Yesterday was the much-ballyhooed “Net Neutrality Day of Action,” an online protest day on which thousands of websites, people and services called attention to the impending revocation of net neutrality rules by the FCC. And the turnout, it turns out, was quite impressive.
It would be quite difficult to use the web at all yesterday without running into at least a handful of pop-ups, site takeovers and funny messages all aimed at getting people to make their voices heard on the net neutrality debate.
Tumblr, Twitter, Netflix, Yelp, Kickstarter, Mozilla, Vimeo, Spotify, Airbnb, Amazon, Reddit, Etsy, YouTube, Twitch and many, many more participated; we gathered a few interesting ones into a gallery.
The broad exposure and ease of access to feedback mechanisms (some sites let you call your representative with a keypress, others submitted comments to the FCC on your behalf) made for a pretty tremendous volume of reactions.
Per Demand Progress, the Day of Action featured:
- 2 million comments to the FCC (to be submitted over the next few days so as not to overwhelm its servers; and no convenient going down this time)
- 5 million emails to Congress (similarly spaced out)
- 124,000 phone calls to representatives
- 20 Congressional offices visited in person by protestors, among other meatspace actions
- Dozens of high-profile celebrities and politicians speaking out on the issue
The battle is far from won, of course, and as FCC representatives have said, the Commission isn’t a democracy and its members have no obligation to accommodate public demand — however overwhelming.
Yesterday was a very strong show of support for the strong net neutrality rules we have in place. If you’d like to learn more about why they exist and the arguments against them, check out some of TechCrunch’s recent articles on the topic:
- Commission Impossible: How and why the FCC created net neutrality
- The FCC’s case against net neutrality rests on a deliberate misrepresentation of how the internet works
- These are the arguments against net neutrality — and why they’re wrong
- FCC commissioner: ‘Net neutrality is doomed if we’re silent’
- How to comment on the FCC’s proposal to revoke net neutrality
- The FCC officially proposes to end net neutrality rules (but it’s not over yet)