This morning, the FCC will vote to overturn the net neutrality rules that Etsy, our sellers, and our many allies fought so hard to win back in 2014 and 2015. Today is a sad day for those of us who fought for the strong net neutrality protections that enable millions of microbusinesses to start and grow online.
As our CEO Josh Silverman wrote yesterday in this op-ed, “1.9 million Etsy sellers and 29.6 million small businesses…depend on the open internet to compete with much larger, more established brands. Nine out of ten of our sellers are women, and most are running businesses out of their homes, many of them in rural communities. These are the people who stand to lose the most when the FCC votes to overturn net neutrality protections this week. Under the FCC’s new proposal, businesses that can’t pay off big cable companies could find themselves in the internet slow lane or blocked altogether.”
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