Twitter fights aren’t the only ones happening on the internet anymore, as net providers and web companies spar over escalating tensions surrounding net neutrality. While companies like Comcast and Spectrum fight to increase revenue by charging for faster speeds, others like Google and Netflix have launched public protests to counteract the move.

Google and Netflix are on the right side of history when it comes to raising awareness. After all, a world without net neutrality is just a drop in the bucket for their earnings. But for small businesses and web companies that don’t have the same star power and public influence, net neutrality isn’t just pinching coins, it means closing shop.

Kevin Camelo | Design Editor

The Federal Communications Commission first introduced net neutrality, which prohibits internet providers from slowing speeds on websites that don’t pay a premium, in 2015. Without net neutrality, big ticket companies could monopolize the digital sphere, creating fast lanes that will charge both web providers and consumers more money to access big-name servers including Google and Netflix. Fast lanes would favor access for lucrative companies and people with higher incomes and would also create an unlevel playing field for emerging media companies.

Michael Gursha, the inaugural entrepreneur-in-residence at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, argued that net neutrality ensures the constitutional rights and freedoms of smaller companies.

“Net neutrality allows for smaller media companies to have access to the same pipelines and resources as bigger media companies like Time Warner, Netflix and Conde Nast,” Gursha said. “Without that protection, media startups may have a harder time competing and get their content in front of the right consumers.”

Getting rid of net neutrality’s protections would just add another barrier to entry for small media startups that need the internet to turn a profit, including emerging tech companies that call Syracuse’s Tech Garden home. Yet former Verizon employee and current FCC chairman Ajit Pai argued that eliminating net neutrality will allow the free market of the internet to prosper without unnecessary government involvement.

Pai’s decision has major backing from internet service providers and web companies that can afford to outbid smaller companies and steal their business. Providers such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast have a combined market cap of nearly $600 billion, and Google, Facebook and Netflix roll in at $1.3 trillion.

Kevin Camelo | Design Editor

An absence of net neutrality would strengthen monopolistic structures like Time Warner, making threats to low-cost internet access more imminent. Spectrum — a subsidiary of Time Warner — is the largest internet provider in Syracuse and could charge users or content providers more to use big-name, high-download sites like Netflix if they want premium service.

Massive tech companies like Facebook and Google could easily afford a world without net neutrality, and it could help them cut off any rising competitors. But they’re still fighting to preserve net neutrality under the guise that they’re “speaking for their users.”

These tech giants could absorb a premium, but it would eat into their profits. And if they didn’t pay their share and let the costs roll over to everyday users, those who can’t afford higher internet bills could reject those sites entirely. It’s a lose-lose situation for Facebook and the people who use it.

It’s not like most of the biggest names in the web industry aren’t already eating up smaller companies — and they don’t need the Pai’s help to do it. Even today, most big names in the web industry can already buy up competitors and use ad power to devastate the music, movie and journalism industries. And since, per Wired, Google and Facebook reign as the two largest online ad sellers, they rely on small businesses’ web presence to profit in the first place.

While the enemy of your enemy is your friend, don’t be fooled into thinking Facebook, Google, Netflix and others are in support of net neutrality in defense of the greater good. Talk may be cheap, but money will make anyone listen.

Adam Friedman is a junior broadcast digital journalism and economics dual major. His column appears biweekly. He can be reached at arfri100@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @friedmanadam5.

Published on December 5, 2017 at 11:49 pm