Both sides are wrong in net neutrality debate: they need to tone down the rhetoric, conduct proper field trials, and gradually apply proven solutions that work
Dean Bubley / Dean Bubley's Disruptive Wireless : Tweets: @disruptivedean , @_am1t , and @disruptivedean Tweets: Dean Bubley / @disruptivedean : My #NetNeutrality blog on @Techmeme today: - Why everyone on *both* sides is wrong - 10 practical suggestions http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/ ... http://twitter.com/... Amit Gawande / @_am1t : “Nearly anyone weighing in on Net Neutrality, on either side, is talking nonsense a good % of the time.” #mustread http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/ ... Dean Bubley / @disruptivedean : Anyone using the term “level playing field” in #NetNeutrality debate is duplicitous, ignorant, or both http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Dean Bubley's intervention lands at the peak of a polarized year: Ajit Pai's FCC had released its proposal to roll back Title II net neutrality rules in April and opened the comment system, and five days earlier AT&T had joined the Day of Action protest despite years of opposing the rules it claimed to defend.
Bubley's argument is that this theater has crowded out evidence — his prescription of field trials and gradual application of proven solutions is aimed at a rulemaking process that had already been distorted by 128K+ identical fake comments flooding the FCC's public API.
First-order effects
- The post hands fence-sitting policymakers and ISPs a third position between full Title II repeal and the 2015 rules codified in the FCC's net neutrality vote, challenging both camps' talking points rather than joining either coalition.
Second-order effects
- By attacking the 'level playing field' framing used by neutrality advocates while rejecting pure deregulation, it raises the evidentiary bar for both sides: claims now need trial data, not slogans, in a comment process already compromised by bot-driven submissions.
Third-order effects
- The pattern Bubley warns against played out: the repeal proceeded without field trials, and by December the FCC's own CTO Eric Burger had privately flagged concerns to commissioners while responses from nine ISPs showed few firm commitments not to block or throttle — exactly the untested-outcome risk gradualism was meant to avoid.
The trend: US net neutrality policy keeps swinging between all-or-nothing regimes — the 2015 Title II rules and their 2017 repeal — because neither side will fund the field trials that would support an incremental middle.