In the heady days of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, many trumpeted the emancipatory potential of the internet. They spoke of networks and hive minds, crowdsourced revolution and livestreamed liberation. But the internet, like everything else, is subject to market discipline and vulnerable to privatization — and with each new victory for the American telecommunications oligopoly, that digital optimism fades further from view.

Last week, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai announced that his agency will be repealing the hard-won net neutrality protections instituted in 2015 by the Obama administration. To understand what net neutrality is and why it matters for the Left, Jacobin’s Meagan Day spoke to Victor Pickard, associate professor of communication at the University Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School, whose research focuses on internet policy and the political economy of media.