On Thursday (1 November 2018), Justin Sun, the founder and CEO of TRON Foundation, announced his support for net neutrality, and demonstrated this support with a $10,000 pledge to DonateForNetNeutrality.com, a crowdfunding effort by the non-profit organization “Fight for the Future”, which was founded in 2011 with the mission of ensuring “that the web continues to hold freedom of expression and creativity at its core.” The goal of this organization is “to build tech-enhanced campaigns that resonate with millions of people, enabling them to consolidate their power and win historic changes thought to be impossible.”

Net neutrality “is the principle that Internet service providers treat all data on the Internet equally, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication.”

Fight for the Future’s latest campaign is about putting pressure on the U.S. Congress to save net neutrality — which was killed on 11 June 2018 following a vote by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in December 2017 — by passing legislation that would “effectively force the FCC to bring back the rules the FCC approved in 2015.” Under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), “Congress, with the approval of the president, can not only reject regulations issued by a federal agency but effectively bar that agency from taking similar action again.”

The DonateForNetNeutrality.com website says that although the Senate has already passed a resolution, “now the House is running out of time to do the same.” It further says that the money being raised will be used to the following:

  • “Flood Congress with phone calls, tweets, and emails”
  • “Run crowdfunded billboards, newspaper ads, and online ads”
  • “Organize in-district actions and events”

Here is how Justin announced his support for this campaign on Twitter:

The press release by the TRON Foundation says that Justin’s $10,000 donation will “help fund efforts to educate voters in key districts across the country to vote pro-net neutrality and support lawmakers to reverse the decision that ended net neutrality.” This donation comes shortly after TRON’s “initial pledge of $3M to the Blockchain Charity Foundation headed by Binance.”

The press release also contained the following quote from Justin:

“Given my deep belief in an open and decentralized internet, I support Donatefornetneutrality.com and urge others to do the same in this critical moment where Congress can still act in favor of net neutrality. When the internet is free and open, it fosters innovation that benefits not just a few, but all of us. It's our responsibility to protect these core values and push our community towards the cause.”

Justin, who is also the CEO of BitTorrent, apparently “plans to energize support from the BitTorrent community of over 100M users.” BitTorrent “has a long-standing history of supporting net neutrality and also Fightforthefuture.org and Donatefornetneutrality.com through campaigns that have urged tens of millions of users to get involved.”

Featured Image Courtesy of the TRON Foundation