
Fake Net Neutrality Comments Draw A Federal Probe - cronix
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kevincollier/feds-investigation-net-neutrality-comments
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AnIdiotOnTheNet
Surprising no one who was paying attention. Similarly there will be no
consequences to this action, which will also not come as a surprise to anyone
who was paying attention.

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ggggtez
I agree the possibly criminal behavior in the NN repeal has been known for a
long time, but the fact the FBI actually believe it's criminal enough to
investigate is definitely new.

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alexeldeib
The implication I assume is that we’ve all been down this road before.

“We’ll investigate.” “Here’s the report. We recommend minimal/no action.”

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cronix
> In it, the commission voted not to release the records that the news
> organizations had requested: data from web server logs that could shed
> additional light on the suspicious comments.

Well, that has to change...

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eddiecalzone
Let's hope they compare the names (typos and all) with subpoenaed data from
Comcast, Verizon and others to see where the "leak" came from.

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FlyMoreRockets
Evidence very probably exists to show the faked comments accessed the FCC
unpublished API to bypass the web form. I wonder if these server logs still
exist...

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mattthebaker
Scratch the logs, subpoena email records of Pai and direct reports.

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randyrand
Duh. But why do FCC comments even matter? They mean literally nothing. You
might as well be counting reddit comments.

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r00fus
They are required to consider them by law. What you're saying is that cheating
is ok, and laws can be ignored.

They may be routinely ignored, but there is a price to pay for ignoring the
law. Even parking tickets you can brush off for a while but you'll pay (a lot)
later.

Or is something different for this administration?

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randyrand
> What you're saying is that cheating is ok, and laws can be ignored.

Huh? All I'm saying is FCC comments don't matter. And therefore neither do
fake ones. Not sure what you're referring to...

If the comments matter only because the law requires them, that's a very weak
argument.

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ABCLAW
>If the comments matter only because the law requires them, that's a very weak
argument.

If the law requires that they be considered in the process of creating policy,
then fraudulently spamming comments is a direct attempt to subvert the policy
making function of the FCC.

We cavalierly assume the comments do not matter because of an underlying
assumption; that FCC Chair Pai will not actually consider them regardless of
their contents, and that he functionally controls the decision to enact or
repeal NN regulations. Imagine if we had a different FCC chair - would the
comments still not matter?

There are two problems preventing the comments from fulfilling their intended
function, but the existence of a second problem (Pai's refusal to discharge
the duties of his office honorably) does not negate the first (the fraudulent
corruption of the public comments record).

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upofadown
>If the law requires that they be considered in the process of creating
policy, ...

The important distinction here is that they have to be considered as comments,
not votes. For example, if a whole lot of comments say more or less the same
thing, then that only counts as one comment. In this case the politics had
already been decided so no comment could affect the general outcome. In a very
real sense the comments did not matter in this case. In other situations they
can matter.

The pointless distraction related to the various attempts to spam the FCC
comments in the end prevented actual politics that could of possibly retained
net neutrality.

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craftinator
How is this news? This has been known for like, 18 months now.

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ggggtez
The news is the FBI investigation. The NYT is completely shut out of the data,
but apparently it's drawn enough attention to get some actual muscle behind it
finally.

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martin1975
Even at that rate, I still think some form of net neutrality has to exist in
the absence of decent broadband competition and/or municipal fiber being laid
everywhere in the US...

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pasbesoin
I would be happy to see some Verizon executives land in the pokey, among other
things.

Unfortunately, one of them is on course to be the next Attorney General.

Enough to give pause for a moment of thought.

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benlorenzetti
Does anyone blame John Oliver for all of this? A sort of Cold War of comments.

Maybe there should be an internet startup selling e-stamps.

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java-man
Why did we let this slide?

What can we do to prevent this behavior in the future?

Why is Ajit Pai not in jail?

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cremp
Serious question: Why is everyones reaction to put {executive} in jail?

People don't understand that corporations, and to a larger extent,
governments, are Medusa. You can cut a snake off, but there are more, who were
trained by {executive}. (And it doesn't actually stop the {bad_practice} from
happening; the head wasn't cut off.) (And for those who really want the myth,
the head still turned people to stone, IE 'we've always done it this way.')

Don't get me wrong; as a net-isizen, I want Pai to rot in hell for everything
he's done, but what is the rational behind putting people in jail?

USA already has enough people incarcerated from tiny drug charges; what makes
this any better? Throwing people in jail won't solve anything, so why is that
the biggest reaction to stuff like this?

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imgabe
What is your proposal to stop this behavior then?

Putting people in jail for doing bad things is a signal to future people who
want to do those bad things that they will suffer consequences for it. This
will make them rethink doing those things. AKA "deterrence"

If people can do these things and get away with it, why wouldn't they? They
make billions of dollars doing this and have no chance of suffering any
negative consequences. If you were in a room with a billion dollars on the
table and you knew you'd be free to take it and no one would ever come after
you for it, wouldn't you take it?

> You can cut a snake off, but there are more, who were trained by {executive}

If your boss told you to do a bunch of things, and then got thrown in jail for
doing exactly those things, are you saying that you would keep on doing them?
Most people wouldn't.

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ikeboy
What, exactly, are the "bad things" you want people to go to jail for?

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imgabe
In this case, manipulating government regulations by submitting false
comments. If it's proved that companies fraudulently submitted comments to
create the appearance of a grassroots sentiment that did not exist,
specifically in order to obtain favorable regulations that would enrich them,
don't you think that someone should go to jail for that?

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ikeboy
Are there any credible allegations that Ajit Pai, or any other government
employees were behind any false comments?

Because I haven't seen any such claims. It seems to me that people are
demanding he be put in jail for drafting and voting for a regulation they
disagree with.

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imgabe
I honestly don't know what role, if any, Pai specifically may have had. This
is why we have a justice system - to investigate crimes and hold trials to
determine if someone committed a crime or not.

I agree he should not be put in jail solely on the basis of allegations from
the Internet. I don't think anyone is proposing that.

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ikeboy
The original comment here says "Why is Ajit Pai not in jail?"

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imgabe
I assume that person believes that, as former general counsel of a major
telecom company and then head of the FCC, if there were wrongdoing, Pai would
have been aware of it, if not involved. Do you think that's an unreasonable
assumption? Even if it happened without his knowledge, he's the leader so it's
ultimately his responsibility.

In the best case, we could say he was negligent in assessing the validity of
the comments that were submitted to his agency. After all, subsequent
investigations have been able to determine the comments were fraudulent, so
why didn't he?

If he knew they were fake and just ignored that fact because they supported
what he wanted to do anyway, that's another thing. If he was being compensated
in some backdoor way from the industry for ignoring that the comments were
fake, that's yet another thing. These are things that should be investigated.

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ikeboy
Yes, it's incredibly unreasonable to go from "fake comments were submitted" to
"Pai is responsible".

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imgabe
Ok, see if I were a government official in charge of reviewing comments from
the public, I would consider it my responsibility to ensure that those
comments were an accurate reflection of public sentiment and had not been
manipulated by an interested party to benefit themselves.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about what sorts of responsibilities
government officials have.

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ikeboy
It was incredibly obvious to anyone paying attention that they were
manipulated. 2.8 million comments were identical and were from a pro-net
neutrality site called "Battle for the Net". That's not organic.

Do you think he should have blocked comments from there? Or what, specific,
actions should he have taken?

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imgabe
> 2.8 million comments were identical and were from a pro-net neutrality site
> called "Battle for the Net". That's not organic.

Lots of advocacy groups offered a form for users to submit comments with a
pre-filled comment field in support of net neutrality. I used one myself. The
fact that the text is the same does not necessarily imply the comment is fake.

There are many other comments where the person who supposedly submitted the
comment says that they didn't. That would be a fake comment.

> Or what, specific, actions should he have taken?

I don't know, how about something besides "not a damn thing"? How about
tracking down the source of the fake comments and fining or otherwise holding
them accountable if it's within his jurisdiction to do so, or turning them
over to the appropriate authorities if not? How about cancelling the comment
period due to the rampant fraud, implementing some measures to verify user and
re-opening comments to try to get something accurate? How about giving the
tiniest shit about the public he's supposed to be serving? Is that too much
ask?

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ikeboy
You seem to be operating under a severe misunderstanding of the point of the
public comment system. It is not to figure out whether or not the public
supports a particular action. Polls are much better at that particular goal.
Rather, the purpose is to surface relevant arguments so the committee can
consider those arguments in their decisions.

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imgabe
> Rather, the purpose is to surface relevant arguments so the committee can
> consider those arguments in their decisions.

And would you say that having one side flood the system with millions of
fraudulent comments is conducive to this purpose? Before you object, yes it
was overwhelmingly one side. FTA of the 14 organizations being investigated,
11 were anti-NN and only 3 are pro.

If what you say were true, all they should have had to do was submit their one
comment with their best argument against net neutrality so that the committee
could consider it. Surely their sound argument would be enough to win the day,
right?

But that's not what they did, is it? Instead of submitting one argument, they
tried to overload the system. It's almost as if they wanted to prevent the
committee from considering the other side's argument, rather than presenting
their own, isn't it? Does that sound like a healthy, functional democracy to
you? Is that the sort of tactic that you would like to have deciding how our
government is run?

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ikeboy
I think basically all the sites that facilitated bulk comments are pointless.
Can't think of any cases where bulk comments made a difference (outside
petitions are a different story, although they're more useful to make obscure
issues get noticed by politicians than for changing positions).

But I think portraying this as part of some broad conspiracy is a stretch. In
theory the fraudulent ones (as opposed to the merely manipulated ones
facilitated by websites giving one side of the issue) could have been placed
by one bored teen script kiddy. I agree it should be investigated, but I don't
think there's reason to demonize Pai for that.

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mmmmmmmmm
Voting should be the only way to influence government. Emailing
representatives, posting comments on message boards, and protesting in the
streets all give an unfair voice to people who have more free time.

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gerbilly
> Voting should be the only way to influence government.

Sure, and when the elected representatives get a majority they get to be kings
for four or five years.

I don't think that's a good idea.

