Forget Net Neutrality: The Myth of a Truly Free and Open Internet

If you’re to believe the worst of the doomsday predictions about the recent striking down of “Net Neutrality” regulations, then you’re to believe we’re headed for a completely divided internet of digital ghettos, exclusive walled gardens, and certain websites receiving preferential treatment over others.

But in truth, we’re already there.

As a music fan, you might remember the Net Neutrality issue becoming a big cause célèbre within the music community back in 2017. Hundreds of musicians like R.E.M., My Morning Jacket, and Killer Mike signed a petition imploring that the Net Neutrality rules not be rolled back. Labels such as Bloodshot Records, Sub Pop, and Third Man Records spoke up as well, warning it would make their websites, and the websites for their independent artists difficult to impossible to access.

Even Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Google all came out in favor of maintaining the Net Neutrality regulations at the time, before softening their positions, and generally going silent on the matter as time went on, in part because it seemed the worst fears of what deregulation could mean were unlikely to come to fruition.

What were those fears? That Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, would start charging consumers different rates to access different web properties, sort of like cable. For example, there might be one price for a “basic” internet service, and then upcharges for YouTube, Facebook, Rolling Stone, or The New York Times. Want to get access to independent websites like Saving Country Music or SturgillSimpson.com? We’ll that might be another charge.

But none of this came to fruition, even when the regulations were rolled back by the FCC in 2018 during the first Trump Administration. In fact, nothing really materially changed on the consumer side of the internet from the move at all, though perhaps hypothetically, it still could at some point. But up until The Biden Administration reinstated the rules in 2024, the fear of a tiered internet never came to fruition. Then earlier this month, the Sixth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals basically said the FCC can’t reinstate the Net Neutrality rules, meaning they’re dead for good unless Congress acts.

I won’t bore you with any more of the technical details on Net Neutrality here. Feel free to read up on it more if you wish. My only point is that we didn’t need some sort of dystopian regulation—or the lack thereof—to turn the internet into a distinctly anti-democratic walled off maze bifurcating the have’s and have not’s. We did this ourselves through paywalls and subscription-based websites.

Please understand, this is not an assertion that the rolling back of the Net Neutrality regulations couldn’t be a concern for the future. But what’s of greater concern is the actual reality of the internet today, not the hypothetical of what might happen tomorrow now that Net Neutrality regs are no longer in place, especially after we’ve already lived in a non Net Neutrality world for a while.

As the below social media post illustrates, the concern for rolling back Net Neutrality regulations is that the internet would no longer be “free and open.”

But the internet is not free and open. Far from it. And Net Neutrality has nothing to do with it. The irony is that if you actually click on the link for the Rolling Stone and are not a subscriber to the publication, this is what you’ll see.

Almost 100% of Rolling Stone‘s content is paywalled. Same goes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, many other top-tier news and entertainment websites on the internet, along with most all local newspaper websites in the United States. We’re already living in tiered internet hell.

No doubt, important journalistic institutions deserve to be supported financially so they can continue to deploy journalistic resources to cover topics that are critically important to communities and the world. But consumers shouldn’t be expected to subscribe to dozens of different websites just to stay informed on current events, or see differing perspectives. And ironically, many of these paywalled websites still service significant amounts of ads, so subscription dollars aren’t in lieu of pop ups and click-thrus to get to the content.

It perhaps makes more sense to offer a mix of free and paid-for content. For example, Billboard has a paywall for their “pro” content, meaning articles that mostly appeal to professionals in the music industry. The theory is these industry people can probably pay, while John Q. Public can still read the more celebrity-style and short-form news coverage from Billboard subscription free.

Other websites and podcasters give subscribers first access, and make content free for everyone later, or will offer bonus content to subscribers only. This is still less than ideal to the “free and open” internet policy, but a lot more tolerable, and perhaps helps free up publications from having to rely so much on clicks.

But remember the dystopian idea that we’d have to pay for certain websites in bundles if Net Neutrality rules were eliminated? That already exists, it’s just done through these subscription and paywall models. For example, if you pay for an Apple News+ subscription, you get a host of paywalled sites with it.

What major websites are still free? Places like Barstool Sports and Whiskey Riff, a.k.a. the digital ghetto. It also happens to be than many free websites that are suddenly veering to the political right, and this might be one of the reasons recent elections around the globe are going the way they are. Elite, high-brow discussions about culture and politics are often happening behind paywalls, inaccessible to average citizens who either can’t or won’t pay for news when there’s so many other free, ad-supported options.

You can’t wage a revolution behind a paywall. It’s even difficult to engage in meaningful activism if you’re limiting your audience. One of the reason it feels like were living in two separate Americas is because we’re consuming two separate tiers of news. And one of the most pernicious aspects of paywalls is that if you don’t interface with them, you have no idea that so many internet users are.

Paying a modest subscription for your local newspaper, or perhaps a national publication or two makes sense. But as our perspectives become increasingly siloed, it’s perhaps never more important to interface with differing viewpoints that challenge our own. That’s difficult to impossible under the current model. Yes, journalists and publications need to be paid. But it’s unclear if paywalls actually work to increase revenue. Though they do in some cases, in others, revenue decreases.

As one study explained, “The research revealed that the effects of paywalls varied significantly from newspaper to newspaper, ranging from a 24 percent increase to a 12 percent decline in total revenue…While paywalls brought a success for some newspapers, the net effect of a paywall on digital revenue was negative for many newspapers as a significant decline in digital advertising revenue due to declined visits to their websites virtually cancelled the newly generated digital subscription revenue.”

What does any of this have to do with country music? Over the last eight years or so, we’ve seen an increasing amount of conversations about country music in many of these paywalled and elite publications that are completely detached from reality, and the lives country fans actually live. This is because this media is not for actual country fans who are less likely to subscribe to The New York Times or The Washington Post, or even Texas Monthly. It is for their more upper crust clientele who will subscribe, including some who then turn their nose down on America’s unwashed rural population.

A free and open internet? That hasn’t been the reality for years now, and it’s getting worse by the minute like the frog getting cooked in the boiling pot as the majority of the internet gets placed behind blinders, irrespective of Net Neutrality concerns. How do we stop it? Should important local and national news be subsidized like farming since it’s so essential to democracy? Should advertising models be more lucrative to help keep the internet open? Perhaps there’s no easy solution.

But let’s face it, the problem of a tiered and walled-off internet isn’t something to fear for the future. It’s already here.