The Battle for the Net—Interet Slowdown

On September 10th, sites across the web displayed an alert with a symbolic “loading” symbol (the proverbial “spinning wheel of death”) and promoted a call to action for users to push comments to the FCC, Congress, and the White House, in support of an Internet Freedom Letter circulated by Senator Angus King and others. Note: none of these tools actually slowed the sites down; they told visitors about the issue and asked them to contact lawmakers. Here’s an email I received after the event with some amazing results. Read on.

Hey!

Thanks to you, the Internet Slowdown was a resounding success. More people took action to defend net neutrality in one day than ever before in history.

Click here to check out this inspiring infographic showing what we did together on September 10th. It will seriously make your day, unless you happen to be a Comcast lobbyist.

The slowdown was so big it was impossible to ignore. Several members of Congress tweeted about how their phones were ringing off the hook, and we dominated the mainstream news headlines. More than 40,000 websites took part, including many of the most popular sites in the world, and at the peak of the day, there were more than 1,000 phone calls to congress every minute!

This changes everything. Victory is more tangible now than ever before. But we still need to bring it home. Now that we’ve shown our strength, the giant Cable companies that are lobbying tooth and nail to destroy net neutrality will redouble their efforts, and work every connection they have to keep the public’s voice from being heard in Washington, DC.

There’s only one solution: we have to fight even harder, and grow our movement even larger, and we have to be ready to battle for the net for the long haul.

So, to introduce ourselves, we’re Fight for the Future, a non-profit organization that works year round to protect the Internet and free speech. The Internet Slowdown is one of the biggest things we’ve ever done — but we also were instrumental in organizing the massive SOPA blackout. We are in this fight to win it, and we’d like to keep you informed when there are critical opportunities to take action.

Want to stay up to date? Follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, or follow our Tumblr.

[snip]

Seriously, though, if you do one thing today, check out this Infographic. It’s awesome and you deserve it.

All of us here at Fight for the Future are so proud of the Internet right now. Now more than ever it’s so clear how powerful the Internet really is as a platform for free speech, and how absolutely critical it is that we not only fight for it, but we fight to win.

With gratitude and determination,

-Tiffiniy, Holmes, Evan, Jeff, Kevin, Vasjen, and Jessica

Fight for the Future

P.S. There are several “real life” protests being organized early next week to help keep the pressure on from the Internet Slowdown.If you know folks in New York City, Philadelphia, or Washington, DC, click this link and send them the info!

P.P.S. Want to learn more about Fight for the Future and what we do? Check out this neat timeline of our past campaigns:https://fightforthefuture.org/timeline

Want more awesome more often?

* Like us on Facebook

* Follow us on Twitter

* Keep us fighting, chip in what you can.

The results were incredible!

The Battle for the Net—Interet Slowdown