When the Federal Communication Commission asked the public what it thought about its net neutrality rules in 2017, the comments flooded in--including millions submitted under fake names by bot-comment-generators. These missives added no value and raised concerns that people's identities were being stolen. Now everyone from Congressional Republicans to the New York State Attorney General have their sights set on shutting down the bots. But anxiety about the risks of computer-generated comments might go too far. We don't want to allow overblown fears to squelch the development of future killer apps that could improve public participation in regulatory decision making.

While America struggles to retain net neutrality protections on a piecemeal state-by-state level, India just adopted its own seemingly-strong set of rules that largely ban artificial slowing or blocking of content. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) proposed the rules back in November, and the country's official Telecommunications Commission (TC) approved them today, resolving a movement to update internet protections that began in 2015. From today onward, ISPs cannot perform actions involving "blocking, degrading, slowing down or granting preferential speeds or treatment to any content," per The Wire's report. Providers are also prohibited from providing zero-rated content. These include remote surgery or autonomous vehicles, which Sundarajan compared to laws allowing ambulances to ignore traffic rules.

Would you pay extra for Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube? That's how they do it in England, reports Jefferson Graham. Could that happen here too, in the wake of the relaxed FCC Net Neutrality rules? LOS ANGELES -- Like turning on lights and making phone calls, we consider it a right that we can watch free entertainment on YouTube, post travel photos on Facebook and listen to online music. After all, we treat Internet providers another utility, just like the electric or phone company, with our monthly service fees.

With federal regulators poised to repeal net neutrality rules this week, your internet service provider would be allowed to speed up delivery of some online content to your home or phone. Whether those fast lanes are coming, and what they ultimately deliver for Americans, is unclear. The concept, known as paid prioritization, involves a telecommunications company charging an additional fee to transport a video stream or other content at a higher speed through its network. The fee would most likely come from deals struck with websites such as Netflix willing to pay for a competitive advantage over an online rival. Or the fee could be charged to a company providing services that require reliably fast connections, such as self-driving vehicles or remote health monitoring of people with serious illnesses.