If you’re reading this, hopefully you’re already well aware of the dangers posed by the FCC and their determination to end Net Neutrality. If not, here’s a quick rundown.

First and foremost, Net Neutrality should be a non-partisan issue. Every person, every race, every political entity, everyone benefits from an open and free internet. Everyone except big ISPs who, if Net Neutrality where to be done away with, could begin charging for the internet like others do for cable. 

The primary argument behind the repeal of Net Neutrality is that it didn’t exist before 2015 and the internet was fine, so it’ll be fine to get rid of it now.

The thing is, the battle for Net Neutrality has been raging since the early 2000s. We’ll save the nitty-gritty details for a future, more in-depth article. But the synopsis is that it all came to a head in 2014 when internet service providers started to really test the limits of what they could get away with. President Obama urged the FCC to make a non-partisan ruling to ensure a free and open internet for generations to come.

The result was a 2015 ruling that reclassified  high-speed nternet as a telecommunications service, making it much more like a utility, such as gas or electric.

The ruling, which was challenged and upheld time and time again, ensures that ISPs can’t engage in things like price-gouging, throttling, selective service, censorship and other unethical practices.  

Now, the new chair of the FCC, a troll gremlin money-grubbing former-Associate General Counsel at Verizon an individual named Ajit Pai, wants to change all that. His goal is to hand control back to the big corporations. The ones who acted so incongruously that the government had to step in and save the people from them in the first place.

The end of Net Neutrality means that ISPs could charge more to watch Netflix or make your connection slower if you wanted to stream Twitch. It means they could charge more to gamers or force them to buy additional packages if they wanted to play both on Steam and on Xbox Live. It means they could make Google slower and Yahoo or Bing faster. They could restrict access to the sites of their competitors or make it so that YouTube was only accessible to those willing to pay an additional $25 a month. 

So, one of the biggest days in the history of the internet will come on December 14th, 2017. That’s the day the FCC will vote on the official ruling.

If you want to try and help save the internet, check out this site (or any of the others like it) and make your voice heard. You can also call or tweet your representatives. Hell, you could even go protest in front of Pai’s home for Thanksgiving if you want. Just do something to add your voice to the masses.

And if you want more information on the matter, we get it. An informed, well-reasoned and fact-based decision is the best kind of decision. And best of all, we’ve done some of the research for you already.

The official FCC page

Current tweet from Ajit

Statement from another FCC chairman

A comprehensive video review of Net Neutrality from John Oliver

What NPR has to say

What Netflix has to say

 What the Washington Post has to say

What the New York Times has to say

What Google has to say

And stay tuned for our follow-up article on why gamers should remain especially attentive to the Net Neutrality debacle.