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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.
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.