he mentioned that, while he respected and was happy with battleforthenet because they are doing their best to express their opinion as anyone with a strong opinion on something should, he isn't happy with how they aren't explaining both sides of the issue. he said they're pushing a heavy left narrative. he said he wants people to understand that its not just republicans who have voted to appeal but its democrats voting to appeal too. he thinks battleforthenet has created an aura of fear with their design:
black background, big red and white parapraphs talking about how the FCC is "gutting net rules for new fees, throttling, and censorship". and also asking people to spread images like:
as a graphic designer, i can understand how hard wording like this could lead someone to believe its intimidating.
That's a completely unreasonable position for him to take. I'm sorry but it's just true, and let me explain exactly why in detail:
1. battleforthenet only states pure facts on their website. The closest they
ever come to stating an opinion is the following:
"They are Team Cable. They want to end net neutrality, to control & tax the Internet."
Even this, however, is true. It's an objective fact that they want to end net neutrality, and that to end net neutrality gives them the power to control and tax what you are able to see on the internet. In fact, for them to go and encourage the FCC to put back net neutrality (and have it work) would actually be against the law for them, as the board of directors and the CEO of these telecom companies have a legally binding fiduciary duty to do everything in their power to make more profit. If they were to go back on that, they'd be sued by shareholders for massive amounts of money (equal to the amount of money that could have been made had they not put Net Neutrality back in).
2. I 100% support looking at both sides of an argument. I say that because almost universally, there is a sense in which opposition to (almost) any particular idea can be reasonable. There can be downsides, and people, no matter how strange it is, could prioritize those downsides over the upsides. However we need to take this in context. This idea of "looking at both sides" is for an individual trying to form an opinion on a subject, as a sort of internal debate.
In the context of just an individual reading around on the internet by themselves, I agree. But battleforthenet is an activism site, trying to prevent the permanent repeal of Net Neutrality, not a debate website. Sure, one could argue that including common counterarguments and then showing how they're false would be beneficial for a few people who're trying to make up their minds, but that wouldn't satiate your representative (as it's still presenting one side as fact), and it would merely serve to distract others who have already made up their minds from the fact that not having Net Neutrality
truly is a net negative on any capitalist society from both a market perspective and a consumer perspective. They're not being disingenuous by not including common counterarguments.
3. There's no argument to be had over whether their intention is
really to revoke net neutrality itself. Sure, one could reasonably(ish) argue that maybe, for some contrived reason they don't like the wording of the current Net Neutrality regulation. That's fine (even though I strongly disagree with it), but what's not fine is the fact that the FCC's intention is not to fix that for you. They're not trying to improve it, they're trying to repeal it and never have it come back again.
Their intention really is to get rid of Net Neutrality itself.4. The design of the website isn't "scary," nor is it intended to be. It's a predominantly white, light blue & royal blue theme with red emphasized text (chosen because of its strong, yet not ugly looking contrast with the royal blue background) in order to catch the users attention for key points. All of the emphasized text, including the "good" text that's filled with optimism for the future of the internet and the "bad" describing the urgent current situation, is red. Two of the four ISP company logos already have red in them anyway, there's no reason to believe that it's anything other than a small edit to make the logos fit in with the style of the website.
Given these facts, all the steps they've taken have been entirely reasonable, and I believe most would argue necessary in order to get the public motivated towards fighting this. For them to have satisfied your representative would have required basically turning it into a "change my mind" website, with false counterarguments that distract from the reality of the situation and needlessly changing the design of the website.
