A year after net neutrality’s demise, the Internet is faster

They said we would be neanderthals by now, savages scraping ourselves with pieces of broken pottery every time our cat videos wouldn’t buffer. But the Internet apocalypse hasn’t happened.

It has been remarkably unremarkable without net neutrality, one year after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai killed the Obama-era Internet rule that required service providers to treat each piece of content identically.

“No big changes,” reads a Wired headline atop an article explaining that “broadband providers didn’t make any drastic new moves to block or cripple the delivery of content after the FCC’s order revoking its Obama-era net neutrality protections took effect.”

Everything has been fine, in other words. Someone should check on the folks below, though. They didn’t just think that the Internet would go dark. They thought that corporations would conspire to create a digital fiefdom where access to information was throttled and people couldn’t communicate freely except by carrier pigeon.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., warned that losing net neutrality would threaten representative government.

GLAAD feared gays and lesbians would be targeted.

Planned Parenthood weighed in for whatever reason.

But people of the Internet, dry your tears! Things are better now than they have ever been. The Internet is actually faster in the United States. A new report by Ookla, a sister company to PC Magazine, shows that download speeds have increased 35.8 percent across the country. The fastest Internet is actually in Kansas City, Mo., where Google Fiber burns through the wires.

So put down the broken shards of ceramic. Net neutrality is dead. Everyone is fine. Long live the Internet.