The internet as we know it is about to change drastically.

Net neutrality — the standard that internet service providers, or ISPs, must treat all traffic equally — was repealed Thursday in a party-line vote by the Federal Communications Commission in Washington. FCC chair Ajit Pai, flanked by two Republican allies, has a majority on the commission.

Commercial ISPs like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon will be free to block content, throttle users’ internet use, and prioritize their own services at the expense of competitors’. It’s a wide-reaching and controversial issue that some have called one of the “biggest corporate giveaways in history.”

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Eric Allen Been: Why should ordinary people care about net neutrality, which can seem very complicated?

Barbara van Schewick: The internet isn’t a specialized service for geeks anymore. It’s long become woven into everyone’s daily lives and every sector of the economy. Net neutrality is the secret sauce that has made the internet awesome. It ensures that we, not Comcast or Verizon, get to choose what content we read, what websites we go to, and what services we use on the internet.

That’s been the case since the beginning of the internet in the US, and it has stayed that way because the FCC, under the leadership of Democrats and Republicans alike, ensured that the companies we pay to get online could not interfere with the free markets and free marketplaces of ideas.

Pai’s proposal will change that. It will allow broadband providers to block websites on content grounds, decide which apps we can use, charge online services simply to reach subscribers at all, create fast lanes that favor companies and speakers with deep pockets, and make it more expensive for local and niche sites to reach readers.

Americans understand this. That’s why Pai’s move to abolish net neutrality protections that date [to] long before 2015 has led to such a loud and sustained outcry by Americans of all political affiliations. Americans filed millions of comments with the FCC, even more than were filed in 2014. Startups, small businesses, investors, faith groups, musicians, and community activists have filed comments, held rallies, written op-eds, and called and met with their members of Congress. Americans have placed more than 1 million calls to Congress urging that the protections stay in place, and that’s just through BattleForTheNet.com alone.