Internet Slowdown Protests Drove Over 300,000 Calls & 2 Million Emails To Congress, Plus Another 700,000 FCC Comments

from the but-still-some-want-to-dismiss-it dept

In discussing yesterday's internet slowdown day protest, we noted that, at its peak, the effort was driving over 1,000 calls per minute to Congress. The final numbers are now in, and they're amazing. If you can't see the image, it shows 303,099 calls made to Congress, 2,167,092 emails sent to Congress, and another 722,364 comments filed with the FCC. If you want to file comments with the FCC (you can read ours, if you'd like a sample) I recommend using EFF's DearFCC.org website.

What's amazing is how quick some folks have been to try to dismiss this massively successful effort. The most hilarious of all has to be Newsweek (the same publication that recently outed the wrong Satoshi Nakamoto as the "creator" of Bitcoin), whose Lauren Walker seemed so anxious to slam the protests as meaningless that she wrote a hilariously wrong article suggesting no one really participated in the protests, and that even the activists are conceding that net neutrality is dead.

Walker uses the weak premise that so many cynical tech press folks have used in the past few years: if an online protest doesn't match the astounding numbers from the giant anti-SOPA/PIPA internet "blackout," then clearly it's a failure. That's a dumb hacky premise, but hacky reporters keep jumping on it. Even worse, however, is that (beyond misquoting Fight for the Future's Evan Greer), Walker insists that the protest fizzled because very few sites took part, and those that did probably didn't drive anyone to do anything. She reports none of the numbers above, and totally incorrectly claims that just 76 websites participated. The number was actually more than 10,000. Reporting!

Either way, the effort yesterday has to be seen as a huge success in driving awareness on the issue and also in letting DC know that the public really cares about this issue. And, now, we wait to see if the FCC will actually listen to those pleas.

Filed Under: calls, congress, fcc, internet slowdown day, net neutrality, open internet, protests

The Battle For The Internet's Next Round: Internet Slowdown Day

from the time-to-speak-up dept

A whole bunch of startups and activist groups are taking part today in Internet Slowdown Day -- showing just what kind of internet we might be facing if the FCC caves in to the pressures of the big broadband access providers, allowing them to set up tollbooths on the internet, pick winners and losers, and generally limit the ability of innovative new startups to face an even playing field online. It would enable the big broadband players to double charge service providers, limit upstarts and competition, and generally make the overall internet a lot less dynamic and innovative. For these reasons and more, we're quite concerned with where the FCC is heading, and are joining in today's protests -- we hope you will too. If you missed them, you can read our comments to the FCC on this matter, and you still have a few more days (until the 15th) to file your own.

Later today, we'll also be posting a blockbuster "everything you need to know about net neutrality but were afraid to ask" post, and will likely have a few more posts on the topic as well... Stay tuned...

Filed Under: internet slowdown day, net neutrality, open internet