If there is one thing the last Congress agreed on, it’s that the big-tech platforms are not neutral. In hearing after hearing, Senators and Representatives of both parties accused the platforms of bias, blocking of legal but disliked communications, political manipulation including manipulation of elections, massive privacy violations, and lack of adequate data security.
As the new Congress addresses the issue of net neutrality, it has the opportunity to tackle big-tech’s abuses and ensure that Americans are protected throughout the Internet, at the edge as well as the core, from big-tech as well as Internet service providers (ISPs).
A consumer who sends an email wants it to reach its ultimate destination, and when that fails, finds no comfort in knowing that the ISP transmitted it but the email-host blocked it. A couple who tries to Facetime or Skype is just as frustrated if Apple or Microsoft blocks the stream as if an ISP blocks it. A videographer who is blocked by YouTube unless she accepts Google’s revenue-sharing terms is in the same position as one who has to pay an ISP for paid prioritization. A small business whose website is buried deep in a search-engine’s results loses customers just as it would if an ISP throttled access to its website. The millions of Americans whose privacy or data-security has been violated by Facebook and other big-tech platforms are just as harmed as they would have been had an ISP performed that violation.
If Congress acts on net neutrality at all, it will only do so once and will not revisit the issue for many years, so it must get the legislation right. Some would like to enshrine the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) 2015 Open Internet Order in legislation even though that order addressed none of big-tech’s violations. Former FCC-Chairman Wheeler intentionally limited the scope of the order’s jurisdiction to ISPs, the providers of the broadband over which Internet communication flows, and explicitly excluded the big-tech platforms from the FCC’s jurisdiction and the order’s obligations. In other words, the FCC’s 2015 order only ensured openness part-way through the Internet, an approach that is useless to the consumer if the rest of the path is blocked, throttled, or otherwise disrupted or made unsafe.
Given the recent revelations of big-tech violations, there can be no excuse for Congress to take Wheeler’s approach. It would just give big-tech another free pass to block, throttle, manipulate and violate American consumers and their privacy. Whatever protections Congress decides to include in its net neutrality legislation must apply to big-tech platforms as well as to ISPs.
When Americans communicate over the Internet, they deserve to know that their messages will reach their destinations safely and without interference at any point in the transmission. Americans deserve legislation that delivers more than a half-open, half-safe Internet. Americans deserve a truly and fully open and safe Internet.
Anna-Maria Kovacs, Ph.D., CFA, is a Visiting Senior Policy Scholar at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. She has covered the communications industry for more than three decades as a financial analyst and consultant.