
New York Attorney General Expands Inquiry into Net Neutrality Comments - shadowtree
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/technology/net-neutrality-inquiry-comments.html
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tombert
At the risk of coming off as some bleeding heart liberal, what's to stop
corporations from doing this kind of stuff all the time? What percentage of it
goes unnoticed?

Everyone knows about lobbying, but until very recently, I didn't know about
the whole "astroturfing" thing.

EDIT: Not sure why I'm being downvoted for this... I didn't really intend to
make my post partisan, though I realize that the self-deprecating "bleeding-
heard-liberal" might appear that way.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
> At the risk of coming off as some bleeding heart liberal, what's to stop
> corporations from doing this kind of stuff all the time?

This doesn't strike as being a conservative vs. liberal issue. Most of us can
probably agree that it's an unacceptable attack on the foundations of a
representative democracy.

And as a social conservative with strong "law and order" leanings, the
apparent fraud and identity theft make me very angry. The unwillingness of the
federal government to investigate this only adds to my frustration and anger,
because it smacks of (at least) passive corruption.

~~~
austincheney
Uggggghhh, this isn't an attack upon democracy any more than being spammed on
Reddit. It isn't corrupting a vote for office or legislation. It is, however,
an easily corrupted online comment system that is merely informative and not
in any way asserting an outcome or action.

If you want to reduce spam and bot participation there needs to be a formal
registration process with multifactor authentication of unique identifiers and
it must not be anonymous.

~~~
kbenson
> Uggggghhh, this isn't an attack upon democracy any more than being spammed
> on Reddit. It isn't corrupting a vote for office or legislation. It is,
> however, an easily corrupted online comment system that is merely
> informative and not in any way asserting an outcome or action.

Actually, since the FCC proposal specifically called for soliciting public
comments to inform the decision, those comments can be seen as influencing the
outcome, since lawmakers were expected to read and consider them.

It _is_ an attack on Democracy in a very roundabout way (roundabout because
this wasn't an election, it was regulatory action put in place by officials
that were put in place by elected officials). But in any case, citizens were
asked for what they thought _in a way that affected an outcome they would have
to legally abide_ , and it appears that their voices where stifled. That
actually is a fairly obvious attack on _Democracy in general_ , even if it's
only an attack on _our Democracy_ at a distance.

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travisoneill1
As you stated, the purpose is to inform, not vote or poll. The content of a
comment is informative or it's not. How is it relevant that it was posted by a
bot? How was any commenter stifled?

~~~
losteric
Officials were already aware of the range of possible opinions. The
distribution of those opinions among the general public is informative, and
bots were used to intentionally distort reality.

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rayiner
Notice and comment is required by the Administrative Procedure Act for rule-
makings, not so the agency can solicit peoples' opinions, but to gather
relevant legal and policy arguments and data.

In fact, if an agency said "we picked rule A because that is what the most
people wanted," that would probably be an error that could warrant reversal of
the rule in court. The whole point of agencies is that they're experts
insulated from the political process. Their job is to analyze the law and the
data to reach a reasoned conclusion ( _e.g._ by conducting a cost-benefit
analysis). Courts will reverse an agency if they engage in fallacious or
erroneous reasoning. Deciding that an option is _better_ because it is _more
popular_ would be such an error.

~~~
s73v3r_
However, given enough negative feedback, an agency may decide to decline to
make a rule, or in this case repeal a rule.

~~~
austincheney
Do you have an example of that in the context of administrative procedure?

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phakding
Hopefully this act of deception gets punished. Not just a slap on the wrist
few million dollar fine, but the criminal indictment of the head honchos.

~~~
komali2
If Ajit Pai goes to jail I'm going to throw the biggest party ever and
everyone is invited. Everyone.

I've made it a personal objective of mine to send him a Christmas card every
year, forever, until one of us dies, reminding him that he's a knobhead for
bending over for big telecom.

~~~
phakding
Let me co-host your party. We will split the costs 50/50

~~~
Exuma
I'll provide the entertainment.

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forapurpose
I think we've come to accept government inaction, a display of helplessness,
on these issues. We don't even ask for law enforcement to do its job or expect
it to. We should expect more. Fraud on the Internet is just fraud, and
government should be protecting us.

