New York to boycott ISPs that don’t adhere to net neutrality, de Blasio announces at SXSW

Mayor Bill de Blasio led mayors from 11 other cities in launching a municipal boycott of internet service providers which don’t respect the norms of net neutrality. The mayor made the announcement on a panel with other mayors Sunday at the tech and culture conference SXSW in Austin, Texas.

The principles of the boycott can be found at mayorsfornetneutrality.org, which encourages mayors from around the country to sign on.

“Cities have come to rely on the internet as an open medium with the assurance that a service provider will deliver a resident’s request for government content just the same as they deliver any other content,” according to the site. “The Federal Communications Commission’s recent repeal of its Open Internet order violates that principle. Cities cannot allow private internet service providers to be the gatekeeper between our residents and the local government services on which they depend every day.”

Mayors across the country are joining together to keep the internet open for all — 12 cities are already on board. #NetNeutrality #SXSW https://t.co/c8BTl1g7G8

— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) March 11, 2018

To that end, the site asks cities to pledge to six policy points, the first among them being that cities “Procure applicable internet services from companies that do not block, throttle, or provide paid prioritization of content.”

So far, the following cities have signed on: Austin, Portland, San Antonio, Kansas City, San Francisco, Baltimore, San Jose, Minneapolis, Madison, Wis., Putnam, Conn., and Santa Cruz County, Calif.