Comcast isn’t even bothering to promise about actual net neutrality anymore

Comcast used to argue vehemently that FCC restrictions on it as an ISP related to Net Neutrality were so unnecessary because they would never, never, ever violate Net Neutrality in the future, even if there were no FCC regulations on the subject.

Strangely enough, from the day when the FCC announced it was going to ignore public input on the matter and get rid of its Net Neutrality regulations, Comcast ratcheted back its pinky swear to simply say they don’t (right now) do many things that people would deem violating Net Neutrality.

But, then, it’s not like they have to persuade either the public or the FCC any more, right?

(For those who have only heard about Net Neutrality in “It’s evil! Pure evil!” speeches from your radio pundits and local politicians, it’s the principle that Internet providers should not (a) block legal Internet content just because they think it’s wrong or because they find it competitively inconvenient, (b) slow down or throttle content, again because they don’t like it or because they own or have deals with competing content providers, or (c) allow content providers (including themselves) to pay to provide their content more quickly than competitors.

So, for example, Comcast is owned by NBC Universal. If all of a sudden Comcast prioritized or fast-laned NBC content, and/or slowed down or or blocked Fox content, or reduced the content quality — that would be a violation of Net Neutrality. And since most people don’t have a choice about their cable Internet provider, that’s why it’s a problem, and why getting rid of Net Neutrality regulations is going to lead to all sorts of interesting shenanigans that make a lot of big companies a lot of money at the expense of their captive customers.)

Comcast deleted net neutrality pledge the same day FCC announced repeal
Three-year-old “no paid prioritization” pledge was suddenly removed.

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