
Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality - andygcook
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/net-neutrality-fcc-fake-comments-impersonation
======
irjustin
This is old news, well known and literally the whole "comments" was a sham
anyway.

The voting was controlled by 5 people and split on party lines 3-2 [0]. NN was
never actually up for debate.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States#Rollback_of_Obama-
era_rules) \- last paragraph

~~~
env123
Wasn't aware of it though. Why can't news be slow?

~~~
IshKebab
Because then it isn't _new_ s anymore. It is history, and it's probably better
found on Wikipedia:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States)

~~~
Lio
By that definition everything is history and nothing is news because
everything is read sometime after it was first reported.

I’m sure you didn’t mean it as such but that sounds like the kind of argument
often used to shutdown discussion of egregious behaviour.

------
ThalesX
I try to shy away from politics on this website but I can't shake this nagging
feeling that this says something important about the current state of the US
and the world. I am not a US citizen nor a resident, nor am I a Russian
citizen or resident, so my opinions are absolutely subjective.

I feel like whenever an external agent such as Russia opens up the troll
farms, the US gets all up in arms about the threat to democracy and how its
poor country is under assault by the big bad meanies sending their virtual
gargoyles to pray on its innocent citizens and influence their voting habits
and put whoever they want in charge of the country and oh woe me, _while_ they
are doing it to their own citizens!

I don't hear Russia on the world stage as vocal about it as the US, if
anything I'm hearing a lot more pragmatic (not something everyone agrees with)
geopolitical discussion coming from that side, and I don't hear about them
actively targeting their own citizens in "psyops" with the same fervor as the
US.

Of course, this could mean that the press is free in the US and totally
controlled in Russia so of course we hear only one side of the story, but I
have this nagging feeling that whereas Russian government is actively and
directly sabotaging its citizens, the US is engaged in far more
psychologically dangerous activities targeting its state of being, and that
the most damage is done by internal forces, not by external baddies.

I dunno, might be totally off, who knows...

~~~
alwayseasy
>and I don't hear about them actively targeting their own citizens in "psyops"
with the same fervor as the US.

Both countries are well versed in the topic but of course your media diet
might affect how much you see on it.

Historically more than half the budget and employees of the IRA is dedicated
to Russian speaking internet users and have been involved in way more
elaborate schemes directed at Russian electors. They've physically
impersonated journalists and gone to the door of anti-government activists for
example. The Russian government also has a tighter media machine to encircle
their propaganda targets by coordinating their attacks using TV, press and
internet assets directly aligned with the state.

In the USA sockpuppetting and astroturfing by political entities is usually
discovered due to healthy democratic tensions where both camps get to freely
express themselves when they discover them.

The "alt-right" has been building a network of media organizations but have a
harder time getting their propaganda laundered by the traditional media who
tend to vet what they air/publish. The political fracture of the USA makes it
harder to convince the entire country on 1 topic. The recent failed attempts
by Jacob Wohl to create "offline" pressure on Robert Mueller or Elizabeth
Warren and have them laundered in traditional media is a sign they're trying
but not connecting yet.

Finally the example here is less about a political operative trying to trick
the American constituents than giving the FCC a pretext (or biased analysis)
to say their policy was popular.

~~~
ThalesX
Thanks for the comment, food for thought!

> Historically more than half the budget and employees of the IRA is dedicated
> to Russian speaking internet users and have been involved in way more
> elaborate schemes directed at Russian electors. They've physically
> impersonated journalists and gone to the door of anti-government activists
> for example. The Russian government also has a tighter media machine to
> encircle their propaganda targets by coordinating their attacks using TV,
> press and internet assets directly aligned with the state.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if this were true. Russia's government
viewed from a distance does seem like the kind of entity engaged in this kind
of 'persuasion' and operations, even through third party 'private' entities.

> In the USA sockpuppetting and astroturfing by political entities is usually
> discovered due to healthy democratic tensions where both camps get to freely
> express themselves when they discover them.

I think there's danger in this kind of statement. If one _truly_ believes
one's country to have a healthy way of resolving such operations because the
balance of powers is so great, that person is prime for getting manipulated as
they are letting their guard down.

> Finally the example here is less about a political operative trying to trick
> the American constituents than giving the FCC a pretext (or biased analysis)
> to say their policy was popular.

I agree, however if you ask me this gives an even smaller group of people
control of the majority than if the target would be directly influencing the
average American constituent. I'm not sure if I understood the idea clearly,
but it seems a lot more dangerous for an entity to just be able to justify its
own actions in order to influence laws in a nation, than to have to go through
the hurdle of influencing the masses.

~~~
alwayseasy
> I think there's danger in this kind of statement.

I agree, my intention isn't to encourage people in the US to let their guard
down but rather give an explanation on how structural differences between
Russia and the USA lead to different propaganda and manipulation dynamics.

Citizens in democracies can and are manipulated by many different actors, it's
just that these actors are more likely to be adversarial at some point.
Healthy media competition and freedoms are a good antidote but not the silver
bullet.

------
d--b
The story is that citizen have nothing to gain from anti net neutrality laws.
So basically, all comments against net neutrality are either faked or by
someone who has skin in the game.

People ought to go to jail for this kind of crap.

~~~
dTal
I'm right there with you that "this sort of thing", i.e. deliberately
subverting the process of democracy, should be a serious crime on par with
treason.

However, can we qualitatively define a line that demarcates "honest
communication" from "malicious attempts to change public opinion"? You can't
make it a crime to try convince people of things. The basic intent we would
like to capture is it should be illegal to lie for political gain, including
subtle lies of omission like anonymously pretending on the internet that
you're a disinterested bystander. But lying is a very slippery concept to
legally define (as is "political gain").

~~~
PeterStuer
So on which side of your nebulous edge-casing slippery slope do you think
hiring firms to write millions of fake comments from stolen identities to
provide your captured regulator enough FUD should fall?

~~~
dTal
...the bad side? I thought I was very clear about that. I don't really
understand why I'm catching flak.

Obviously the stolen identities is something we can definitively point to that
can fairly straightforwardly be made illegal, if it isn't already. But most
astroturfing campaigns don't do that, and although it makes this a
particularly compelling case it's not actually the meatiest part of what makes
it bad. Millions of comments from _invented_ accounts to provide background
FUD would also be very evil. But what part of that can we actually make
_illegal_ , without also compromising the free speech of you and me? Hiring PR
firms? Writing comments on the internet? Unfortunately, "I know sketchy shit
when I see it" just isn't good enough.

I'm not sure what you think I'm arguing. I _want_ there to be answer. I was
hoping for suggestions.

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anonymousBarker
What would you except in a country where most politicians depends on bribes
from the rich? First you buy the worst politicians money can get. Then you
purchase "public opinion" to back them up when they push your agendas.

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Quipunotch104
Wait, so a lobby group was behind it all? /s

The reality is no one is surprised, and the lack of surprise is exactly why
the system is broken. Let’s hope the states advocate for Net Neutrality.

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willis936
I noticed this while looking through comments while they were still taking
submissions. I was outraged. I told everyone I knew who cared. I can’t
understand how this story isn’t bigger.

I would be much happier if at the time there was a counter force to spam
submissions of the opposite opinion and at least make it abundantly clear that
the whole thing was a farce. It’s wild that the FCC chair had the gaul to
claim the public was against net neutrality from these submissions.

~~~
Bartweiss
I mean, there was pro-net-neutrality spam, millions of comments worth. It's
part of what Pai cited to justify the claim that this wasn't a one-sided
problem.

Except... the pro-NN spam mostly came in two batches, which could each have
been done by a single person. One batch used FakeEmailGenerator, along with
what seem to be identities made by pulling randomly from lists of first names,
last names, and streets. The second batch exclusively used "@pornhub.com" as
the email domain. Both were discounted from every serious attempt at counting
responses on each side.

It's the worst of both worlds, really. There was enough pro-NN spam
_numerically_ to claim the anti-NN astroturfing wasn't any worse, but it
represented a tiny number of bad actors. Meanwhile, the anti-NN spam was
vastly more malicious in both the influence of the perpetrators and the
extremity of the behavior used to hide it. Randomly generating a fake name
isn't a misdeed on par with identity theft, but it was certainly treated that
way.

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ryanmarsh
Astroturfing, troll farms, and AI driven slide bots are the future of
discourse where the stakes are high and the conversation is in any way
connected to the internet.

This will affect all parties on all sides of all debates.

I have no idea what this means for society or what should be done about it.

~~~
PeterStuer
Welcome to the post-truth society.

Where this will end nobody knows, but that it will take us into some new 'dark
ages' already seems pretty likely.

~~~
jacquesm
I would argue that we are already well underway towards those 'dark ages'. The
fact is that today if you compare the quality of the news and the deluge of
information you are bombarded with with say the news grade at the end of the
80's, just before the internet became a commodity that we've slid backwards
considerably.

Losing quality newspapers as a source of information and replacing them with
the current crop of online news sources, filter bubbles and the twitterverse
does not feel at all like an improvement to me.

------
alexandercrohde
I am no lawyer, but I would assume that posting as another person online by
filling out their name, en masse, is illegal.

I would imagine it's slander, fraud, and a number of other crimes.

------
sincerely
I guess my question is why did Buzzfeed write this now? Didn't we know that
dead people and Barack Obama were sending in anti-net neutrality comments in
2017?

~~~
PeterStuer
Because there are new developments in the case, sadly persisting the
perversion.

Context: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/why-ajit-pais-
un...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/why-ajit-pais-unhinged-net-
neutrality-repeal-was-upheld-by-judges/)

~~~
jasonjayr
Interesting that DNS Caching is cited as one of the reasons to uphold the
reclassification.

Perhaps that is the grounding that should be used to promote additional 3rd
party DNS resolvers

------
vharuck
I thought the public comments were a chance for experts or stakeholders to
give their opinion of what should be done. I wouldn't be surprised if federal
groups just ignored any template submissions. The public comments aren't a
voting system, and the number if comments for or against a proposal has little
meaning.

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ineedasername
I don't think the comments mattered at all. At most, they provided political
cover for the move. Ajit Pai was always going to ram this through. However,
the corruption of the public comment system will also give our next president
the political cover to change back and, hopefully, enshrine the change in law
rather than easily changeable policy.

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bschne
Details on Jeff Kao's analysis of the comments from 2017:
[https://medium.com/hackernoon/more-than-a-million-pro-
repeal...](https://medium.com/hackernoon/more-than-a-million-pro-repeal-net-
neutrality-comments-were-likely-faked-e9f0e3ed36a6)

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russdill
"Project Veritas" But of course.

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fallingfrog
Of course, no telecom executive will face any consequences for this. No jail
time, no slap on the wrist. Business as usual in the good old United States.

------
anovikov
There is a very close analogy from the past which may explain why net
neutrality is a good idea: railways and Standard Oil. Rockfeller making
special deals with the railways prioritizing his traffic directly resulted in
the worst monopoly in U.S. history, putting millions of people in misery. If
that isn't an example of why critical communication channels should be equally
available to everyone i don't know what is.

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5trokerac3
Deception by omission. That entire comment section was fueled by bots on both
sides.

