Yelp announces support for Title II net neutrality as 16,000 websites join the Internet Countdown, online protest seen by millions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 18, 2015

Contact: Evan Greer, 978-852-6457
Email: press@fightforthefuture.org

WASHINGTON, DC––With just 8 days left until the FCC’s much anticipated net neutrality decision, the Internet is rallying in force to ensure strong protections for free speech Internet freedom. This morning popular online review service Yelp announced their support for Title II reclassification in a blogpost, encouraging readers to take action on BattleFortheNet.com during the Internet Countdown.

Meanwhile, organizers announced today that more than 16,000 websites have joined the latest effort by displaying an animated “countdown timer” on their sites, helping drive a daily barrage of thousands of emails and phone calls to Congress. The “countdown” widget has already had more than 14.8 million impressions across the web.

The Internet Countdown was launched on January 26th, one month before the FCC’s vote. In addition to its latest ally, Yelp, the effort has attracted the support of major web companies and popular startups including Tumblr, Mozilla, MediaFire, Bluehost, BoingBoing, Daily Kos, AdaFruit, Cheezburger, CREDO mobile, and Thunderclap. In addition, the organizers have built online tools making it easy for individual Internet users to participate.

More than 11,000 people have signed up to join the #InternetCountdown “twitter army,” authorizing net neutrality activists to tweet on their behalf regularly between now and the FCC vote. More than 8,500 of those people have signed up to tweet every single day until the vote. The total social reach of the twitter army (meaning the combined followers of all the participants) is more than 8.2 million people.

Fight for the Future’s campaign director, Evan Greer, said, “"As the Web literally counts down the seconds to the FCC’s historic vote, thousands of websites and hundreds of thousands of Internet users are rising up once again. Politicians in Washington, DC need to learn the lesson once and for all: if you want to keep your job, don’t mess with the Internet.”

The Internet Countdown effort was conceived by Fight for the Future, and has been organized in coordination with Demand Progress, Free Press, and the broad coalition behind BattleForTheNet.com

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