No More Net Neutrality?

As many may know, net neutrality protections were repealed on December 14th, because the FCC's Republican majority approved chairman Ajit Pai's plan.  To learn more about this subject, I looked for articles and eventually ended up on the website: savetheinternet.com.  Although the name suggested that the article was going to be strongly opinionated, I decided that I would read it anyway and see what I thought about the issue and the stance that the people running this website were taking.  What immediately caught my attention were letters in bold font that said: "What will happen to the internet now?".  I began reading, because I wanted to know the things that I should be expecting to see since I'm only a couple of years away from being an adult.  In my opinion, it is important to be aware of the world that you are about to enter as an individual without the constant help of your parents.  The paragraph stated that companies like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast, will now be able to control the speed of internet service that you get when you visit certain websites.  The article suggested the fact that these companies might limit access to the websites of their rivals and to websites that include political stances that the companies might not agree with.  In my opinion, these companies restricting your access to websites that might cause you to stop giving them money doesn't sound too crazy.  Ultimately, they're trying to stop their customers from knowing about plans that may be better that are offered by other companies.  Although they already try to do this with advertisements, repealing net neutrality just gave them a more direct method to keep a steady consumer base.  However, the writers of the article knew that simply stating the facts wouldn't be enough to convince the readers that their opinion is the right one.  They immediately went on to talk about how net neutrality will particularly "devastate" minority groups of people and religion.  Words like "devastate" immediately make the consequences that the website is listing sound so much bigger than they might actually be.  The inclusion of "facts" that the repealing of net neutrality will specifically target minority groups immediately makes the issue personal to minorities, making the issue more important to them.  The article suggests that without net neutrality, the voices of minorities will be silenced and their opinions will no longer be accessible to large groups of people.  The article also goes on to say that without net neutrality small businesses will also be negatively affected.  The article points out that people starting a business or who already have one, depend on net neutrality to advertise their products/services and to reach out to potential customers.  However, the article says that without net neutrality, large companies will "change the game" and make the playing field uneven, giving the advantage to large corporations.  "Without Net Neutrality, the next Google or Facebook will never get off the ground.".  This article makes the reader feel like repealing net neutrality was a bad decision that will negatively affect small businesses and minority groups, however, if I was to look at a website that supported repealing net neutrality, I would find reasons of equal strength that make net neutrality sound bad.