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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.

18 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Ajit Pai and Donald Trump are both traitors. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Get rid of em.

    1. Re: Ajit Pai and Donald Trump are both traitors. by Opportunist · · Score: 3

      Observation bias much?

      Take a wild guess who gets up and moves once across the globe, the achievers or the couch potatoes? Now compare the handful of "successful fresh off the boat" people to the amount of people in India.

      If you try to compare something, at least TRY to make them comparable.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Ajit Pai and Donald Trump are both traitors. by thegreatbob · · Score: 3, Funny

      Cthuhu wasn't on the ballot, sadly.

      --
      There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
  2. 95% of the bots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Were 3rd party sites aggregating signatures from a campaign. But yeah, "BOTS!".

    1. Re:95% of the bots by GrumpySteen · · Score: 3, Informative

      And by "aggregating signatures", you mean "posting the same anti-neutrality comment using the names of people who did not submit those comments.

      The FCC, of course, refused to remove the comments even when the supposed submitters sent a letter explaining that the comments were fraudulent.

      In other words... yes, it was a bot. Whoever did it used a list of names and information to submit the anti-neutrality posts in other people's names. There were no signatures or approvals from the people whose identities were used fraudulently.

  3. 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).

  4. 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 volkris · · Score: 2

      That's not quite how the US government works.

      Congress cannot give agencies blank checks to do whatever they want. Yes, they can direct that agencies fill in the details of policies, but the policies have to originate in congressional action, passed by law. The granting of discretion has been abused, but even so it's not unlimited.

      Regulators are required to show that their actions are the result of legal mandates. They have to show that they were, in one way or another, ordered to come up with the regulation that they propose.

      If an agency is going back and forth on a regulation, it's a sign to the courts that the agency is operating outside of law, and the regulation may be found to be void.

      In this case they're not undoing the Network Neutrality provisions just because they want to, but because they can show that they have a mandate by law to correct the error committed by the previous commission. If they can't rationally demonstrate that, then the action will be struck down.

    3. 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:This isn't voting. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      Congress cannot give agencies blank checks to do whatever they want.

      Oh, you sweet, summer child.

      If an agency is going back and forth on a regulation, it's a sign to the courts that the agency is operating outside of law, and the regulation may be found to be void.

      Basically, what you're saying is that the agencies can basically do what they want and then say, "So sue us". Which, by the way, is exactly what happens. Then you have a fight over standing to sue, and the Justice Department will weigh in, and if the administration happens to like the maybe/maybe not legal thing that the agency is doing, that'll be about the end of it.

      In this case they're not undoing the Network Neutrality provisions just because they want to, but because they can show that they have a mandate by law to correct the error committed by the previous commission.

      Except they have shown no such thing. So far, the only thing that's been shown is the receipts for the huge donations lobbyists have made. If there had been a legal "error" committed by the previous administration regarding FCC regs, we might have heard something about all the successful lawsuits against the rules.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    5. Re:This isn't voting. by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      That's not quite how the US government works.

      Exactly, you don't get a law by writing letters to politicians. You get a law by writing checks to politicians.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Re:does not *necessarily* mean bots by dgatwood · · Score: 2

    I don't think you can automatically assume "bot" just from a lot of repeated comments. I'm not saying they're all not bots. I'm just saying it is common to see identical comments from non-bot entities.

    True, but I think you can safely assume that those copy-and-paste jobs are utterly irrelevant, because:

    • A. They almost invariably reflect an uninformed opinion. People who actually understand an issue won't copy and paste somebody else's text, because they will have their own personal reasons for their opinions, and will want to express their reasons, not somebody else's.
    • B. They reflect an opinion that isn't strong enough to compel its holder to spend more than a few seconds copying and pasting something. People who actually hold a strong opinion will take the time to write something personal.

    So whether the posters are bots or not, the posts are still noise. At best, they're uninformed people who have been swayed by an astroturfing campaign by their ISPs that encouraged them to copy and paste something without really understanding it, in which case their opinions are ill-informed and could turn on a dime if they became well-informed on the subject or if someone else screamed more loudly. At worst, they're programmatic bots paid for by ISPs, and they all represent the opinions of one or two actual people. Either way, they should be treated as the opinions of the one or two people who organized the campaign, because they're the only people who actually felt strongly enough to write down their opinions.

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.