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> Two possible silver linings if it does get removed on the 14th:

Well, here's my bet on what will happen:

3. There will be no immediate catastrophic consequences. Over time, the Internet will become less amenable to innovation and small players and will just overall be worse than it would otherwise. But there will be no sudden dramatic change that will spur action for people who weren't already concerned.

I think this is the most likely short-term outcome, too. And what's worse is that this outcome will make it significantly harder to get back net neutrality in the future. Peeling back each anti-consumer policy one-by-one will be necessary because of the way that the ISPs will frame the debate in the future.

Over time the Internet in the United States will become less amenable to innovation. There are other countries in the world, some of which will stick to their guns and keep their net neutrality laws (or their line sharing requirements, which create the competitive pressures needed to accomplish the same thing). Startups will fare better in those other countries.

Among other things this is an issue of competitiveness for the United States.

Unfortunately the US is the biggest market. So for businesses tou habe little choice but to play by the non-neutral rules.

Worse, China is the next biggest market, but the Internet in China is even worse as far as innovation goes (censorship etc.). Europe and Japan also have various problems as far as the Internet goes, due to their strict copyright laws and other innovation-stifling rules (right to be forgotten, etc.). I doubt China will change, given their totally different view of what the Internet should look like, but there is some hope.

Eventually some country or federation of countries will recognize the opportunity to grab some of the market once America becomes less startup-friendly. It may even happen in the developing world somewhere, in countries that are being mostly ignored today, taking the rest of the world by surprise.

Most people are not going to realise the pain. It's one of those issues that affect people but they would never understand why. In spite of scientists saying climate change is real and it's affecting us directly (floods, heat waves,...etc) people still can't put 2 and 2 together to ask for change. I don't think ISPs would be dumb enough to drastically become cable-operatorish and charge customers for every website. The pain will be felt by small companies and competition (albeit indirectly).

I'm fairly sure they early stages will even look like it was a good change, making some people wonder why were they even fighting it.

For example excluding affiliated sites from any caps (let's stream 4k movies from Hulu, RedBox etc even if you have lower bandwidth than necessary, you would be excluded for these services) or have data caps not apply for affiliated sites.

For an extra fee you could also get similar treatment for non-affiliated sites (Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video etc).

In the mean time everything else will gradually is getting slower and slower. Tough luck for any new startup trying to enter the market. As it already is difficult right now, it will be nearly impossible after that.

The absolutely bad things (throttling/blocking/modifying content of sites the companies don't agree with) will happen much much later.

More like they use the fees from content providers to make service nearly free, then they'll be able to plausibly say that bringing back net neutrality will make internet service more expensive. Then, no one will want to bring net neutrality back.

Like how cell phones are "free" so it's impossible to buy one without a contract.

None of the major US carriers have contracts anymore, since the start of this year.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/verizon-kills-two-ye...

I agree the effects won't be felt directly and probably not associated with the correct source. For example, if tiny startups have a hard time getting off the ground against competitors who have market power to get good rates from the ISPs, it will be hard to even notice the lack of something disruptive.

For example, will people notice the lack of a really great Netflix competitor that would have gotten off the ground? What about the new best search engine to topple Google Search that died out of the gates?

Most people are not going to realise the pain. It's one of those issues that affect people but they would never understand why.

I disagree. Pai and his GOP sponsors are making enemies of people who buy bandwidth by the terabyte-second. That's much worse than making enemies with people who buy ink by the barrel, as the old saying went.

Any negative consequences to this decision, real or imagined, absolutely will come back to haunt the Republicans.

That's why I don't understand why they're doing this. They are pissing off millions of people who wouldn't otherwise bother to vote against them.

One of the healthy side effects can be that more frontend devs will be caring about payload their users have to download to start using the app/service/website.

Imagine a world where more people think twice before inserting tracking and adware junk into their websites!

Edit: typo

Yay! The repeal will bring Internet to it's (as FCC says) golden age times - the dialup times.

Or the ISPs just suppress all mentions of reinstating Net Neutrality.

The net could be filtered and cantonized to the point where all news about net neutrality could be blocked and people wouldn't even realize there is a majority opinion to re-instate it.