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More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked (hackernoon.com)
Jeff Kao from Hacker Noon used natural language processing techniques to analyze net neutrality comments submitted to the FCC from April-October 2017 and found that at least 1.3 million pro-repeal net neutrality comments were faked. From the report: NY Attorney General Schneiderman estimated that hundreds of thousands of Americans' identities were stolen and used in spam campaigns that support repealing net neutrality. My research found at least 1.3 million fake pro-repeal comments, with suspicions about many more. In fact, the sum of fake pro-repeal comments in the proceeding may number in the millions. In this post, I will point out one particularly egregious spambot submission, make the case that there are likely many more pro-repeal spambots yet to be confirmed, and estimate the public position on net neutrality in the "organic" public submissions. [The key findings include:]
1. One pro-repeal spam campaign used mail-merge to disguise 1.3 million comments as unique grassroots submissions.
2. There were likely multiple other campaigns aimed at injecting what may total several million pro-repeal comments into the system.
3. It's highly likely that more than 99% of the truly unique comments were in favor of keeping net neutrality.
1. One pro-repeal spam campaign used mail-merge to disguise 1.3 million comments as unique grassroots submissions.
2. There were likely multiple other campaigns aimed at injecting what may total several million pro-repeal comments into the system.
3. It's highly likely that more than 99% of the truly unique comments were in favor of keeping net neutrality.
We need more conclusive proof than just a statistical model and analysis. Does he have any actual evidence to present to us?
It wouldn't have mattered if 100% of the comments were against net neutrality. The politicians are paid for and big businesses wants this, so it's happening. Now bend over and lube up so the raping won't hurt as much.
This is why the FCC ignored all of them!
It just shows how underrepresented We The People are. It's a desperate attempt to compete with the corporation sponsored lobbyists.
for it to be investigated by nobody ever because this entire thing is crooked AF and that asshole behind it is a Verizon shill. He should be removed from office and charged with bribery and treason.
We need to do less with HASTE! As long as we do nothing about it the free market will work out a solution and we can avoid communism and loose our freedoms and end up like Cuba if we investigtate.
http://saveie6.com/
.. the actual proposed changes :
http://transition.fcc.gov/Dail...
Oh look, this is all about changing back ISP classification from Utilities to Information services. Not so black and white now uh ? Too bad the media is banking on keeping people mad and uninformed.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
I have a feeling that, and let me go out on a limb here, this may not be the last story we see about net neutrality.
Wanna poison a side? Side with it, but act like an assshole, like an idiot, or stir in some bullshit to poison the good.
It's literally in the NSA documents. It was used on the Tea Party, Occupy, Wikileaks, the Pirate Party, Anonymous, and at least 38 others.
That's why every time a three letter agency is accused of anything, suddenly there's "conspiracy theorists" tying the accusation to insane bullshit. So every time you accuse them of the original core point, you get dogpiled by a bunch of passive-thinking humanoid livestock telling you your insane bullshit is wrong. It's called "poisoning the well".
So yeah, I think these news stories were written even before the comments were generated. And they were written after the traitors (aka "lobbyists") realized they would lose.
Yeah, commenting for the other side may have swung it around at first. But only to trigger an even bigger counter-reaction. If you want a reaction that goes your way, you have to cause a counter-reaction not against yours, but against theirs!
I bet they were considered anyway even if they made no serious legal argument whatsoever
Twinstiq, game news
No identities were "stolen". It is not possible to "steal" an identity.
What should be said is that the crime of IMPERSONATION occurred and the RELYING PARTY made a MISTAKE of fact and law in RELYING on the IMPERSONATOR and is therefore liable both criminally and civilly for the result/consequence of that mistaken reliance.
At least that is how it works in the free world (China, Russia, Burma, Canada, etc.). Perhaps communist/fascist countries such as the US have somewhat different law from the rest of the world -- they are certainly one of the most corrupt jurisdictions in the solar system.
The cork-schnorkeler in charge of the FCC would have schnorkled the corks he was beholden to schnorkel no matter how the comments would have shaken out.
I'm sure Ajit Pai will announce on Monday that he is going to keep the net neutrality regulations after all.
For the humor challenged, that was sarcasm. Since Pai has already said he's going to completely ignore pretty much all of the comments and do what his corporate masters have paid him to do, there's little point to this kind of analysis. It wasn't enough for them to bury the comment link several layers deep and behind completely non-obvious terms, now they're just going to ignore all of the comments because they were overwhelmingly in against what he was paid to do by the telecom lobby.
If we have any lawyers out there, what would you say the odds are that you could lodge a complaint with the FCC's Office of the Inspector General over this as some kind of dereliction of duty or being against some kind of FCC rule? Taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize this kind of corporate cock sucking. The faster we can move this ass bucket out of the FCC the better.
With the apparent integration between the Republican party and Russia it's getting harder to tell the home-grown corruption from the interference of a hostile foreign power.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Pretty ironic (and sad) that Slashdot editors will run this story but not acknowledge the millions upon millions more fake comments from Sorosâ(TM) foreign operatives pushing net neutrality:
https://www.infowars.com/fcc-to-free-internet-from-obamas-net-neutrality-rules/
They aren't listening.
Anyone else sense that this could be an attack by an AI?
I wonder if on or off script?
Google, Apple, and Facebook are literally three of the top 5 biggest companies on Earth and they are all pro-net neutrality.
Do you trust Zuck and Eric Schmidt to look out for you?
Amazing, I had no idea they could fit so many lies into such a short article. A world record surely?
This business of submitting comments to the FCC is not a vote. It was never represented as such. Nobody ever even implied that a huge volume of like-minded submissions would sway their agenda. They wanted legal arguments that they may not have thought of, and that's it.
Everything else, both pro and con, was just noise. And that is how it was expected to be from the beginning.
If you expect to be taken seriously, perhaps have some actual proof instead of wild conspiracy theories involving the Russians.
Alex Jones? The guy who says juice boxes are turning kids gay? Sorry but I'll pass.
It is fallacious to disregard a truth claim just because you dislike the person who said it. In fact, Jones is not even the author of that article.
This is about building the great Firewall of USA. The Public internet Started under Title II in the 90s, as just an aspect of Phone Service. During the Bush years, they were reclassified as Title I, for a while, then Obama got in office and his FCC head made it Title II again.
The problem really is this: 2016's election was a kind of political Coup of sorts on both parties.
What happened was, that there was racist blowback from Obama by racist white voters, and displaced workers. Some of the complaints were legitimate, most were not. The Human species is likely doomed because of this. A fraudulent Demagogue, rose to power in the Republican party, and captured the nomination. Using voter suppression laws put in by Republican state legislatures in the north, he managed to disenfranchise just enough of the poor and minority voters to reverse what would have been a Democratic Victory in a few key states. Keep in mind there were police raids in Indiana of the police shutting down Black majority Polling places where they were being registered to vote.
One of the reasons for the existence of the electoral college, is that the electors are supposed to see a transparent fraud, demagogue, and liar, and take into account the nature of the popular vote. There was no clearer cause for the electors to reverse their votes, and install Hilary Clinton. But alot of the electors were staunch republicans. They replaced any electors who even tried to stop this.I think there was one guy who tried to vote for the John Kasich?
Keep in mind that the forces of the Old Confederacy has more of a vote than it should anyway.
Now they have until the next election to try and solidify their grip on power. I can foresee more voter suppression based on race, religion, or political affiliation. The cable and Telecom companies have an interest in controlling communication, to make sure that the US Never becomes a liberal country again. See since the Bush years, the way it has worked is, the right passes some horrible draconian law, and it gets reversed by a Judge that deems it unconstitutional.
There's too much money to be made from this kind of Fascism the far right wants. The far right controls the government now. They are engaging in violence and fraud to get their way. In the past, this has been done at the state level in the deep south. But because the US didn't deal with it then, the way they should have they grew and now have taken over the Federal Government.
Should the Electors of the Electoral College Reversed their vote? Yes. I think so.
Can the 2018 Election in the US House Senate fix this? Well it can slow it down. But unless some far left Justice Democrats are elected, I don't see any other way out of this than Revolution/Civil War. I fully expect the right to use every dirty trick it can to stay in power. The last liberal President we really had was Bill Clinton.
Ok, this was clearly an organized campaign by one of the big providers, and is it is blatantly illegal on many fronts, not to mention a direct attack on the democratic process.
There needs to be a full scale no holds barred investigation into this, and the corporations responsible need to be held accountable, including jail time and fund freezing for every traitor who new about this, and a literal fine so large that the treasonous companies will have difficult recovering from it.
Ajit Pai is corrupt and need to go, but more than just his head need to roll on this. And unequivocally, heads need to roll for this.
Doesn't really matter, they ignored all the comments anyhow and this isn't a vote. They never truly cared about our opinions to begin with.
The problem is that they were on the greedy ISPs' side and that has nothing to do with spam submissions.
Interesting that the company only publicly published one report, has one leader, and a rather ineligible GSA document.
(I stopped there after reading the report.)
I think I've found my candidate for the 2017 Poe's Law Award.
See that "Preview" button?
> This business of submitting comments to the FCC is not a vote. It was never represented as such. Nobody ever even implied that a huge volume of like-minded submissions would sway their agenda. They wanted legal arguments that they may not have thought of, and that's it.
Legal arguments, yes, and practical arguments and suggestions. I didn't think that the year and a half that the net neutrality rules were in place were all THAT much different than the previous years, so on this issue my participation was limited to commenting on the very early proposals (one of which would have made it illegal to block spam), but I was very involved in shaping the 2257 and DMCA rules.
I, and some business associates, commented extensively on 2257 and DMCA regulations based on the practical business effects of the proposed regulations, and the government made several changes to each draft based on our comments. As you said, these were things the regulatory agency may not have thought of, or areas where they didn't realize the impact until we pointed it out.
It's unfortunate that none of us foresaw ahead of time how badly DMCA would need significant penalties for recklessly filing false complaints. That's a major omission in DMCA which has caused a lot of problems. The implementation of safe-harbor provisions of DMCA we ended up with is quite good in that web hosting companies and other service providers aren't afraid of being sued for customers' copyright infringement like they were before DMCA was implemented, and they have a well-defined, reasonable process for handling infringement. It sucks that process has been abused by frivilous complaints where there is no actual infringement.
As you said, the comment process is NOT a vote, especially not a "yes or no" vote, and certainly not a Facebook meme contest. It's meant to bring up issues the agency wasn't aware of and to suggest minor changes which make the regulations more practical to implement.
As an example, under a set of regulations I successfully commented on, each small business was required to keep certain records which include personal information about people who had made products they sell, people they had no contact with. The businesses had purchased items from a distributor, who purchased them from the producers, who employed the workers. It wasn't practical for the retailers to keep records about the workers who made the stuff. Through the comment process, we got the proposed regulations changed so that the distributors could hold the records. The distributors already served as a central clearinghouse for the products, so it worked out well for the to be the centralized keeper of records too.
Time to get into the proxy business. or just an affiliate. :P
https://www.hidemyass.com/en-c...
ya... bite me
[($)]
You're so Russian I can almost see the mix of vodka, shitty cigarettes, and worn out track suits through the screen....
This rollback is not the same as a rollback to previous regulations. This is because supreme court cases have stripped important parts from the relevant laws. The general progression is an alternating pattern of the FCC saying it can do something, then ISPs winning a case to prove it can't, followed by new laws saying the FCC can do something, followed by more decisions that the FCC can't.
As a result, a rollback to pre-2015 regulations is actually a rollback to pre-2015 regulations where ISPs know key regulations don't apply.
The 2018 election is exceptionally unlikely to allow the democrats to win the senate or the republicans to get a supermajority. The senate is probably going to be approximately the same. This is because there are very few incumbent republicans for democrats to pick up, and because republicans would need to gain a fairly high number of incumbent democrat seats. The house is more interesting.
The overall premise of the anti title II position is that title II adds extra regulation to solve a non-issue that can be rapidly addressed if consumers actually complain about it. This allows the FCC to ignore all comments about doomsday scenarios -- like ISPs censoring political speech. It is actually interesting because comments from a fox-news article were focused on the liberal media being able to out-buy bandwidth and thus limit conservatives' free speech on the internet.
The issue of NN is perhaps one of the few issues supported by far-left and far-right voters and basically everyone in-between who isn't the CEO of an ISP.
I have a feeling that, and let me go out on a limb here, this may not be the last story we see about net neutrality.
I suppose it's the nerd equivalent of the 2016 elections.
Seeing Russians behind everything that you disagree with is a sign of delusional paranoia. Seek professional help immediately.
Of course some Soviet-style censors from the Ministry of Truth buried the link to the report, so here it is again:
http://www.emprata.com/reports/fcc-restoring-internet-freedom-docket/
What happened was, that there was racist blowback from Obama by racist white voters [...]
And that's where people stop reading your post.
There is almost no real racism in the US, and the term is only used now to demean and belittle as a substitute for making an actual argument. Certainly it's not an appropriate label for half the nation.
We've had equality since about 1991 when Clarence Thomas was appointed to the supreme court. Not only do we have a black supreme court justice, but he's married to a white woman. I can remember being wonderstruck at that time by how amazing it was, and how far we had come(*).
There were no riots, no demonstrations, not much reaction at all when that happened. Just like when Obama was elected - it was only a matter of time before a reasonable presidential candidate happened to be black, and no one gave a fuck. It was a checkmark in peoples' minds, nothing more.
People don't like Obama not because he was black, but because he was awful! Lots and lots of actions that were patently unconstitutional on first reading, ordering US citizens killed, making up laws by executive action, prolonging two wars, screwing up health care... the list goes on.
It's easy to say that people who don't like Obama are racist, it might get you an "amen" from the cheap seats in the house, but it doesn't really reflect reality.
People don't like Obama because he was awful.
(*) Twenty-five years earlier and blacks couldn't marry whites in most of the south, by law. Fifty years earlier it was most of the US. It was illegal when (and where) Thomas was born.
What companies do you know that have more than one CEO?
As an example, under a set of regulations I successfully commented on, each small business was required to keep certain records which include personal information about people who had made products they sell, people they had no contact with.
Title 18, Section 2257?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I never thought i'd ever see you all screaming about net neutrality that isn't about neutrality just because an actual nazi told you to.
Fucking amazing. 'oh no we don't fall for propaganda!'.
Dance little puppets dance! Fight for handing the net over to the FCC. Your nazi master demands it.
Or maybe you never really looked into who was pushing that save the net site... didn't you wonder who was funding it?
I just love how you know exactly why I voted for Trump. People like you are the reason why he's going to get re-elected too.
Helpful hint: nobody likes it when you tell them their motives are something other than what they are, or that their complaints about a corrupt system are not legitimate. They REALLY love it when you call them racists when they are not. But congratulations--you've now successfully got people seriously talking and examining race based and identity based politics in this country with an eye towards ending the preferences and programs that give marginal idiots outsized voices in our society whereas before the majority were largely content to leave them alone. So, thanks for that. It'll save money and increase job opportunities for the rest of us, whatever our skin color or gender, so long as we're not professional victims.
You're either a troll and a fairly talented one, or you're an indication of the absolute decline of mental abilities in the world. Either way, you lost, and you're going to lose again because you're an arrogant ass. If you're going to be arrogant, you might try being correct just once in your life.
This on it's own isn't suspicious. The linked fact that makes this suspicious is the FCC's unwillingness to turn over data that would find these people and hold them legally accountable.
It's almost like they don't want to help do that for some reason.
There is no low low enough for Corporate America to sink to.
Yep, we went through several drafts of 2257 rules
Not saying that the entire process isn't shady as hell, but I'm honestly a bit puzzled why anyone would bother... it's been obvious to anyone with half a clue that Pai was going to ram this through with zero consideration of opposing viewpoints, so what's the point in faking a million comments either way?
Log in or piss off.
The pro NN groups had a couple forms that auto submitted comments with ones name attached. How do you distinguish between those and the work of bots that generate fake names?
just like slashdot posts...
A description of the process from the Federal Register :
The notice-and-comment process enables anyone to submit a comment on any part of the proposed rule. This process is not like a ballot initiative or an up-or-down vote in a legislature. An agency is not permitted to base its final rule on the number of comments in support of the rule over those in opposition to it. At the end of the process, the agency must base its reasoning and conclusions on the rulemaking record, consisting of the comments, scientific data, expert opinions, and facts accumulated during the prerule and proposed rule stages.
So whoever thought that flooding the site with automated comments could tip the balance either way (and there were millions
on both sides of the issue) was just flat wrong.
As is everyone on here moaning that this is a harbinger of the fall of democracy in the USA.
âoestatisticallyâ speaking, when responding with binary opinions, with clearly and commonly defined points of concern, there should be no surprise that phrasing is duplicated, nor (as I am wont to do) someone outright cuts and pastes well articulated statements from other posts...
technical whipping boy, Occam's Strop (think about it...)
what's your point, dumb ass? the cans and boxes are lines with bpa which is a fucking estrogen mimicker just like he fucking said.
Infowars is not a credible source. Have you got something from somewhere credible?
Will win, one way or another.
At the end of the process, the agency must base its reasoning and conclusions on the rulemaking record, consisting of the comments, scientific data, expert opinions, and facts accumulated during the prerule and proposed rule stages.
That they're supposed to do that, but instead and in direct contradiction to that, while openly lying about what the facts are, are simply doing the bidding of the big telecom companies, who the chairman is very clearly a shill for, acting indisputably against the best interests of the country, is why this is a problem for democracy. I don't think anyone is claiming that the *only* problem is that they don't base their policies on the popular vote of submitted comments. But as the passage you cited suggests, that is *part* of it.
I don't think anyone is claiming that the *only* problem is that they don't base their policies on the popular vote of submitted comments. But as the passage you cited suggests, that is *part* of it.
I read that part of the passage as referring to the content of the comments, not the volume (and relevant, substantive content at that -- not stuff that reduces down to "the future of our democracy hangs on my ability to receive unlimited NetFlix for a low fixed price"). That's consistent with what I've read about the process elsewhere. But please let me know if you know of something that clearly states otherwise.
Okay, federal law allows interstate commerce to be regulated. If you can get that to mean that bytes that cross a state boundary are in the FCCs ballpark, well that doesn't have to be so bad.
Just have a state law that all bytes inside the state must obey network neutrality.
Once that is done, the Internet will likely mostly route around the bullshit, to one degree or another, particularly if the state in question gives some incentives to have key nodes inside a state.
So you agree it would totally fuck the internet? THANKS!
The internet IS a utility and should be protected like one
I suggest you take a deep breath, sit back, and focus on perspective. The internet is not going to get "totally fucked" by anything. The internet is the neural net of humanity. We've had 'business-class'/VPN/tethering/staticIP taxes forever. This is all a bullshit narrative in service of a darker conspiracy. It won't be 'six different fast lane configuration tiers for all users overnight'. It will be some stupid ventures into greed here and there that feed the newmedia's daily narrative newscycles, providing entertainment and aggravation for various groups of people. These *small* impacts (the opposite end of the spectrum from a 'total fucking of the internet') will be reacted to politically, with resulting narratives being pushed on the populace just as they are now. At the end of the day, it won't really matter all that much. Within 10 years we will see democrats in the majority at the FCC again, and I assure you, their impact on the neural net of planet earth will be anything but game-changing, no matter how much that narrative is pushed on the public.
This is a good point. I usually just think about this in terms of the legislative consequences, but there has to be some criminal component here. Who is responsible for prosecuting something like this, and why have I never heard of them actually doing it?
I believe the news reported that Obama didn't pardon Snowden because Snowden was an embarassment to his legacy or something like that.
Ego rules.
It's unfortunate that none of us foresaw ahead of time how badly DMCA would need significant penalties for recklessly filing false complaints. That's a major omission in DMCA which has caused a lot of problems.
It wouldn't be a major problem if the USA had an ethical legal profession. Infringement of fundamental rights "under the colour of law" has been grounds for both civil and criminal action for a long time. False complaints violate a number of rights that can be asserted under the 9th Amendment "rights retained by the people", and the 10th Amendment "rights reserved to the people", including the right to ethical practice of law (which applies both directly and indirectly to this matter, even if the party filing the complaint is not a lawyer). They are clear and undeniable examples of violations of fundamental rights "under the colour of law".
In short, we have a mere Act of Congress in conflict with the highest law in the land, and we all know how that is supposed to work out. We even have people swear oaths to act accordingly - and it's covered by the Constitutional "good behaviour" requirements for holding federal office. But things haven't worked out the way they are supposed to, and that's just another incident in the long ugly history of US law that ultimately comes down to the inability of the US legal profession to be ethical.
Time for a change. Unfortunately, if the government and special interest groups keep acting illegally - and get away with it - that sends a clear message to the public that change within the system will not be possible. That's not a good situation for a nation to be in - historically it has often led to violent change, which anybody with any sense would prefer to avoid.