This my own personal take on net neutrality. Let me know your thoughts on it.
The essence of net neutrality seems to be that the consumers (and not the ISPs) decide what websites to access. There is one internet and no matter who your ISP is, you access whatever apps and websites you want to access without any sort of prioritisation.
That being said, I think net neutrality questions the whole idea of a competitive market. The Internet companies did the hard work to build their infrastructure and I believe, they can choose to cut a deal with a particular company like Facebook and prioritise it over say Google. Facebook would load faster than Google on say Verizon, as compared to AT&T. Why is this wrong? It's pure business.
Edit: My own personal musing. Just to get a better understanding of the whole net neutrality argument.
The way I see it, the internet is like a road system. It's a conduit to enable a user to connect from point a to point b. While it is true that some road systems have tolls and some have fast lanes, there's nothing at all that prevents a slower vehicle from arriving at their destination. Based on things I'm reading, not having net neutrality opens up the way for ISPs to start charging to access specific sites.
For example, you want Netflix and Hulu? Fine, buy package A, which includes both services. But, package B only includes access to Netflix, but you can forget about Hulu.
I don't know about the rest of you, but my monthly internet service is already very expensive. If I have to pay a cover charge just to access specific sites, I would not be happy at all.
A point I still have not seen considered by anyone in the Internet, like if I am the only one concerned about this:
Without Net Neutrality ISPs are allowed to favourite whomever they want. This also means that they may slow down HTTPS and favour HTTP.
While it looks like an extreme scenario, I wouldn't consider this among the less probable. ISPs are known to do obscene things with our connections and data, not even counting the Netflix ransom.
They could potentially force a downgrade to HTTP. Why you may ask? With plain HTTP connections they get the possibility of injecting code into websites they do not control (directly). This means that your ISP may inject advertisements, tracking scripts, malwares and god knows what into your daily routine.
This may also be incited by "higher autorities", police, FBI, NSA, The President. They would benefit a rollback to HTTP by all means, allowing tracking, censorship and identity profiling.
Is this the web you're asking for?
The main argument here is that smaller competition without the funds cannot compete anymore, ultimately leading to few monopolistic companies. You will only have Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter. There is no place for things like startups anymore, because the usage of a small/new/unknown service provider now has even more downsides and getting people to use a new idea will become ever more difficult. On the other hand, since they have the monopol, big companies will change... and you won't like those changes*.
Take a look at the whole discussion from the perspective of a FOSS developer (which you probably are). Why should anyone use your FOSS software, if it is very slow compared to one of the giants, which also doesn't take money. No matter how good and disruptive your product is, you stand no chance. Capitalism sure has its merits, but anyone without money is at a severe disadvantage, if neutrality isn't preserved.
In your case: think Hashnode. SO probably has more funds than Hashnode. So they can strike a deal with the ISPs in the US and everyone will have the same access speed as before. Hashnode might not be able to afford the high prices, so it will be throttled and we will all have a really slow HN experience, even though you optimized Hashnode to be very fast. People in the US might decide to leave HN, because it is annoying to always wait for every little thing to be transmitted. What would your sponsors say if you lost many people in the US?
Maybe it's also a thing of attitude. Maybe I watch too much Star Trek. Imho, the way of the USA is not right. They are capitalistic. Because of that, many people have to suffer. Of course, there are companies which try to act differently by providing lots of free services and software, like Google does (AOSP doesn't even take your personal data as compensation!). I think, trading personal information still is wrong, however it at least enables more people access to those products and services. I think, that's a good direction and through awareness and improvements in the security sector leads to a brighter tomorrow.
I don't see a future for the way we misuse money today, but setting up a new system will probably take decades to centuries, given that important leaders start even thinking about it.
\* (Let's use Intel as an example for what happens to monopoles. Over the last couple of years, their CPUs became absurdly expensive, while at the same time they didn't bring out any new development at all. The production companies shrank the die size and Intel added a few more PCIe lanes. That's the sum of what they managed to deliver while AMD was fighting for survival. I am still on an Ivy Bridge and I don't see any reason why I should switch to a current Intel chip (Kaby Lake) other than burning money. The extensions are the same, the core count is the same, and with OC, the clock speed is better than that of a current stock CPU. IPC have increased slightly, but that's marginal and rather sad for all the time which passed. Comparing my office PC (Skylake) to my home computer, I don't feel any difference in speed)