A quick internet search on the topic “net neutrality” yields thousands, if not millions of articles, blogs, and social media posts responding to the FCC’s repeal of the act in outrage. A legal protection of net neutrality was enacted in 2015 in order to prevent internet service providers from charging different rates of internet service based on the type of content or the user and to treat all content on the internet the same. Until 2015, America had no laws protecting net neutrality, yet the internet remained unaffected. There was no price manipulation making consumers pay ridiculous amounts, and there were no cases of ISPs blocking services to their users based off of biases or locked packages.

If the introduction of a legal protection of net neutrality did not bring any changes, then why would its removal? If analyzed from a business owner’s point of view, business is a competition, and customers are seen as things that need to be won over and stolen from their competitors. If public opinion tremendously shows that consumers should not be charged for separate packages when paying for their internet services, a business owner will follow that public opinion so that they may keep the customers on their good side and steal the customers of businesses who don’t follow the majority opinion. This gathering of new customers from competing ISPs will make the company way more money than they would if they didn’t raise prices at all, and for this reason, net neutrality does not matter.