I'm not gonna sit here and act like I know the ins and outs of net neutrality, but I do have a basic understanding.
About 3 months ago my media teacher showed me this video: http://youtu.be/fpbOEoRrHyU
It is a clip from the American current affairs show 'Last Week Tonight With John Oliver' basically talking about net neutrality.
So, what is net neutrality?
If you type 'define: net neutrality' into google the first result says as follows 'the principle that internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favouring or blocking particular products or websites'.
What it basically means that big companies or people who pay more don't get 'fast tracked' - their websites don't load faster than other smaller websites/they don't get access to more 'bandwidth' than other smaller websites.
What would happen if net neutrality didn't exist?
Take Netflix, for example, they would be able to pay internet providers to allow their service to have access to more bandwidth, meaning there would be less buffering and faster loading times. I can imagine a lot of people are now sat there like 'that doesn't sound bad at all'. However, while large companies are reserving bandwidth, smaller companies/people would be getting less access to bandwidth which means all those blogs you love or small business' in your city/town/village websites take an unbearable amount of time to load. And we all know how much we hate that little loading circle.
Obviously, we all experience slow internet from time to time but imagine experiencing it all the time. I know I'd lose my mind.
What can I do?
If you have a blog/website/tumblr you can join in the internet slowdown by getting a code from here: https://www.battleforthenet.com/sept10th/
You can also donate - I'll link a tumblr post explaining that all here: http://tumblr.fightforthefuture.org/post/96020972118/be-a-part-of-the-great-internet-slowdown
And you can also help by just raising awareness. Make sure everyone around you knows about the issue. You can make a blog post, write a Facebook status, tweet about it, whatever you feel is best.
As I said at the beginning, I am in no way an expert but I do know it is an issue that effects us all.
All the best!
Faith x
