Late-Night Hosts Poke Fun at FCC's Net Neutrality Vote

7:21 PM PST 12/14/2017 by Lauren Huff

Screengrab/Late Night with Seth Meyers
'Late Night with Seth Meyers'

"The only thing that should slow your internet speed is the number of people also sitting at Starbucks working on their screenplays."

The Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal net neutrality protections on Thursday, and late-night television had a lot to say about it. 

"Uh, anybody here use the internet?" The Late Show's Stephen Colbert asked his audience. "It's a sad day for us web-ka-teers, us internauts," he said, while explaining that the move would repeal regulations that prevented internet providers from blocking certain websites or slowing down user's data. "And that's wrong. The only thing that should slow your internet speed is the number of people also sitting at Starbucks working on their screenplays," he joked.

"So now, a big player like Google could make their site load faster than a smaller player like Etsy," he explained. "Which is bad news for my Etsy shop, Steve's Sleeves. Some people sell shirts with the sleeves cut off, Steve's sells sleeves with the shirts cut off." 

The faux Etsy store's slogan? "Steve's Sleeves: You have the right to not bare arms."

Over at Late Night, host Seth Meyers used the opportunity to make a dig at Republicans. After explaining that polls show that Americans overwhelmingly supported net neutrality, including 75 percent of Republicans, Meyers joked, "Of course Republicans would favor an open internet. Otherwise, they'd have to get their news from newspapers and CNN instead of Facebook group 'Patriot Eagle MAGA 1776.'"

Chairman of the FCC Ajit Pai has often referred to his proposal as "light-touch regulation," something that Meyers also poked fun at. "Please stop using the term 'light touch,'" he said. "You sound like someone defending themselves to HR."

Meanwhile, Jimmy Kimmel called the vote by the FCC "absolutely despicable." "They did this even though 83 percent of Americans support net neutrality, and two million of the people who supposedly wrote to the FCC to oppose it were bogus," Kimmel explained. "Many of them turned out to be dead people — someone stole the identities of dead people — to help push this through."

He continued, "So now, we have to hope Congress agrees to vote on and reverse it. So, thank you, President Trump – thanks to you and this jackhole [referring to Pai] you appointed to run the FCC – big corporations are about to take control of the Internet."