lioness–hart:

Note: I am NOT a tech or security expert, so please don’t take this as an instruction manual or gospel. I’m an avid
researcher of authoritarian regimes, however, and I’ve lived in a place without net neutrality
before.

Please don’t let this
panic you. Nothing is going to come crashing down overnight. But while Ajit Pai’s
decision is making its way through the courts and fighting all the battles it
has to fight from opposition, don’t think the telecomm companies will spend
this time kindly sitting on their hands waiting for an official call to be
made. Chances are slim they’ll throw up paywalls immediately, but I feel fairly
certain they’ll take quiet, subtle steps to begin censoring/suppressing content
they don’t like. HOWEVER. I can’t accurately predict what will happen to our
internet when, so this list is me erring VASTLY on the side of caution.

So, to that end:

1) Get a VPN, which you should have had anyway.
This won’t save you from paywalls if they’re put up, but if, down the line, the
government decides to start censoring critical voices, they’re going to use
your IP address to track you. A VPN hides your IP address. VPNs are by no means
bulletproof, but they’re better than nothing. You can get some for free on the
App Store or Google Play, but I recommend finding one you trust and paying for
it. These tend to be more robust, and based outside the US, making them harder
for ISPs and the government to hack into. My personal favorite is TunnelBear.
It’s super easy to use, but not the very cheapest. It supports 5 connections, so
one VPN is enough for two people’s devices usually.

2) **If you
are an activist in a progressive/resistance group, I would STRONGLY urge you to
exchange phone numbers and possibly physical addresses with your colleagues. Your
Facebook groups are probably reasonably safe for now, but any standalone
websites will likely be shoved into slow lanes or blocked altogether. This will
require you to change the way you meet and conduct business. Make a phone tree
for urgent alerts. ISPs have blocked emails and texts from and between progressive
activist groups despite current net neutrality rules, and I have every reason
to believe they’ll do it more now that these rules are gone. The way we resist will change fundamentally
if our resources on the internet are blocked or restricted. We HAVE to be
prepared for this. This is the one thing you may kind of want to panic about, because without net neutrality, we will not have another Doug-Jones-in-Alabama situation. We will be suppressed. We will be silenced. The internet is our last bastion of mostly-free and equal speech. We MUST be prepared to engage other channels of communication FAST if the total repeal of net neutrality rules is successful. Make plans NOW so you’re not caught with your ass out if shit goes south.

3) Torrent/ download everything you’re going to
torrent nowish. ISPs—who are often co-owners or
stockholders in entertainment companies—won’t tolerate torrent sites for long. Also
please use a VPN while you torrent.

4) Consider backing up/downloading to your personal
hard drive any music you listen to on websites like Spotify, Soundcloud or
8tracks. These will most likely be behind paywalls if the ISPs decide to play
it that way. Even if you can afford to pay for access, the artists may not be
able to afford to keep their material up or they may be censored, so it may
eventually disappear. Be prepared for this possibility.

5) Same story with websites like AO3, fanfiction.net,
Medium, Deviantart, and any other platform on which you upload your and access
others’ creative content for free. I’m
not saying to go on a downloading binge RIGHT NOW, but just be prepared for
changes and definitely make sure you have backups of your own work.

6) Websites where your favorite creators sell their
wares, like Redbubble and Society6, etc., will also experience changes. If you
want to help these creators out, consider pledging their Patreons or donating
to them directly. More of their money will be going to just maintaining their
internet presence if paywalls go up.

7) Download/ print off the Indivisible Guide. Read it often.

8) Download/print this article. Read it often.

9) Download/print this article too. Read it often. Also follow Sarah on Twitter. I’ve said this before, but she’s half the
reason I’m as savvy an activist as I am. Her book, The View from Flyover Country, is definitely worth
your money and time. Sarah has been eerily prescient in her predictions of how
this year would play out, and her insights are brutal but necessary.  

10) Follow Amy Siskind on
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and visit her Weekly List website. She
maintains a weekly list of everything that’s happened politically since
January. Sarah Kendzior advised us to keep a list of everything that changes
around us, so we’ll remember what used to be normal, and how normal has been
warped. Amy’s lists are resource-dense and sometimes harrowing to read, but
they are a necessary archive of every single thing the Trump administration
doesn’t want you to remember and what the ISPs will likely censor sooner rather than later. **She
just put up a print version of the list for preorder on Amazon, which I STRONGLY
recommend you purchase if you can afford it.

11) If you are a student, get
as many resources off the internet and onto your hard drive as you can. There
are several websites up currently where you can download .pdfs of textbooks.
There are a few posts on this website that list them all, but I can’t remember
the tags I used for when I reblogged, so if someone else has those posts in
easy reach, please add a link.

12) If you live with your
parents and you don’t want them finding out what social media websites you use,
don’t panic just yet. The price plans for internet service I’ve experienced don’t
work quite like that. You pay a single monthly price for a social media plan,
which includes several platforms. Chances are your parents use Facebook, so if they want to and can purchase a “social media” plan to use FB, sites like Snapchat and
Tumblr and Twitter will most likely already be included, so you won’t have to out yourself
by asking for them. The company did not ask for any personal information like
my social media handles or my profile information. Hopefully American ISPs won’t
do this. They shouldn’t, because they already collect enough metadata on you to
not really need it. So unless your parents go through the onerous process of
requesting records (if these are even available to them), they won’t be able to
scroll through an hourly log of every website you access and when and what you
post.

13) KEEP RESISTING. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet. If we all give up and
pretend she has, we’ll squander our chances to take back what’s ours. The way I see it, we have two choices: to fight to keep what
we have, or to fight to get it back. Choice #1 has always been easier. Know
that there is an army of pissed off people right here alongside you, including
a majority of Republican voters.

Contact your Congressfolks and ask them to support and pass HR4585, the “Save Net Neutrality” bill. It’s not as good as the FCC’s protections, but it’s better than nothing.

Also, remember to take a step back and allow yourself to
turn off from this for a little while. This from someone who’s suffered from
anxiety since I was a kid. So I get how
terrifying and exhausting it is just thinking about all the ways this could
fuck up our lives. Tumblr is really good at manufacturing moral outrage, and
this definitely IS something to be outraged about, but the posts that forecast
immediate and total doom for all internet users are flat out wrong and you
shouldn’t listen to them. 

My askbox and messages are always open if you want to reach
out.