Danielle Kehl

On September 10th, the spinning wheel of death appeared on a large number of websites in the United States. But the disruption wasn’t caused by an accident or a network failure. It was actually a deliberate, coordinated effort by a wide range of major tech companies and content creators — not to mention hundreds of thousands of small websites and individuals — to stage an “Internet Slowdown” day.

If you want a glimpse into what the speed of your Internet connection might look like under the newly proposed Open Internet rules, take yourself back to the last uncomfortable hour of a long plane flight.

On September 10th, the spinning wheel of death appeared on a large number of websites in the United States. But the disruption wasn’t caused by an accident or a network failure. It was actually a deliberate, coordinated effort by a wide range of major tech companies and content creators — not to mention hundreds of thousands of small websites and individuals — to stage an “Internet Slowdown” day.

If you want a glimpse into what the speed of your Internet connection might look like under the newly proposed Open Internet rules, take yourself back to the last uncomfortable hour of a long plane flight.