If you, like me, are one of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who has recently asked the Federal Communications Commission to support an open internet, congratulations: you may actually have made a difference. So many people posted pre-deadline responses on Tuesday about how the regulator will oversee the future of the internet that its public-comment filing page nearly crashed, prompting an extension until this Friday night.

The outpouring to support what's generally called "network neutrality" has taken the form of letters and official filings to the FCC website, as well as more public campaigns in recent months. It's been gratifying to watch, but don't get your hopes up: the FCC chairman, former cable and wireless industry lobbyist Tom Wheeler, floated the idea of internet "fast lanes" earlier this year – and he'll probably to turn the web into a somewhat enhanced form of cable TV anyway.

Officially, the FCC says it will read and reply to you by September, then make an official ruling on whether all web traffic should be treated equally. That decision, probably later this year, will have an enormous impact on our digital futures, because an internet controlled by huge and unaccountable corporations is anathema to digital innovation and free speech itself.

What should we be doing in this interim, and into the future? We need to keep up the pressure, because you can be sure that Big Telecom – which has patience, massive amounts of money and deep ties with lawmakers and regulators – will be doing precisely that.

You can count on the big carriers – the Comcasts and the Verizons – to churn up a propaganda storm in coming months, supplementing their mega-million-dollar lobbying campaign in Washington. There will be the usual statements, which often turn out to be misleading or outright false, from official spokespeople. But watch out for the less obvious stuff – the opinion laundering via the telecoms' legion of front groups and other allies, many of whom are being paid for their help. Those allies will range from unions to think tanks to academics to advocacy organizations that, at first glance, have no reason to be taking a stand on something as basic as internet traffic. And the telecoms will no doubt hope that the journalists who quote these people won't check to see if that's what's going on.

There will, of course, be some of this on the pro-net neutrality side. I'm no fan of hidden agendas, even when I agree with them, but I'm confident that the people who want an open Internet have every reason, unlike those who want corporate control, to stand behind their own words on this issue.

This is an election year. If you care about the freedom of information, you should grill the people who are running for office where you live – and vote and donate your time and money accordingly.

If they're running for local office, get them on the record in support of publicly financed local broadband networks. If they're running for state office, get them on the record for blocking or repealing laws that would prohibit such publicly funded networks and other competition. If they want to go to Congress, get them on the record for net neutrality, expanded unlicensed wireless spectrum, stronger antitrust regulation of the ISPs, and federal pre-emption of laws blocking local competition.

Net neutrality is so important to me that I might well vote for someone whose positions on many other issues were counter to my own, as long as he or she persuaded me of a commitment to an open internet.

I'm skeptical that the right policy will prevail whenever massively funded and politically connected interests want something. I'm doubly skeptical in this case given Wheeler's background: Occam's Razor tells you President Obama appointed a telecom insider who lobbied for the industry to do that industry's bidding.

Yet once in a while, bad policies – even ones where the outcome seems preordained – can be averted. The blocking of the infamous Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa), which was outright internet censorship that would also have curbed innovation, occurred only after a massive outpouring of anger from concerned citizens like you and me, as well as many of the biggest internet companies themselves.

Trouble is, this time the biggest internet companies have been awfully quiet. A filing in favor of net neutrality earlier this week by one of their lobbying groups was way too little, if not way too late. And it's easier – by far – to block something bad than to persuade hostile or risk-averse politicians and regulators to change policies.

Over the next few months and years, assuming the FCC sells us out on this, we'll face enormous difficulty in winning back an open internet. Some promising work is going on in the wireless arena, including bottom-up networks that someday could someday challenge the hegonomy.

For now, keep trying to crash that site. Big Telecom and its allies deserve to hear from you.

• Earlier: The FCC is about to axe-murder net neutrality – don't get mad ... get even