Media literacy cannot be attained without NAMLE‘s core principles; one such principle, Access, specifically related to all information and ideas without censorship, could quickly come under attack if Net Neutrality were to be repealed or replaced with a piece of legislation that did not require equal footing on each of these digital roads.
Net neutrality might impact consumers’ Access to information by creating pathways that consumers will use to avoid difficulty reaching and maintaining specific sites. These factors lead to information and ideas that the ISP does not find charitable to them being all but blocked out for the sake of their financial comfort. If a group becomes politically targeted, this global conglomerate-owning ISP with ties to the group’s adversaries can actively stifle the life and liberty of the former, dealing significant damage to the opinion and truth surrounding them. With a lack of representation in the media, any group’s ability to fight the might of a pack backed by an entire mega-conglomerate is limited; the minority group peers through the filter and propaganda built around them to attempt contact with passive media travelers, citizens of the digital space.
The problem extends beyond an adversary’s army of discrimination. Suppose I pick up a sport; I want to be good at this sport, so I use the internet to learn how to get good and to see how skilled I am. If I can only quickly access posts that say I’m naturally great at playing tennis and nothing is going to improve my biological advantage, I lose motivation to improve. In that case, my ISP is only interested in keeping me online and not going on websites that challenge me. However, if I go onto “Johnathon’s” ISP, it says I’m doing a terrible job because I don’t know how to serve (that’s a tennis term, right?) In this case, I am finally revealed truth, missing out on a crucial aspect of literacy and my life. I get stuck in an echo chamber that believes no progress is necessary, built by artificial pathways, also known as the only websites I know will be consistently accessible on my ISP’s version of the internet.
Who is to say the provider will not make the internet twice as expensive? The Crash Course, Media Literacy video; “Media Ownership: Crash Course Media Literacy #8” is poignant in asserting that the provider has the ability and legal rights to keep your speeds at pre-AOL days if you don’t pay them their exclusive five-times-multiple prices for less internet than you had before the repeal. If you think popups are nasty now, ponder a future without allowance to functionally use a website until you effectively pay for the subscription to your ISP’s social media edition or the politically informed edition, all but coming soon in the minds of reasonably paranoid people surrounding mega conglomerates’ habits on profits. I believe in a free internet affected more by the people who make up its creators than the men in suits who desperately claw at our pockets, praying for our last dollar.
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