14 DAY TRIAL // Making us all feel like it's 2014 once more, John Oliver is taking a stance asking people to defend net neutrality, leading to the FCC's site to crash.
Years ago, when American Internet users were fighting alongside tech companies to convince the FCC to implement net neutrality protections, John Oliver famously compared Tom Wheeler to a dingo. Then too Oliver urged people to flood the FCC with their opinion and their demand to implement net neutrality protections. As a result, the site went down quite fast and hundreds of thousands of messages were sent in record time.
This past weekend, Oliver approached the topic again, targeting Ajit Pai's intentions to kill net neutrality despite strong opposition from numerous tech companies, as well as the public.
Pai, a former Verizon lawyer, used to be a member of Wheeler's FCC team and he was never shy in expressing his opposition to such rules. Now that Trump has put him in charge, he's making good on those intentions.
A free pass
Giant telcom companies like Verizon and AT&T will be free to favor their own online services once more, as they've done in the past, discriminating against rival services. Therefore, if Pai gets his way, don't be surprised if your connection to Netflix is going to go downhill. After all, Time Warner and Comcast both have a stake in competitor Hulu, for instance.
During Sunday night's episode of "Last Week Tonight," Oliver urged users to visit gofccyourself.com, a newly purchased URL which redirects to FCC's comment submission page. This should make it easier for everyone to find that comment page and tell Pai how they feel about net neutrality. It looks like plenty of people did just that because the site crashed and stayed down for a while.
"Every internet group needs to come together like you successfully did three years ago. Every subculture must join as one. Gamers, YouTube celebrities, Instagram models, and even Tom from MySpace, if you're still alive," Oliver said.
