Ajit Pai: the man who could destroy the open internet

Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has a reputation as a nice guy who remembers co-workers’ birthdays and their children’s names. After he was targeted by trolls on Twitter, he took it in good humor, participating in a video where he read and responded to “mean tweets”. This is the man who could destroy the open internet.

Chairman Pai argues that if the US introduced strong net neutrality protections, authoritarian states would have an excuse to clamp down on online freedoms – in spite of the fact that authoritarian states don’t need an excuse to do so. He also says that legislation should only be applied if there’s a market failure. However, as Pai has said, “nothing is broken” and the rules were established on “hypothetical harms and hysterical prophecies of doom”.