As you probably know, after the FCC’s vote yesterday, the net neutrality open internet protections are gone, and ISPs could already start to implement new fees and fee structures. That’s because the vote, spearheaded by Ajit Pai, reclassifies internet service providers as “information services,” instead of public utilities, and this reclassification would enable them to favor their own sites and to charge fees for access to rival sites.

The Internet Service Providers have lied to us and the government to encourage this rule change.

Lie #1

The ISP lobbying group has been telling the government that the net neutrality rules discourage investment. Basically, the argument goes that net neutrality is hurting internet service providers financially, to the degree that they’re investing less in their services, and that therefore service quality would increase if the rules were gone. This is a lie for two reasons.

First

First of all, the numbers that FCC Chairman and Verizon shill Ajit Pai cite come from these same lobbying groups and a conservative think tank, and the numbers exclude Sprint’s billion-dollar strategy to purchase cell phones and lease them to customers (spending like this is normally included in such reports). The numbers also neglect to mention that AT&T was predicting its spending decline as early as 2012, when it said that it would increase capital expenditures in wireless and wireline for three years and return to lower levels of investment starting in 2015.

Second

The second reason this is a lie is because net neutrality is not even hurting the ISPs. While the ISP lobbyists are telling the government that net neutrality is hurting them, they’re telling their investors a very different story: the rules don’t matter, and they were doing just fine. For instance, in December 2015 AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that the net neutrality rules were not an impediment and that “Everything that we’re planning on doing fits within those rules.”

In their investor reports that are required to include risk factors, none of the ISPs have mentioned net neutrality. Instead, they haven’t mentioned it at all, or have said that the FCC policy hasn’t affected their investment. ISPs have continued investing in order to expand network capacity. Here are a few of the highlights that you can find in the Free Press’ report.

Comcast spent $7.6 billion on its cable segment capital expenditures during 2016, the most the company has ever invested in a single year.

Verizon’s capital investment total increased during the year following the FCC’s adoption of the Open Internet Order (just as the company said it would a month before the February 2015 vote). And Verizon’s total two-year post-vote capital expenditures were 3.1 percent higher than they were in the two years preceding the vote, even as the company divested its Florida, Texas, and California systems to Frontier Communications.

So the rules weren’t hurting them. Probably a more accurate story is that ISPs saw content-facilitators like Google and Facebook bringing home the bacon with ads, and since they’ve been trying unsuccessfully to enter that space for years, they’re instead trying to make more money on the infrastructure systems they manage.

Lie #2

In the lead-up to the FCC vote, many internet service providers have been mysterious, vague, or outright deceptive in their messaging to subscribers about the proposed rule change.

AT&T

On At&T’s net neutrality page, the purported message is, “We support an open internet,” but the things they chose to emphasize, and the words with which they chose to emphasize them reveal their true intentions. Right below the main title is this statement:

“AT&T is joining with hundreds of other internet companies on July 12th to show our support for an open internet. Since this debate began over a decade ago, we have always supported an internet that is transparent and free from blocking, censorship and discriminatory throttling. But relying on 80-year old regulations to ensure these fundamental open internet principles does not make sense.”

Would a company that really supported net neutrality say that the “80-year old regulations…don’t make sense?” The phrase “80-year old regulations” or “80-year old statute” appears three times throughout the whole statement, and it places a high emphasis on their lack of investment.

AT&T closes the statement by saying that the FCC should repeal net neutrality, but that right after that, Congress should pass a better law to preserve an open internet. And who’s lobbyists do you think are gonna be sitting at the table helping draft that law to preserve their interests?

Verizon

Verizon released a video back in April where one of its top legal counselors basically says that the FCC killing net neutrality won’t actually kill net neutrality. But a lot of what the counselor says is deceptive or simply not true.

One of my favorite highlights — the Verizon spokesperson says, “The FCC is not talking about killing net neutrality rules and in fact, not we nor any other ISP are asking them to kill the open internet rules. All they’re doing is looking to put the open internet rules in an enforceable way on a different legal footing.” No, Verizon — the FCC (and your boy, Ajit Pai, especially) is explicitly talking about getting rid of net neutrality.

This is the video:

Comcast

In 2014, Comcast released a statement supporting Obama’s stance against paid prioritization, and up until April 26, Comcast’s net neutrality page said, “Comcast doesn’t prioritize Internet traffic or create paid fast lanes.” April 26 is when FCC Chairman and lizard-person Ajit Pai announced the first version of his plan to do away with net neutrality. On April 27, Comcast’s net neutrality page was different.

Here’s what it looked like before big scumbag Ajit Pai’s statement:

And here’s what it looked like after the statement:

A few things are missing — they no longer pledge against paid prioritization or throttling, and they removed the pledge to support internet access for lower-income families. Hmmm.

Basically, ISPs are deceptive in their messaging about what will and won’t change after the net neutrality repeal. They are especially deceptive in their statements of support, and it makes sense — they all have a lot to gain from the repeal of net neutrality.

Lie #3

Many of the 22 million comments left on the internet in support of the rule-change were fake. As early as November, people started questioning the validity of the comments and calling on the FCC to delay their vote, but real-life supervillain Ajit Pai continued with the vote as planned.

The Fake Comments

According to a Pew Research Study on the comments, 57% of comments used temporary or duplicate email addresses, and seven popular comments accounted for 38% of all submissions. 94% of all comments were submitted multiple times. Most of the fake comments were in favor of the rule change. Additionally, the FCC got 444,938 comments from Russian email addresses.

Here are the seven most popular comments:

Real people’s identities were spoofed to “author” thousands of fake comments, which were often submitted, without alteration, thousands of times almost simultaneously

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is planning to sue to stop the FCC’s rollback of net neutrality.

Here’s his video statement:

It’s unlikely that the comments actually swayed the FCC. The FCC is not required to follow public opinion, but Ajit Pai favorably cites it when it suits him. And big scumbag Ajit Pai proved himself a scumbag once again when he continually refused to provide evidence for an investigation into fraudulent comments.

There’s Still Time to Protest

Aside from inventing the internet, the US Federal Government has played a hugely important role in the development of its infrastructure, so it should be treated as a public utility (and classified as such) like it used to be under the net neutrality rules.

Congress Can Overrule the FCC’s Decision

The FCC vote is not the end-all-be-all: there’s a way to reverse it. Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress could issue a resolution of disapproval and overrule the FCC’s decision. But it’s not going to be easy — the CRA only provides Congress a 60 day window in which to act, and a resolution of disapproval needs either presidential support or backing from two-thirds of the House and Senate.

What this means is that we, as individuals, can act to make a difference in the fight for net neutrality, but we need to act QUICKLY.

Here’s what I suggest: Don’t just call your reps (that should be the obvious first step), call all of the members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet Subcommittee, and urge them to issue a resolution of disapproval. These are the committees that oversee the FCC and would be the likeliest places for any legislative action overruling the FCC’s vote to originate. Do it! Do it today!

There are tools to make this easier, like PurplePatriot. PurplePatriot is a political engagement app designed to make it easier to get involved in politics. After the FCC’s vote today, they released a “Net Neutrality Call List,” conveniently listing all of the members of those congressional committees in an easy-to-call list. (You can follow this list by going to your profile, going to associations, and checking the box next to the “Net Neutrality Call List” association).

Go to the ‘Net Neutrality’ red hot issue, and hit the megaphone to see the screen pictured above. If you don’t have time to call all of the committee members, at least tweet at them. PurplePatriot will auto-populate a tweet to them, making it very easy to go down the line and tweet to all of them. Here’s how easy it is to mass-tweet all the committee members:

I hope you take the step to become a more active citizen to help us get Net Neutrality back!