Explaining Net Neutrality to xyz audience with Analogies

CaptionGreetings All,While your sitting down to Thanksgiving Dinner, be prepared to easily explain net neutrality if askedOver the last few years there have been several really great explanations of Net Neutrality and why it is important through analogies. Below are a few great easy to remember analogies/explanation for various audiences. There are many other great ones that are missed, if you see one, please post it as a reply and I'll try my best to merge it in to this post for the next few hours.Explaining to a Nine year old "... OP: /u/kvw260Milkshake examplePretend ice cream stores gave away free milkshakes. But you had to buy a straw to drink them. But that's okay, because you still get free milkshakes. One day you're drinking a free milkshake and you look down and the guy that sold you the straw is pinching it almost shut. You can still get your milkshake, but it's really hard and takes a lot longer. So you say, "Hey! Stop that!" And the straw guy says, "NO! Not until the ice cream store pays me money." And you say, "But I already paid you money for the straw." And the straw guy says, "I don't care. I just want more money."..."Another few good analogiesUPS/Freeway/Who eats first/Taxi service Analogy"... Charles Duan, staff attorney at Public Knowledge“A world without net neutrality would be like UPS delivering packages from Amazon faster than ones from Walmart. It would be like a freeway with a special lane for Hondas but not Toyotas. It would be like your mother serving Thanksgiving dinner faster to your brother than to you. It would be like a taxi service that picked up some passengers quicker than others and drove slower to some destinations than others."..."Mafia AnalogyEvan Greer, campaign director at Fight for the Future“If a local mafia can show up at a small business and threaten to burn them down if they don’t pay protection money, that’s essentially an illegitimate tax on everyone. Net neutrality rules prevent big cable and telephone companies from engaging in a digital version of this type of extortion. It’s what stops internet service providers like Comcast and AT&T from threatening to make small businesses’ websites slow and unusable unless they pay special fees — or from shaking down internet users for more money to access the content we want. If you get rid of Title II — the legal framework for net neutrality — it would be a disaster for the economy and give a small group of powerful businesses an unprecedented control over everything we do on the internet.”Gardener AnalogySascha Meinrath, the Palmer Chair in Telecommunications at Penn State University"We all have different tastes: Things we adore — like fresh peaches — and things we find a bit more suspect — like boiled okra. There is only one thing that we all agree — we are a diverse nation with a diversity of differing likes and dislikes.So maybe you really love basil and tomatoes or maybe you're a wild-flower kinda guy — either way, a gardener is a master of her domain! Your garden is yours to do with as you please — whether you want to plant okra or peaches.Eat your vegetables. Eat your vegetables. - Cate Gillon/Getty Images Network neutrality protects our virtual realm — putting us in full control of our digital domains and predilections.And sure, some gardens might be better suited for shade-loving plants, and others love drought-tolerant varietals — the point is, you can plant whatever you please, and experiment with ideas that some say are suboptimal, but are a much better fit for your own personal tastes.Network Neutrality is fundamentally about ensuring that you — and only you — get to decide what you want to hear, watch, play, and read. So next time some mega-corporation tries to tell you that their peach-okra pie is 'simply delicious,' remember: You know best what you like to eat."Ordering Pizza AnalogyJohn Bergmayer, senior counsel at Public Knowledge“Here is a simple metaphor: The telephone system, which has long been regulated to protect the public interest. You probably wouldn’t like it if you tried to order pizza from your favorite local place and were connected to a Papa John’s instead because it had got some special deal. Or if a Verizon telephone only connected to other Verizon phones. Obviously, there are a lot of differences between internet access and the telephone and how they work and how they are built, but the basic principle that essential communication systems ought to be non-discriminatory is the same.”Mmm. Pizza.Another Pizza ExampleKate Forscey, associate policy counsel at Public Knowledge“There are a lot of ways to describe net neutrality, but my favorite has its roots with justice [Antonin] Scalia: Pizza delivery. Imagine you are in a town with two pizza places — Domino’s and Papa John’s — and one phone company, AT&T. In a normally functioning free market, if you want to order pizza you are likely to call whichever pizza place that tastes best to you or has the best bang for your buck. But let’s say AT&T and Domino’s cut a special deal where any calls to Domino’s are favored over the calls going to other pizza places. So anyone calling Papa John’s has to wait behind everyone else calling Domino’s. For most people even if you might think Papa John’s tastes better, you know you will get your pizza faster if you choose Domino’s.Worse, let’s say AT&T acquired Domino’s and profits directly from Domino’s profits. Now AT&T has even more reason to block or throttle calls going to Papa John’s. We doubt any new pizza shops are going to set up shop near you if they know they are facing this kind of unfair treatment from the established big guys. So, here we have fewer choices and higher prices for everyone involved. The strong net neutrality rules currently on the books prevent big providers like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast from favoring one pizza chain — or in the case of internet, content creator — over another. It means all traffic and content travels over your connection at an equal pace. This means more entrants to the market, more reasons for people to continue making their services better, and happier customers, whether they prefer Domino’s or something else.And now imagine that instead of delicious pizza we are talking about access to healthcare, the ability to open competitive businesses, launch your own app, to apply for jobs and for your kids to do their homework. Net neutrality makes sure that everyone gets a seat at the table to succeed at the American dream."Sending a package analogySourceOP: /u/iamPause."...Let's pretend you are trying to mail a package. The package weighs 10 lbs and is full of pictures. It's going to cost you $10 to send that package. Now let's say you want to send a package that also weighs 10 lbs, but it is full of DVDs. Despite the fact that the packages weigh the same, your parcel service is telling you that your second box is going to cost $20 to send. Makes no sense, right? The logical argument is that 10 pounds is 10 pounds, so it should cost the same. This is the basis of net neutrality.Just how 10 pounds is 10 pounds, all digital information is stored and transmitted as 1s and 0s. The only difference between a picture and a movie is the number of 1s and 0s that are needed to get that file to you. Net neutrality means that all of those 1s and 0s are treated equal and are sent to you with the same level of priority and the same speed.Telecom companies (Comcast, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.) do not share this view. They are saying that the 1s and 0s of sites like Netflix (our box of DVDs) should cost more and be treated different than sites like imgur (our box of pictures). They believe that they have a right to slow down or speed up the delivery of certain services based solely on what the content is. They want to treat some 1s and 0s special.Why is this a big deal? Well for one thing many people think this is not fair. If I download a raw picture that is 2 gigabytes large, then why is that any more or less "damaging" to their network than streaming 2 gigabytes worth of a movie on Netflix? There is no additional cost to the telecom based on what kind of file is being transferred because, again, it is just a stream of 1s and 0s. It is simply a money grab.The other reason it is an issue is because of free speech and the free market. For example, let's say a new ISP comes to town and they have a website you can go to to sign up for their service. Comcast doesn't like competition, so they decided to add this ISP's website to the "slow" tier of websites. Now instead of the website coming up in 1 second, it takes 5 minutes to load. Imagine the damage this would do to that ISPs business if people can't visit their site.Comcast owns, among other websites Hulu . A direct competitor to Netflix. Imagine what would happen if Comcast could decided to put Hulu on their fastest service, ensuring full 4k video on demand, but limited Netflix's delivery such that you could only get 360p resolution.Net neutrality would force Comcast to show you that website, Netflix, Google, NBC.com, and all sites the same no matter what the content. The reason you keep seeing it on the front page is because governments, especially the US, keeps trying to pass laws that will get rid of net neutrality...."Bookworm explanation/analogy Source OP: /u/Probably-Soviet"...So, remember that time you were like "fuck yeah, im going to the library!" and we all got in the car and we got there.The librarian was super helpful in helping you navigate the Dewey decimal system, but when you went to check out some books, she started charging you more for certain books. Like, for no reason other than because she wanted to.You were like "woah dude, this is a library, these books shouldn't be priced differently based on their content!" to which she said "Tough. Nothing stopping me. You can read these books that align with my ideological and political leanings for $5, or you can read this book that I authored for free. But these books that I don't want you reading? $20."Sadly, your broke ass didn't have $20 so you didn't get the books you wanted and you took the books you were offered for free. The entire drive home, you were mad that you had to pay more for access to something that you didnt have to before. You then said "why dont we just go to that other library across town" to which i had to remind you "dude, we only have ONE library that services our area. There is another library, sure. And that library may even have a better selection. But the problem is that you dont live in the right area so that librarian wont even let you check out books. And even then there is no guarantee that she wont charge you whatever she wants as well."Then you pouted for a bit...."