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lioness–hart:
Note: I am NOT a tech or security expert, so please don’t take this as an instruction manual or gospel. I’m an avid researcher of authoritarian regimes, however, and I’ve lived in a place without net neutrality before.
Please don’t let this panic you. Nothing is going to come crashing down overnight. But while Ajit Pai’s decision is making its way through the courts and fighting all the battles it has to fight from opposition, don’t think the telecomm companies will spend this time kindly sitting on their hands waiting for an official call to be made. Chances are slim they’ll throw up paywalls immediately, but I feel fairly certain they’ll take quiet, subtle steps to begin censoring/suppressing content they don’t like. HOWEVER. I can’t accurately predict what will happen to our internet when, so this list is me erring VASTLY on the side of caution.
So, to that end:
1) Get a VPN, which you should have had anyway. This won’t save you from paywalls if they’re put up, but if, down the line, the government decides to start censoring critical voices, they’re going to use your IP address to track you. A VPN hides your IP address. VPNs are by no means bulletproof, but they’re better than nothing. You can get some for free on the App Store or Google Play, but I recommend finding one you trust and paying for it. These tend to be more robust, and based outside the US, making them harder for ISPs and the government to hack into. My personal favorite is TunnelBear. It’s super easy to use, but not the very cheapest. It supports 5 connections, so one VPN is enough for two people’s devices usually.
2) **If you are an activist in a progressive/resistance group, I would STRONGLY urge you to exchange phone numbers and possibly physical addresses with your colleagues. Your Facebook groups are probably reasonably safe for now, but any standalone websites will likely be shoved into slow lanes or blocked altogether. This will require you to change the way you meet and conduct business. Make a phone tree for urgent alerts. ISPs have blocked emails and texts from and between progressive activist groups despite current net neutrality rules, and I have every reason to believe they’ll do it more now that these rules are gone. The way we resist will change fundamentally if our resources on the internet are blocked or restricted. We HAVE to be prepared for this. This is the one thing you may kind of want to panic about, because without net neutrality, we will not have another Doug-Jones-in-Alabama situation. We will be suppressed. We will be silenced. The internet is our last bastion of mostly-free and equal speech. We MUST be prepared to engage other channels of communication FAST if the total repeal of net neutrality rules is successful. Make plans NOW so you’re not caught with your ass out if shit goes south.
3) Torrent/ download everything you’re going to torrent nowish. ISPs—who are often co-owners or stockholders in entertainment companies—won’t tolerate torrent sites for long. Also please use a VPN while you torrent.
4) Consider backing up/downloading to your personal hard drive any music you listen to on websites like Spotify, Soundcloud or 8tracks. These will most likely be behind paywalls if the ISPs decide to play it that way. Even if you can afford to pay for access, the artists may not be able to afford to keep their material up or they may be censored, so it may eventually disappear. Be prepared for this possibility.
5) Same story with websites like AO3, fanfiction.net, Medium, Deviantart, and any other platform on which you upload your and access others’ creative content for free. I’m not saying to go on a downloading binge RIGHT NOW, but just be prepared for changes and definitely make sure you have backups of your own work.
6) Websites where your favorite creators sell their wares, like Redbubble and Society6, etc., will also experience changes. If you want to help these creators out, consider pledging their Patreons or donating to them directly. More of their money will be going to just maintaining their internet presence if paywalls go up.
7) Download/ print off the Indivisible Guide. Read it often.
8) Download/print this article. Read it often.
9) Download/print this article too. Read it often. Also follow Sarah on Twitter. I’ve said this before, but she’s half the reason I’m as savvy an activist as I am. Her book, The View from Flyover Country, is definitely worth your money and time. Sarah has been eerily prescient in her predictions of how this year would play out, and her insights are brutal but necessary.
10) Follow Amy Siskind on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and visit her Weekly List website. She maintains a weekly list of everything that’s happened politically since January. Sarah Kendzior advised us to keep a list of everything that changes around us, so we’ll remember what used to be normal, and how normal has been warped. Amy’s lists are resource-dense and sometimes harrowing to read, but they are a necessary archive of every single thing the Trump administration doesn’t want you to remember and what the ISPs will likely censor sooner rather than later. **She just put up a print version of the list for preorder on Amazon, which I STRONGLY recommend you purchase if you can afford it.
11) If you are a student, get as many resources off the internet and onto your hard drive as you can. There are several websites up currently where you can download .pdfs of textbooks. There are a few posts on this website that list them all, but I can’t remember the tags I used for when I reblogged, so if someone else has those posts in easy reach, please add a link.
12) If you live with your parents and you don’t want them finding out what social media websites you use, don’t panic just yet. The price plans for internet service I’ve experienced don’t work quite like that. You pay a single monthly price for a social media plan, which includes several platforms. Chances are your parents use Facebook, so if they want to and can purchase a “social media” plan to use FB, sites like Snapchat and Tumblr and Twitter will most likely already be included, so you won’t have to out yourself by asking for them. The company did not ask for any personal information like my social media handles or my profile information. Hopefully American ISPs won’t do this. They shouldn’t, because they already collect enough metadata on you to not really need it. So unless your parents go through the onerous process of requesting records (if these are even available to them), they won’t be able to scroll through an hourly log of every website you access and when and what you post.
13) KEEP RESISTING. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet. If we all give up and pretend she has, we’ll squander our chances to take back what’s ours. The way I see it, we have two choices: to fight to keep what we have, or to fight to get it back. Choice #1 has always been easier. Know that there is an army of pissed off people right here alongside you, including a majority of Republican voters.
Contact your Congressfolks and ask them to support and pass HR4585, the “Save Net Neutrality” bill. It’s not as good as the FCC’s protections, but it’s better than nothing.
Also, remember to take a step back and allow yourself to turn off from this for a little while. This from someone who’s suffered from anxiety since I was a kid. So I get how terrifying and exhausting it is just thinking about all the ways this could fuck up our lives. Tumblr is really good at manufacturing moral outrage, and this definitely IS something to be outraged about, but the posts that forecast immediate and total doom for all internet users are flat out wrong and you shouldn’t listen to them.
My askbox and messages are always open if you want to reach out.
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