Internet Slowdown Day pushes FCC net neutrality comments to 1.7 million

Now that the Internet Slowdown has let off the brakes, and the site of the battle for the net has cleared, you might be interested in just how many regular people told people in power that they want net neutrality. We’ve got the stats.

• According to Fight for the Future, one of the principal organizers of the protest, their protest site, combined with efforts with Tumblr, dropped for a whopping 728,096 comments to the Federal Communications Commission, practically all of them from Wednesday, when the protest went live.
• The protest garnered more than 300,000 phone calls to the FCC, by FFTF’s most current count.
• More than 10,000 sites ended up displaying the Internet slowdown widget or banner, including heavy-hitters like Reddit, Foursquare, Vimeo, Netflix, and PornHub.
• One Facebook explanation of the protest was shared over 1 million times.
• Google included its own net neutrality page, too, breaking a years-long silence on the topic, and posted a “take action” message. The Internet giant declined to share exact figures, but told the Daily Dot that “thousands of people” signed up for their Take Action list.
• Yes, of course, the protesters did briefly crash the FCC website.
• The FCC itself told the Daily Dot that as of Thursday morning, it had received 1,750,435 comments on net neutrality, finally surpassing the approximately 1.4 million complaints it saw from when a traumatized, football-loving America briefly witnessed Janet Jackson in a state of moderate undress during Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004.
• Perhaps most impressive is how many members of Congress took note. As noted by Politico, at least eight engaged in one way or another, either putting the widget on their personal site, changing their avatar to the buffering logo for the day, blogging about it, or at least tweeting their support. They are: Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Reps. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.). Sen. Jeff Merkley, weirdly, tweetd his support, then deleted it.

If you missed out on the fun, you’ve still got until Monday to email openinternet@fcc.gov, when the FCC finally plans to stop taking listening and start deliberating.

Photo by geishaboy500/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Fernando Alfonso III