Net Neutrality Isn’t the End of Silicon Valley’s Washington Problems

Silicon Valley is once again raising a cry to save net neutrality, the policy that prevents internet service providers from picking and choosing how they treat content online. Assuming it passes a Federal Communications Commission vote on Dec. 14, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposed rule change could allow internet providers to bill in the same inscrutable way they bill for cable, asking customers to buy bundles of services rather than just charging a flat fee to get online. They could also block or slow delivery of any web pages or apps they choose, shifting the balance of power to the big telecom companies and away from the likes of Google Inc., Facebook Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Netflix Inc.

On Monday, 200 tech companies—including Airbnb Inc., Twitter Inc., and Reddit Inc.—published a letter warning about the costs of the planned rollback, which was announced last week. Protests are in the works. But Pai, who in a speech Tuesday called the internet companies “a much bigger actual threat to an open internet than broadband providers,” has the votes he needs to kill the current rules, and many of the most committed pro-neutrality advocates have already conceded defeat. The “end of net neutrality as we know it,” as the venture capitalist Fred Wilson put it bleakly last week, is the latest chapter in what has been a politically disastrous year for U.S. tech companies.