Internet Slowdown Day

Internet Slowdown Day

Part of a series on Net Neutrality. [View Related Entries]

Updated Apr 18, 2019 at 10:25AM EDT by 3kole5.

Added Sep 04, 2014 at 03:54PM EDT by Molly Horan.

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Overview

Internet Slowdown Day refers to an online protest in support of net neutrality to be held on September 10th, 2014. Participating websites and blogs can put a spinning loading icon on their webpage, which urge their audience to speak out in favor of Net Neutrality.

Background

On September 3rd, 2014, Fight for the Future[3] published a press release on their Tumblr account[4] announcing the creation of Internet Slow Day, to be held on September 10th, to allow activists to let the FCC know they are for Net Neutrality and against the slow down of certain sites destroying Net Neutrality would create. It explained:

"On Wednesday, a diverse range of public interest groups representing more than 10 million people announced a day of mass online mobilization on Sept. 10 in support of Net Neutrality. On that day, numerous websites, social networks, online activism organizations and others will call on their members to contact Washington and demand real Net Neutrality protections. (Sites will employ icons that symbolize a slower Internet, but will not actually load more slowly.)"


This date comes five days before the September 15th, deadline for the public to comment to the FCC about their impending decision about Net Neutrality. The release directed users to Battle For the Net[1], where they can find the code for the loading widgets and explanation of their message that will explain to their visitors why they are participating in the Internet Slowdown Day. The press release also included a list of other free press activist groups and organizations that have joined the protest.

"The American Civil Liberties Union, Common Cause, Center for Media Justice, Color of Change, DailyKos, Demand Progress, Democracy for America, Democrats.com, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Engine Advocacy, Fight for the Future, FireDogLake, Free Press Action Fund, Future of Music Coalition, Greenpeace USA, Harry Potter Alliance, Media Alliance, MoveOn, National Hispanic Media Coalition, OpenMedia, Popular Resistance, Presente, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Progressives United, the Other 98%, RootsAction, Rootstrikers, SumOfUs, Voqal, Women, Action & the Media"


Notable Developments

News Media Coverage

On September 3rd, Seattle Pi[6] published an article titled "The Internet won’t really slow down on ‘Internet Slowdown Day’" which explained the call to action and how to participate. On September 4th, Wired[5] published an op-ed titled "Etsy CEO to Businesses: If Net Neutrality Perishes, We Will Too" in which Etsy CEO explains and expresses support for the Internet Slow Down. It was covered by several other sites the same day including TIME[7] and RT.[8] The same day The Daily Dot[9] reported several large websites and companies would be participating including Kickstarter, Foursquare and Reddit.

Participants

Impact

Despite the name of the protest hinting at a concerted effort to actually slow down the speed of the Internet for the masses, the day-long event was solely focused on reaching out to the local legislators and contacting the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC). By the end of the day, the organizers[10] estimated that more than 40,000 websites and over 2 million visitors had participated in the protest, yielding more than 2.3 million petition e-mails and over 312,000 phone calls to the Congress, as well as nearly 1.5 million e-mails to the FCC, which set a new record for the highest volume of comments ever submitted to the federal agency, surpassing the previous record volume of 1.4 million comments on Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction during her 2004 Super Bowl halftime show.[11]


2,039,500 312,171 2,332,092 777,364 4.7 million TOOK ACTION CALLS MADE EMAILS SENT TO CONGRESS COMMENTS FILED TO THE FCC COMMENTS FILED SINCE MARCH 1 し100 900 700 600 300 100 Completed PEAKED AT 1000 CALLS PER MINUTE OVER 1,120,000 FACEBOOK SHARES OVER 40,000 SITES PARTICIPATED!

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