Today you might be confronted with an unexpected icon on your favorite websites, that spinning wheel of frustration you see when a site just won't load. It's appearing all over the internet today because it is the official
Internet Slow Down day. It is intended to show the internet user what life could be like under Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal to allow internet service providers (ISPs) to charge a premium for better, faster delivery of web content, leaving those who can't or won't pay on the slow lane.
Major sites, like Reddit, Foursquare, Vimeo, Wordpress, and Boing Boing—and of course, Daily Kos—will be displaying the spinning wheel as a means of educating and engaging their users on net neutrality—the idea that all internet content should be treated equally, given the same high-speed lane to travel over. Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace are doing the same (here's where you can get your widget). These sites won't actually slow down, but show the wheel to demonstrate just how long it could take their pages to load.
This action is modeled on the massive internet black-out day of action in 2012 against the Stop Online Piracy Act, the last time this band of advocates, activists, and big internet companies joined forces. This time around, Google and Facebook—while supporting net neutrality—aren't participating in this action. That demonstrates how much more difficult this fight is—we're trying to influence the FCC, not elected members of Congress on this one. And for the large companies like Google and Facebook, net neutrality isn't as much an existential threat. They'll be able to get on the fast lane, after all.
The founders of those companies, though, should think twice about being ambivalent on this issue, and pulling the ladder of internet success up behind them. They—and their bank accounts—have only succeeded because they had the open and free internet to play on. Taking that away will do irreparable harm to the entire internet.
This is a very good day to remind the FCC of all that. If you haven't already provided your comments about net neutrality directly to the FCC, here's your chance to do so, in your own words. Take the example of these proactive Kossacks in San Francisco and take action. The final day to send comments to the FCC is September 15.