Hasta La Creative!

Netflix and Comcast have been sparring for a while. But on Wednesday, Netflix delivered a quietly epic uppercut to the cable giant and its interests—thanks to a single creative tweet.

It concerns net neutrality, on which the FCC is set to vote Thursday. Netflix is heavily invested in the issue, fearing that without an open Internet, Comcast and other cable companies would create Internet slow lanes for companies that refuse to pay broadband providers for access.

That fear is communicated brilliantly in the tweet below, which stretches on forever. (The tweet has been making the rounds in the net neutrality debate, and was picked up by Netflix today. It was not created by Netflix.)

“What if the Internet was so slow it loaded one word at a time? Don’t let Comcast win,” it says—with a link to the Battleforthenet.com, which argues for net neutrality.

The tweet is particularly impressive because it eats up a giant piece of a user’s real estate when it appears in the feed, making it all but impossible to miss.

Thursday’s vote is actually expected to be a foregone conclusion, with Republicans already conceding defeat on the issue and Netflix and its allies expected to be victorious.
 

What if the Internet was so slow it loaded one word at a time? Don’t let Comcast win. http://t.co/OCoIdQiIN3

— Netflix US (@netflix) February 25, 2015

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to open for public debate new rules meant to guarantee an open Internet.

Time and again, when the government tries to insert itself between the Internet and its users, it gets clobbered. This could end up the same way.

The sparring will be closely watched by every company that depends, even peripherally, on the Internet — which is to say, just about every company.

Reed Hastings said that once Netflix agreed to pay Comcast for a better connection, Netflix customers no longer experienced delays streaming video.

After a court ruling last month, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission will propose new rules to encourage equal access to the web.