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So... What happened with net neutrality? It's been 5 years since the FCC voted to repeal it in 2017. Net neutrality supporters promised a dystopia where small businesses and individuals are throttled by ISPs, and consumers have to pay for each website separately.
As far as I can tell... That didn't happen? Nothing happened? Did it even matter? I must be missing something, why would anyone bother trying to repeal or keep net neutrality if it doesn't make a difference? Biden apparently made an executive order in July 2021 asking the FCC to restore net neutrality, but they haven't done it. The Wikipedia article doesn't have much on what happened after 2017 other than legal developments (on the national level, there were two failed congressional laws and a failed lawsuit by Mozilla to restore net neutrality).
Short answer is that that it was a manufactured controversy from the start that was dropped the moment it became clear that it's utility as a political weapon against the sitting administration was limited.
I agree that there are some people who treated it this way, but then why would Pai/Trump bother repealing it, if that's all it was? Why spend their political capital on this, if it doesn't make a difference?
Other users have covered the reasons for repeal better than I would, and I don't think it actually cost Trump or the FCC much if any capital.
The FAANG companies tried to use their bully pulpit to force the FCC and ISPs to heel but aside from a lot of sound and fury on sites like reddit and hackernews their efforts didn't amount to all that much.
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There’s an idea bumping around in my head about how “political capital” doesn’t mean “currency.” Something like—Capital is an investment. Trump et al. weren’t spending (burning) their capital because everything was already partisan enough. The outrage was driven by Democrats who already 1) hated his guts and 2) distrusted corporations, so they didn’t get much more traction from an investment in corporate power.
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