Techdirt: Federal Consumer Protection Is Dead. The Fate Of Net Neutrality Warned You It Was Coming.

[ancianita]

"...In many sectors, and for many people, it’s going to be a life or death issue. No more enforced pollution standards. No more functional CDC guidance. No more real oversight of corporate fraud. No more serious policing of “unfair and deceptive” predatory company practices...
In telecom, it means pretty much turning the FCC into a mindless rubber stamp for the interests of monopolies like Comcast and AT&T (assuming they prove themselves racist and sexist enough for Trump’s liking) ...

The attack on net neutrality didn’t just kill “net neutrality.” It eviscerated the FCC’s authority to protect broadband consumers from giant, shitty telecom monopolies ...
This is the future of consumer protection across industries.
Feds abdicate their responsibility to protect workers and consumers,
regulatory agencies are steadily hollowed out like pumpkins, and
a rotating suite of states (with varying degrees of competence) try to fill the void. The companies that lobbied to dismantle stable federal oversight then complain about the “discordant nature of fractured state law.”
You’re going to be seeing this exact sequence play out a lot. And the net neutrality fight was a modern pioneer.

Under PA’s proposed law, a new chapter on “Internet Neutrality” would be added to Title 66 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, which would expand the definition of “public utilities” to include broadband ISPs. This would subject ISPs to greater regulatory oversight and prohibit practices such as blocking lawful content or unfairly throttling Internet speeds ... Pennsylvania’s law is unlikely to pass, given the state’s lawmakers [having] been extremely corrupt when it comes to pandering regional telecom giants. In most states, AT&T and Comcast’s influence is so profound, they genuinely directly write most state telecom legislation. Occasionally they’ll get busted for bribery, but generally this kind of thing has been broadly normalized...

States, facing unprecedented legal assault on everything from immigration law to healthcare, aren’t going to have the time, resources, or staff to meaningfully pick up the feds’ dropped ball on consumer protection corporate accountability (see: popular right to repair reforms). That’s going to result in untold millions of Americans getting ripped off, neglected, or in many instances, killed...."

More with hyperlinks at ...
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/04/07/federal-consumer-protection-is-dead-the-fate-of-net-neutrality-warned-you-it-was-coming/
... about how for decades, Congress (mostly the GOP, partly the FCC) were too broken and corrupt to help a complaining public.

The bad news: For We The People, it will be 3.5 long years of silent, lazy, stupid, cruel, sellout fascists allowing for-profit, privatized human impoverishment and suffering, with a measles epidemic thrown in.


The good news: With collective righteousness, we protested April 5 with "Hands Off" and will again on April 19 (the day before Easter).
If anyone is going to be the light in this darkness, it's us.