It has been a while. And in some ways, some days, I feel like a lot of you in that we live in the darkest timeline. It’s funny how excellent but somewhat obscure TV shows introduce such wonderful pop culture references into our vernacular, isn’t it?
The last time I posted here, it was April 2021, and the world was still largely indoors. A lot has changed since then. Vaccines were being rolled out. And the world slowly opened up again. I moved. Changed jobs. Even got a promotion of sorts… a manager/supervisor at home. I became a father and the Toddler Economist has entered the picture, and she has opinions, mostly about berries, books, and bedtime.
And this site sort of went into a holding pattern. Going quiet the way things do when life decides it has other that take priority. And while I might have less time to write, there are a dozen different things I do want to talk about. And at some point thinking out loud to no one feels less useful than thinking out loud here.
So. We are back.
A good way to mark the occasion, I thought, would be to revisit the first piece on this site – my particular interest then, and even now. The role of platforms and the dozen invisible things they do that affect us. Much has changed in the world since then, and though net neutrality is no longer a buzz word (hint: it’s AI), it is still quite important. The argument then was simple: without rules requiring ISPs to treat all internet traffic equally, the companies that own the pipes get to decide what flows through them. Fairness on the internet isn’t guaranteed. It has to be enforced.
Eight years later, the US has managed to establish those rules, repeal them, reinstate them, and then have a federal court strike them down again. Any permanent fix would now requires Congress.
Congress.
Sigh.
And if you were hoping our friends over in Europe might come good here, that is not happening either. Europe may have long been a stalwart for net neutrality principles, the new Digital Networks Act out of the EC is a shift away from the old open and neutral internet. Sure it is being framed as modernisation of telecom rules, but it is quite the backsliding from the net neutrality rules of old.
Not all hope is lost. Individual states have implemented a patchwork of net neutrality rules, and I would love to look more into the practical implications of these differences across states. But in the meantime if this matters to you, call your senators and let them know.
