would have priority over those not rich and powerful.
How is that good for our democracy?
This new report by Pew shows that people want to use and ARE using the internet to be informed participants in our democracy. They use it to get unfiltered information, diverse viewpoints, and deeper analysis they can't find in the mainstream news.
The loss of net neutrality would mean a loss for our democracy.
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