CIRCLES AREN'T ROUND

aiffe:

neutralnewt:

joeywaggoner:

This is the current signature count for the petition to restore Net Neutrality. As you can see it has a very long way to go.

Come on people I know there are at least 64,000 of you on tumblr who haven’t signed this yet. Click here to do so

If you have already signed be sure to share the link so that the word will spread.

hey real talk for a second

the deadline for this petition is in THREE WEEKS

and it’s not even halfway to meeting the goal.

If it doesn’t meet the goal, IT’S OVER. THE PETITION IS REMOVED. THE END.

I know it might be a little annoying to take a whole two minutes out of your life to make an account and sign this, but that little annoyance pales in comparison to the fact that right now, MASSIVE CORPORATIONS NOW HAVE THE POWER TO CONTROL HOW THE INTERNET IS RUN

Please, DON’T sit back and think, “Oh, everyone else will sign it. I’ll just reblog.” No. There are literally THOUSANDS of people thinking the exact same thing. There’s a reason this post has almost 20,000 notes more than the number of signatures: It’s because people are liking and reblogging without signing it.

Don’t fall victim to the bystander effect. DO take this very, very seriously. The only requirement for signing is that you are 13 years or older. You don’t have to be a U.S. citizen to sign. So please, take the two minutes. Sign the petition. It’s the only hope we have to fix this.

I know there’s a certain fatigue involved in “sky is falling they are taking away our internet!!” happening every five months, but that is because they are legit trying to take our internet every five months. They know that young people are easy to lather up, but we don’t really sustain it.

I believe I’ve been level-headed and honest about what different measures mean in the past. I was honest that CAS was mostly about piracy, and didn’t fearmonger that it was going to take all our gifsets. Will it affect tumblr? Well, tumblr is owned by yahoo now…so if yahoo can pay for top-tier access to their audience, then probably not. But what this does is treat every internet user as an audience site-owners have to pay to reach, as well as charge users for access to the internet outside the walled garden that has paid to reach US. And that is Bad News for websites like AO3 that aren’t owned by a major corporation. It’s Bad News for any kind of startup, indie site that isn’t already owned by billionaires. It’s Bad News for innovation in general, for people having their voices heard.

And when it’s harder to get your voice heard outside the corporate platform, the corporate platform can start making more rules about what you can and can’t say. It won’t violate free speech rules—after all, it’s not the government, and it’s not being treated as a crime…you just won’t have access to an audience anymore. We are being carefully corralled into the corporate arena, and anything outside that is being closed off and quarantined where no one can hear it and it can’t do any damage.

This is absolutely a fight over who controls the internet: users or corporations. And right now, the corporations are winning. It will not mean anything good for the users, I promise you that. To them we are nothing but a resource.

(via odinsblog)