>>106354748
>why was there so much fearmongering?
ISPs were openly planning to sell what amounted to fragmented internet plans, where you might have to pay extra to access specific sites or servives. This caused people to freak the fuck out, because if I'm already paying you for internet access, it makes no sense to then also have to pay you to use that access for specific sites. This caused people to freak the fuck out, because it was an obvious attempt to raise prices without actually offering anything for the new increased prices and probably would've properly fucked the internet up for most people. This was abandoned because it was so unpopular.
Then, later, corporate propagandists decided to pretend that the problem was actually that big companies could pay more for faster distribution and that this would give them an edge over smaller ones. This was already happening (consider CDNs) and was essentially off topic to the original concern of an artificially fragmented internet. For some reason, this version of the problem caught on in the boomer psyche, which is how you get images like the OP image which pretend that poor oppressed Fox News would end up in the internet "slow lane".
I would expect the fragmented internet idea to return as soon as it is politically viable, probably once online censorship strengthens enough to keep people from organizing effectively against it.