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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.

8 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Better proof than stats is needed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pick 100 names from the tens of thousands of people who supposedly posted "The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation..." and look up their phone numbers.

    Call them and ask if they posted that comment.

    When they all ask what the hell you're talking about, there's your evidence.

  2. Just in time by slashmydots · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Just in time by StormReaver · · Score: 4, Funny

      He should be removed from office and charged with bribery and treason.

      And so should Ajit Pai.

  3. Re: Better proof than stats is needed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Learn to read, Trumpies.

    One of the main reasons I can never forgive Trump or those who supported him, is not just how much he lies, but he actively tries to discredit and destroy legitimate sources of information so that you have no choice but to trust his people. This is the kind of crap that helped him win, just applied to another topic. It will likely be used ever more frequently in the future. Seriously, at this point is their anyone who hasn't had their personal information stolen? I've got two or three of the reports in the past few years, and I'm pretty careful, and none of them were through a mistake on my part.

    Years ago, I never could have predicted that truth might become the battle of our time. Sure there will be some that will see through all the BS, but will there be enough?

    Either way, if you start to see the internet divided into packages, it might be time to begin to panic, since you can bet most of the major sources of information will end up controlled by only a handful of rather powerful companies like Sinclair does now to local stations.

    Just think, maybe in 10-20 years we will have to VPN to a foreign nation for accurate news, well assuming they haven't already blocked VPNs. I vaguely recall that Russia and China already had a somewhat successful program there. No doubt some terrorist will abuse the gun laws to buy infinite firearms, ammunition, and maybe even manage to get lots of bomb making materials, and then somewhere along the way will use a VPN once and then they will have an excuse to ban them.

  4. Just a hunch by boudie2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:It was just for show anyway. by jonwil · · Score: 4, Informative

    "big business" doesn't want this (I would say that companies like Facebook (500bn+ market cap as of right now) and Google (700bn+ market cap) are more than big enough to quality as "big business".

    The opposition is comming from one type of company specifically and that is the Pay TV industry. Companies that distribute linear TV channels via cable, satellite, fiber or other technologies hate net neutrality because the Internet makes it possible to distribute content easily and bypass these gatekeepers and their dinosaur business model.

    The same thing happened in Australia at the last federal elections where Rupert Murdoch (who's empire has control over Foxtel, the main Pay TV company in Australia) used the front pages of his newspapers to declare war on the fiber-to-the-premises National Broadband Network because such a network would have been a big threat to Foxtel.

  6. Re: Source fallacy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, but the likelihood of finding truth on that site approaches zero.

  7. Re: Better proof than stats is needed. by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Uh, the media actively and frequently lies about Trump. Do we not remember the koi pond? That happened a week ago. They used edited video that zooms in on Trump to only show his face and prevents the viewer from seeing what Japanese Prime Minister Abe was doing at a key point of the short event.

    Why was Abe edited out? Perhaps because he took his entire box of fish food and dumped it into the pond. Trump followed Abe's lead and did the same seconds later.

    In other words - nothing to see here. But with the zoom edit cutting Abe out, the viewer or reader - with an assist from the caption - is led to believe only Trump dumped his box.

    The whole world saw them lie, and you're gonna say they're still credible?

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!