Thursday, January 25, 2018

Burger King's new ad "Whopper Neutrality" shows how the world would be without fairness in the burger space

Yesterday, Burger King released a joke advertisement (embedded below) demonstrating what the effects of repealing net neutrality would look like if it affected the world of burgers at their restaurants.

From the description of their video, they write "The repeal of Net Neutrality is a hot topic in America, but it can be very difficult to understand. That’s why the BURGER KING® brand created WHOPPER® Neutrality, a social experiment that explains the effects of the repeal of Net Neutrality by putting it in terms anyone can understand: A WHOPPER® sandwich."

As a follower of the net neutrality scene (although I don't recall ever writing about it here, I've talked about it extensively on Techtronix/IRC), I can appreciate the effort BK has put here into getting the average joe to truly understand exactly what cancer can and will arise when companies are allowed to start playing favorites, among other things.

According to BK, the people in the video were actual guests as well! I'm glad they went that route because it shows what the real reactions are for people who figure out what is going on. One guy at 2:15 even gets frustrated and snatches his bag out of the front counterperson's hand, unable to wait and believed that he was "being taken advantage of, in a sense."

To the guy in a light blue jacket: you were being taken advantage of, millions of other people will be taken advantage of just like you if these net neutrality rules allowed to be dissolved. Net neutrality makes all the sense in the world but unfortunately has turned into a political issue when there are no politics about it. It's all about keeping the internet fair to everyone.



For those who want to keep up with the net neutrality topic, I recommend keeping an eye on Battle For The Net, /r/KeepOurNetFree, and keeping an eye on aggregated news from Bing and Google, remembering to be wary of media outlets and who owns them, as they may have conflicts of interest if they are owned by Comcast, for example.