Mark Cuban Inflames the Internet (Again) -- This Time Over Net Neutrality

Mark Cuban is no stranger to online anger.

The billionaire investor and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks is outspoken — very outspoken — and thus finds himself regularly cast as an Internet villain.

Remember his comments about racial stereotyping? Or perhaps his insider trading battles with the SEC (he won, by the way).

Well, Cuban threw fresh fuel on the Internet flames this week.

The topic this time was net neutrality, the idea that Internet service providers and other entities should treat all data the same, rather than, say, speed up their own content or slow down that of their rivals.

Earlier this year, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed a set of rules that would give the commission greater power to enforce the principle of net neutrality. At Re/code’s Code/Media conference, Cuban asserted that the proposal will “fuck everything up”and portrayed it as an attack on big companies like Comcast*.

See the relevant quotes in the video below:

The Internet masses responded swiftly with a mix of nuanced counterarguments and obscenity-laden insults, but really mostly the latter. Here’s a glimpse of the reactions on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/swirlOsquirrel/status/568759901960278017

https://twitter.com/sjus_/status/568243652868366338

https://twitter.com/nike12000/status/568235494158573568

https://twitter.com/MarkPriscaro/status/568534867249532928

https://twitter.com/crash_matrix/status/568537505135341569

The feedback was probably better on Facebook though, right? Nope.

* Comcast owns NBCUniversal, which is a minority investor in Revere Digital, Re/code’s parent company.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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