Ajit Pai: the man who could destroy the open internet
The FCC chairman leading net neutrality rollback is a former Verizon employee and whose views on regulation echo those of broadband companies
Ajit Pai on Capitol Hill in Washington. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has a reputation as a nice guy who remembers co-workers’ birthdays and their children’s names.
After he was targeted by trolls on Twitter, he took it in good humor, participating in a video where he read and responded to “mean tweets”.
This is the man who coulddestroy the open internet. Pai, a 44-year-old Republican attorney, is spearheading the Trump administration’s regulatory rollback of net neutrality protections.
Net neutrality, which some have described as the “first amendment of the internet”, is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) treat everyone’s data equally – whether that’s an email from your mother, an episode of House of Cards on Netflix or a bank transfer. It means that cable ISPs such as Comcast, AT&T or Verizon don’t get to choose which data is sent more quickly and which sites get blocked or throttled based on which content providers pay a premium.