In between reeling from the catastrophic failure of the Republican plan to repeal Obamacare and hiding climate scientists from Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump’s administration found time on Tuesday to signal FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s garbage plan to destroy net neutrality has its full backing.
Photo: AP
Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters they support Pai’s plan to roll back the 2015 Open Internet Order, per the Washington Post.
“We support the FCC chair’s efforts to review and consider rolling back these rules,” Sanders said, “and believe that the best way to get fair rules for everyone is for Congress to take action and create regulatory and economic certainty.”
Trump’s endorsement could create some headaches for Pai. Press secretary Sean Spicer, who took note it would be inappropriate to comment on the workings of an ostensibly independent agency, had previously declined to comment on whether the president supports net neutrality on Monday.
Ever since Pai announced his intent to roll back the rules — which could allow ISPs to get away with things like throttling competitors’ sites or forcing content providers into tiered pricing schemes — open internet advocates have been working their hardest to rally opposition, staging a refused to release some 47,000 of those complaints or extend a deadline on the commenting period, saying it had already released 1000 responses and had already offered to provide 2000 other complaints by September 2017. But someone has been filing hundreds of thousands of fake comments in support of Pai, which has conveniently allowed conservative groups to declare the comment process useless.