"Once providers start to privilege some applications or websites over others, then the smaller voices get squeezed out and we all lose." With the loss of net neutrality, we lose the multitude and diversity of opinion and perspective."
What troubles me is that this is news to some people. What troubles me more: how can it every be possible to have net neutrality? We live in a corporate world, period. This is not changing. Even if we could provide a a base speed and do away with the "fast" and "slow" lanes of internet accessibility for uploading and downloading there is still the whole "internet marketing" thing. I know much about this as I use be by my ex-partner's side in an internet marketing company. The results of search engines will always be from the work of marketers. This could be black hat or white hat. Even if links couldn't be bought or searches that resulted from ad spots there would still be a person on the back end that does the footwork it takes: manual linking from unpaid sources, search engine optimization for websites (designing web sites for search engines), etc.
I very much believe in the diversity of opinion and perspective, but it is in the search of these variances that will be necessary for the researcher, reader, searcher, to do. I think it is in teaching this awareness that will be the most important, because until search engines are designed differently where it is randomly selected for material then regardless of the ISP speeds neutrality will not exist.
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