https://medium.com/@Wikimedia/net-neutrality-access-to-knowledge-e5e399a362ea >Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published a proposal to deregulate Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and to eliminate the U.S. net neutrality rules. After the agency announced its vision for the internet earlier this year, we submitted a letter to the Commission, urging it to keep the Open Internet rules in place. Now that the drastic extent of this sweeping deregulation has been communicated, we want to explain why net neutrality matters for Wikipedia and for free knowledge in general. >Net neutrality is essential to the preservation of an open internet for the United States and around the world. The FCC’s net neutrality rules protect internet users’ access to the internet’s wealth of information and their ability to collaborate via the internet by specifically prohibiting ISPs from discriminating among websites or applications by blocking or slowing some, or prioritizing traffic from others in exchange for a fee. They help ensure that everyone with an internet connection can connect to the services, applications, and content of their choice and that ISPs do not abuse their market power or local monopoly position to restrict the free and open flow of information. This openness is an important prerequisite for the Wikimedia Foundation to further its mission to “empower and engage people to collect and develop educational content and to share it globally” — Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects are built by thousands of volunteers who collaborate to edit articles in real time and contribute and curate images and data. To do so, they need to be able to freely and equally connect to the Wikimedia websites. In addition, they need to able to read original and verifiable sources online with information about the topic to be included in Wikipedia.