AT&T pretends it loves net neutrality and joins today's Day of Action protest, despite its consistent opposition to it over the years
kind of Todd Shields / Bloomberg : Google, Amazon Join Online Protest of Net Neutrality Change Digital Commerce 360 : Net neutrality changes draw protests from Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter WPTV : AT&T Surprises Everyone And Joins Pro-Net Neutrality ‘Day Of Action’ David McCabe / Axios : AT&T uses net neutrality protest to make its own case Aj Dellinger / International Business Times : Net Neutrality Day of Action Protest: What Amazon, Netflix, Others Are Doing To Help Save The Internet Kate Conger / Gizmodo : AT&T Takes a Break From Decade-Long Effort to Dismantle Net Neutrality to Express Its Support for Net Neutrality Rob LeFebvre / Engadget : AT&T supports net neutrality but denounces ‘outdated’ rules Scott Cleland / The Precursor Blog : Why Aren't Google Amazon & Facebook's Winner-Take-All Networks Neutral? Haley Velasco / PCWorld : Net Neutrality: The July 12 Internet-Wide Day of Action protest and what to expect Janet Burns / Forbes : Google, Facebook, And Spotify Will Fight For Net Neutrality This Week Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica : AT&T joins net neutrality protest—despite suing to block neutrality rules Jeff Dunn / Business Insider : AT&T says it will support a massive protest to save ‘net neutrality’ … Tweets: Nicholas Thompson / @nxthompson : AT&T saying it's trying to save net neutrality is like Trump saying he's trying to save Obamacare. http://www.wired.com/... Karl Bode / @karlbode : I have to hand it to @ATT & @ATTPublicPolicy. This is some of the most incredible bulls**t you've EVER produced. That's saying something. http://twitter.com/... Free / @freepress : Incredible: #BigCable has spent more than $570 million lobbying the federal government during the past decade. http://maplight.org/... Free / @freepress : RT if @ATT's attempt to hijack the #NetNeutrality Day of Action gets you even more fired up for July 12. http://www.theverge.com/... @techdirt : .@ATT joining the @netneutrality day of action tomorrow is... bulls**t, but clever in an evil sort of way. http://twitter.com/... Shira Ovide / @shiraovide : “AT&T pretending to care about an open internet is like Dracula...professing a heartfelt concern for...blood donors” https://www.techdirt.com/... Tony Romm / @tonyromm : you are not “joining” the net neutrality day of action if you fundamentally disagree with the cause. that's not joining, that's coopting. Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : It's @ATT “taking net neutrality back” by actively misrepsenting basically everything https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
The Day of Action is a coalition play by edge providers — Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix — against an FCC rollback, but AT&T's participation stands out because it spent years on the other side: it was among the carriers that reacted hostilely to the 2015 Title II ruling and has sued to block the FCC's rules outright.
By joining the protest while making 'its own case' for what open-internet regulation should look like, AT&T is attempting to reposition itself from litigant to stakeholder — a move activists immediately read as co-opting the event, given the same company's decade-long effort to dismantle the rules it now claims to support.
First-order effects
- AT&T gets a public-relations reset in real time: it appears alongside Google, Amazon, Netflix and Twitter as a defender of the open internet rather than the carrier that sued to block those protections.
- Activists and press coverage frame the move as hypocrisy, so AT&T's protest banner doubles as a target — Axios notes it used the event to advance its own preferred regulatory framing instead.
Second-order effects
- If the repeal proceeds, AT&T's protest positioning becomes useful cover: when nine ISPs were later asked for firm commitments not to block, throttle, or prioritize traffic post-repeal, few gave any — meaning the goodwill earned today costs nothing operationally tomorrow.
- Edge providers like Amazon and Netflix, who organized the day, gain a rhetorical weapon either way: they can cite AT&T's own protest language against it if its network behavior diverges from it.
Third-order effects
- The episode previews the whiplash structure of US internet regulation: rules are litigated, repealed, and reinstated across administrations — culminating in the FCC's 3-2 vote to reinstate net neutrality in 2024 — so carriers rationally hedge by performing support while fighting the underlying legal classification.
- It also foreshadows the partisan inversion captured in 2022 coverage, where Republicans who opposed treating ISPs as common carriers began demanding 'public utility' treatment for social media platforms — suggesting regulatory leverage migrates to whichever side controls the FCC, and corporate positions follow power rather than principle.
The trend: Net neutrality has become a recurring political cycle in which major ISPs alternate between suing against rules and rhetorically co-opting their defense, hedging whichever way the FCC's composition turns.