One media outlet conceded that the sky didn’t fall following repeal of the regulation, but argued that this was because Net Neutrality never really left, since public scrutiny and state governments kept ISPs in line following repeal.
“And so, it is fair to say we haven’t seen a world without Net Neutrality,” Stanford Law professor Barbara van Schewick, a Net Neutrality supporter, told NPR. It’s nice to see NPR recognize the value of federalism, one of the most important checks on centralized power in the American system. Yet Schewick’s point that states have the power to regulate ISPs was curiously missing from the #savetheinternet campaigns of 2017–18. And there’s a reason for this.