This was a question that I got yesterday but didn’t have a chance to answer. Internet Slowdown Day was staged to support Net Neutrality. In short, everything on the Internet should be treated equally. But that’s not the case as services such as Netflix are slowed down by ISPs for whatever reason. Be it that they threaten some service the ISP has, as is the case when Netflix deals with an ISP like Comcast, or the ISP simply doesn’t want to treat them equally. So companies like Vimeo, Etsy and reddit along with those who have a presence on the web staged a protest yesterday to decry these tactics.
Sites participating in the “internet slowdown protest” will display an infinitely-spinning “site loading” icon, or as the advocacy group organizing the event calls it, the “spinning wheel of death.”
Another is changing one’s avatar, on Twitter or Facebook or what have you, to the icon. The hope is that the action will go viral. The protest comes just 5 days before the FCC’s next comment deadline on September 15th. We’ll have to wait and see how effective it is.
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This entry was posted on September 11, 2014 at 8:09 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Net Neutrality, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Hey IT Nerd: What Was The Deal With This “Internet Slowdown Day”?
This was a question that I got yesterday but didn’t have a chance to answer. Internet Slowdown Day was staged to support Net Neutrality. In short, everything on the Internet should be treated equally. But that’s not the case as services such as Netflix are slowed down by ISPs for whatever reason. Be it that they threaten some service the ISP has, as is the case when Netflix deals with an ISP like Comcast, or the ISP simply doesn’t want to treat them equally. So companies like Vimeo, Etsy and reddit along with those who have a presence on the web staged a protest yesterday to decry these tactics.
Sites participating in the “internet slowdown protest” will display an infinitely-spinning “site loading” icon, or as the advocacy group organizing the event calls it, the “spinning wheel of death.”
Another is changing one’s avatar, on Twitter or Facebook or what have you, to the icon. The hope is that the action will go viral. The protest comes just 5 days before the FCC’s next comment deadline on September 15th. We’ll have to wait and see how effective it is.
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This entry was posted on September 11, 2014 at 8:09 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Net Neutrality, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.