Basically, net neutrality prevents ISPs from using a form of price discrimination to sell a lesser internet, where certain sites are blocked or throttled, or where certain sites have to increase service charges to pay back costs imposed on them by ISPs. Eliminating this would enable ISPs to charge lower prices to segments that currently go unserved. This is considered a bad thing because:
- In modernity, not having internet is considered untenable. Essential things like applying for jobs, interacting with friends, or performing political activism require the internet. Moreover, a free internet is important for these tasks, becaue only then can the tasks themselves be performed freely. Imagine an internet where the only social network is facebook. This would be extremely limiting, and facebook would love to implement this.
- Many ISPs would use this price discrimination to steal customers away from other ISPs, rather than unlock new customers. This is hailed as "competition". The problem is that all ISPs would steal customers from each other roughly equally. Therefore, the effect would be merely to lower prices (for a lesser product) for certain customers. Without a corresponding lowering of costs, ISPs would have to raise prices for the rest of their customers. To get the same price as today, you would have to purchase a non neutral package. Rather than it being merely grandmas and poor people with a limited version of the internet, nearly everyone would have it.
- In modernity, not having internet is considered untenable. Essential things like applying for jobs, interacting with friends, or performing political activism require the internet. Moreover, a free internet is important for these tasks, becaue only then can the tasks themselves be performed freely. Imagine an internet where the only social network is facebook. This would be extremely limiting, and facebook would love to implement this.
- Many ISPs would use this price discrimination to steal customers away from other ISPs, rather than unlock new customers. This is hailed as "competition". The problem is that all ISPs would steal customers from each other roughly equally. Therefore, the effect would be merely to lower prices (for a lesser product) for certain customers. Without a corresponding lowering of costs, ISPs would have to raise prices for the rest of their customers. To get the same price as today, you would have to purchase a non neutral package. Rather than it being merely grandmas and poor people with a limited version of the internet, nearly everyone would have it.