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More Than 80 Percent of All Net Neutrality Comments Were Sent By Bots, Researchers Say (vice.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the for-and-against dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Trump administration and its embattled FCC commissioner are on a mission to roll back the pro-net neutrality rules approved during the Obama years, despite the fact that most Americans support those safeguards. But there is a large number of entities that do not: telecom companies, their lobbyists, and hordes of bots. Of all the more than 22 million comments submitted to the FCC website and through the agency's API found that only 3,863,929 comments were "unique," according to a new analysis by Gravwell, a data analytics company. The rest? A bunch of copy-pasted comments, most of them likely by automated astroturfing bots, almost all of them -- curiously -- against net neutrality. "Using our (admittedly) simple classification, over 95 percent of the organic comments are in favor of Title II regulation," Corey Thuen, the founder of Gravwell, told Motherboard in an email.

10 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. I don't even blame Trump so much by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It's easy to hate on the singularly hateable, and deservingly hated, personage of Donald Trump.

    But you know what? Trump did everything humanly possible short of literally strapping on a giant unkempt beard and walking out the front door of Trump Tower naked holding up a giant sign saying "I AM YUGELY UNFIT FOR OFFICE, BIGLY DO NOT VOTE FOR ME" to prove that he was not fit to be president.

    Having voted for Trump says more about Trumpers than about him. It was a test of ability to discern right from wrong, and just enough people failed it.

  2. Thanks captn obvious by burtosis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who the hell would be against net neutrality except a few straggling brainwashed fools who would have a different opinion if they only knew what was real? Yes sign me up for vastly increased monthly payments, squish small businesses and startups, micro payments on everything net related, separate fees to access different sites, suppress competing services and views not held by big ISPs, and hell yes please make internet access whitelist sites only for my own protection and those of DRM!!1!!!1!

    1. Re:Thanks captn obvious by Solandri · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Who the hell would be against net neutrality except a few straggling brainwashed fools who would have a different opinion if they only knew what was real?

      There are actually two possible solutions here, only one of which is net neutrality.

      • No net neutrality. But also no government-granted monopolies. If people actually had a choice of ISPs, any ISP trying to charge websites for access would be shooting themselves in the foot. Their customers would notice Netflix was slow, hear that Netfix was fine on their friend's ISP, and switch their service to the other ISP.
      • Keep the government-granted monopolies. Use net neutrality to keep them in check. Basically more government regulation to fix a problem created in the first pace by government regulation. ISPs can succeed in making websites pay them for "fast lanes" only because they know their customers are their captives. Instead of the customers being able to access the website via a different ISP, the website has no choice but to pay the ISP if it wants those customers to have access.

      FWIW, most of the rest of the world uses the first one.

    2. Re:Thanks captn obvious by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How about net neutrality AND dropping government mandated monopolies? Ever thought about that?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:Thanks captn obvious by swb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem with your scenario is that it presents a false choice by framing ISP monopolies only existing because of government approval. That may be true for cable television franchises specifically, but not internet access.

      The reality is that utilities are fairly close to a natural monopoly because of the complex infrastructure required. We lack competition not because of government granted monopolies, but because duplicating infrastructure is expensive and the economics of it are poor (essentially your are splitting a fixed market against an entrenched competitor).

      What we need is for the government to acknowledge the existing monopoly status and impose a means of regulation that limits exploitation of the monopoly that already exists, and probably further, does something to eliminate the ability of a monopoly to exist (ie, a municipal fiber network with equal access at the head end).

  3. This isn't voting. by volkris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Slashdot needs to give its readers more context in these posts about regulation feedback. Specifically, it needs to emphasize that in the US regulatory process, this comment phase is not voting. The numbers don't really enter into it.

    The regulator has to address issues raised in comments, but that's about counting issues, not comments. An issue with one comment is to be addressed just as an issue brought up by a thousand comments.

    The FCC is subject to the laws our representatives pass. THAT's where we give the marching orders. This regulatory process is only about seeing to it that the commission implements the laws handed to it.

    1. Re:This isn't voting. by dunkindave · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh you poor naive fool.

      Congress deliberately passes broad sweeping laws that leave a lot of discretion for the enacting agencies since Congress can't be bothered by the minutia. In this case it is the FCC that put the current Net-Neutrality provisions in place, not Congress, and the FCC can take them away. The comments aren't a vote, but they will certainly be used by the politicians to justify their actions - "Look, we were doing what the public demanded. 90% of those commenting were against Net Neutrality, so we did what they public wanted us to do."

    2. Re:This isn't voting. by hey! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While what you say about this not being an election is true, this actually raises an interesting question: if the number of comments support a certain position has no effect on the outcome, why was this bot campaign conducted?

      There are broadly speaking two possible answers. The first is that the people who orchestrated the campaign do not understand how these regulatory decisions will be made. The second possibility is that they *do* understand, but believe that the appearance of widespread public support will either influence those decisions, or provide some kind of useful pretext for making unpopular decisions.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  4. Re:Sounds Familiar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This one sounds more like Ajit Pai and his buddies hired a merc bot company to either feign citizen enthusiasm for destroying the net or to sabotage the legitimacy of the comments so the comments could be ignored and the ruling class could get their way. There's no reason to assume Russian involvement when we have so many people here frothing at the mouth to destroy the internet / country.

  5. Re:does not *necessarily* mean bots by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes. If it's not worth your time to think for a moment and formulate your own concerns, I guess the matter isn't important enough for you to consider your input valuable, because it's likely you didn't bother to learn about it to make an informed decision whether you're for or against it.

    We already have enough idiots parroting what somebody else tells them.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.