14 DAY TRIAL // It’s safe to say that the Internet Slowdown Day has been a real success. Not only have dozens of sites joined in on the efforts, but Internet users were really active in standing up for net neutrality.
According to the FCC, by 6PM ET the agency received 111,449 new public comments to the over a million they already received in the two months the commission welcomed commentary, E Pluribus Unum reports. About 41,000 of these came via the 14-28 docket on the FCC website, while the others were sent to the [email protected] mail address that was specifically set up for commentary on the net neutrality topic.
Fight For the Future has also announced that more than 500,000 comments were submitted through Battleforthenet.com and are yet to be sent to the FCC. The nonprofit said that this happened “during our last big push too when their site crashed,” adding that the comments are being stored and they’ll eventually get delivered.
All these opinions are getting stored for the moment since the FCC can’t handle the amount of data coming its way, most likely in unexpectedly large batches. In fact, the commission actually made the request itself.
Even with all these troubles, the FCC is encouraging people to continue sending in their opinions. In a tweet, the commission said that next Monday, September 15, is the deadline for the second round of comments on the Open Internet issue. They’re asking people to send them via the email address, however, which means the site is probably already swamped by people demanding for net neutrality to be protected.
2 million comments for Net neutrality
According to the Federal Communications Commission, they have received about 1.1 million comments in the two months prior to July 18. Add up the 800,000 that the Fight for the Future NGO has received and is in the process of passing on to the FCC, and you get nearly 2 million people who want to protect the free Internet.
On top of this all, the Internet Slowdown campaign also generated 1,000 calls per minute to Congress. That’s an astonishing number in itself and it’s clear that people want for those they gave power of decision to protect the Internet from the greediness of several companies that want to control it.
In the days left until the week ends, people are surely going to continue contacting the FCC, raising the number of comments even more.
Softpedia has been among the sites that put the ever-loading wheel on the homepage, urging people to take action. We joined sites and companies such as Tumblr, Etsy, Reddit, Dropbox, Mozilla, Upworthy and Netflix, to name just a few.