Cloud? Mall? Why internet metaphors matter in net neutrality debate

Accompanying nearly every debate over internet policy is a host of conflicting metaphors over what the internet actually is.

“It’s not a big truck,” Sen. Ted Stevens (R) of Alaska famously remarked during a 2006 Senate debate over net neutrality; rather, he explained, not entirely implausibly, “it’s a series of tubes.” 

More than 11 years later, during a November 2017 House antitrust hearing on the same topic, Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California compared the internet to a Safeway supermarket that leases its end-cap displays to soda companies, and to a magazine that charges advertisers more money for the back cover. Meanwhile, proponents of net neutrality warn of “throttling,” “fast