According to recent news, Net Neutrality, the set of rules that protect our Internet rights and freedoms, is on the line. The principle that enables online freedom to publish, access, and receive any content you wish might be impacted on December 14th, 2017. If Congress votes to change the bill, millions of Americans’ safety, First Amendment rights, and access to information would be affected.
Almost since President Trump took office, his FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has been pushing for Net Neutrality to be reconsidered on Capital Hill. Millions of Americans have spoken up, on social media and directly to our government officials, requesting that the bill stay the same. Pay has ignored these messages and insists that Net Neutrality limits innovation and economic growth. But what he’d really be doing, if he manages to get the bill off the board, would be clearing away regulations that prevent telecom giants, like Verizon or Comcast, from controlling what content users obtain. Right now, companies can’t pick what websites and services get to us faster, for censorship or economic reasons. They aren’t allowed to slow down or speed up their own content or sites to stifle a competitor. The general fear, and the reason for Net Neutrality, is that if they could, they would. Booming businesses could profit off of the violation of our constitutional rights, if Ajit Pai’s mission succeeds.
You can say and view and do whatever you want online. All the information and opportunity on the planet is at your fingertips, because of Net Neutrality. Heck, while writing this I had to research the details of what’s actually been going down lately. How? Net Neutrality. Social media, websites, applications, databases - so much would be effected, and not for the better. A lot of people who use the Internet to make a change, marginalized communities standing up for their rights, all these people could be silenced. For money.
We owe it to Net Neutrality, the result of millions of activists in 2015, that America is as safe, informed, and free as it is now. Hey, it’s the reason I’m able to run this blog - using my voice to talk about what I believe in, which not everyone out there can do.
There’s still time. In just days, on December 14, the bill will be voted on. Send this to friends, contact government officials and politicians, take action now. While it isn’t too late.
NET NEUTRALITY IS IMPORTANT FOR EVERYONE WHO USES THE INTERNET
“Laura Tribe: Net neutrality sounds really boring, and it’s really important. They’re the rules that ensure that when you log onto the internet … you get the whole internet. When you log in it means that your internet service provider can’t pick and choose what you see online.
They can’t charge you more for some content or less for others, and they’re not allowed to discriminate against competing content to make sure that … when you pay your internet bill, you get the entire internet when you log in.”
It’s been a week since the Army Corps of Engineers announced that they would not grant a permit
for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross the river that the indigenous
Sioux people relied upon for their drinking, farming and washing.
The DAPL was running through Sioux territory in large part because the
settler communities nearby had indicated that they would not tolerate
such a risky proposition when it came to their own water. The water
protectors of the Sioux and their allies from around the nation gathered
to ensure that native Americans would not be forced at literal gunpoint
to accept the risk that nearby whites would not tolerate.
But Energy Transfer Partners – who have pinned their hopes on Trump
reverse the Army and permitting their pipeline – maintained that this
fear was misplaced and that there were no real risks to their
proposition.
Yesterday, we learned that the Belle Fourche Pipeline had spilled at
least 176,000 gallons of crude oil into Ash Coulee Creek, 150 miles
from Cannon Ball, ND, where the water protectors made their stand. The
electronic monitoring equipment that was supposed to detect this leak
failed.
This blog did not and will not send requests for bitcoin donations.
There seems to be a virus or some sort of malware going around causing blogs to “send out” chat messages to blogs that they follow asking for help with the purchase of certain items through donations of seemingly small amounts using bitcoin and adds a link to the message.
The message goes as following (at least the first message I got went like this): “Hi there buddy. I need help, I’m trying to buy a laptop and I can’t afford it. I’m about 0.36$ short, and I’d really appreciate if you could help me and transfer some money to me via bitcoin using this *link*.”
The small details in the message seems to have a few variations with the greeting, amount and purchased item showing up in different variations from formal to friendly, from 0.016 to 2$ and from a phone case to a laptop among others.
The blogs that are affected send out the messages to blogs that they follow for a long time mostly, so you are most likely to receive the message from a long time, active follower whose name you might recognize or a mutual etc. The blogs that are affected are not spam bots but actual active followers who follow the recipient for months or years and most likely the blogger who “sent” the message is unaware of the message being sent.
DO NOT OPEN THE LINK.
Opening up the link will cause the virus to spread even more and infect your computer/mobile with any sort of malware.
If you have received a message of that sort from this blog please know that it was not sent by me or within my control and ignore/delete the message without clicking the link.
