Broadband Companies Paid For 8.5 Million Fake Net Neutrality Comments, New York AG Reports

The Office of the New York Attorney General said in a new report that a campaign funded by the broadband industry submitted millions of fake comments supporting the 2017 repeal of net neutrality. wiggles shares a report: The Federal Communications Commission's contentious 2017 repeal undid Obama-era rules that barred internet service providers from slowing or blocking websites and apps or charging companies more for faster speeds to consumers. The industry had sued to stop these rules during the Obama administration but lost. The proceeding generated a record-breaking number of comments -- more than 22 million -- and nearly 18 million were fake, the attorney general's office found. It has long been known that the tally included fake comments. One 19-year-old in California submitted more than 7.7 million pro-net neutrality comments. The attorney general's office did not identify the origins of another "distinct group" of more than 1.6 million pro-net neutrality comments, many of which used mailing addresses outside the U.S. A broadband industry group, called Broadband for America, spent $4.2 million generating more than 8.5 million of the fake FCC comments. Half a million fake letters were also sent to Congress.

Federal login?

[jacks smirking reven]

Obviously this really calls for a need for gov divisions like the FCC to have some sort of registration authentication for US citizens as it seems like 80% of the comments were fake making the process effectively useless and as we see it can be used to effectively push bad regulations.

Re:

[smap77]

Comment count is but one political tool for leveraging one side's position. Comment content is another tool. Beware those who use the count over the content.

Re:

[Lab Rat Jason]

And furthermore, beware those who use the content, but ignore the continent.

Re:

[aitikin]

And furthermore, beware those who use the content, but ignore the continent.

Autocorrupt?

I posted a few ...

[PPH]

... comments against net neutrality. Where do I submit my invoice?

Prosecute for Fraud

[omnichad]

That is about 8.5 million counts of fraud they should be charged for.

Re:Prosecute for Fraud

[ArchieBunker]

We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing.

Re:

[Gavino]

Turkeys asked to vote on Christmas. Results say CHRISTMAS IS NOW BANNED!

Re:

[Anubis IV]

That is about 8.5 million counts of fraud they should be charged for.

Actually, that number should be 18 million, not 8.5 million.

The broadband ISPs contracted "lead generators" (companies that specialize in producing leads that result in consumer action) to drum up as many comments against net neutrality as they could, which included tactics such as more or less bribing consumers by giving away items and then asking if they'd write a comment against net neutrality. Some of those lead generators went a step further, however, and fabricated the comments altogether. Much of tha

Re:Prosecute for Fraud

[Alain Williams]

Prosecute the individuals, not the broadband companies. If the companies have to pay a fine it will be seen as part of the cost of business. If executives (and their managers all the way to the top) have to pay large fines and spend time in prison - then there is a chance that this will not happen again.

Re:

[Inglix the Mad]

I respectfully disagree in that companies should still have to pay a fine directly. Charge them fines based on a percentage of gross income, say 5 percent plus penalties and interest and use that money for net neutrality endeavors. For AT&T, as reported in 2018, they had a gross income of $170.8 billion. After taking everything out, they had a net income of about 19.4 billion, or $2.85 per share. Such a fine would come straight off the top, ringing in at $8.54 billion tearing out at least $1 per share i

Seems legit

[sofla]

8.5m fake comments from the broadband industry, 9.3m (7.7 + 1.6) fake comments from the pro-net neutrality crowd.
With both sides of the issue seeming to have been equally fraudulent, it seems unlikely that the outcome was affected.
Only that the final N-counts were overstated.

Re:Seems legit

[mysidia]

With both sides of the issue seeming to have been equally fraudulent, it seems unlikely that the outcome was affected.
Disagree... The regulators are supposed to take comments into account regarding their proceeding, not merely "tally" them For and Against making a rule. The reasons, issues raised, and Arguments + Data provided in comments are supposed to provide inputs to the rulemaking process.

17 Million fake comments makes it that Much less likely that the actually legitimate comments might be read and taken account to modify the rules being considered --- the useful comments become more likely to get overlooked and just tabulated For/Against, and the Against comments are prone by regulators to get disregarded in such a situation (You can expect regulators will have a Bias towards proceeding as they planned when the responses are about 50/50, and there's so much noise in the comments that any meaningful input has gotten buried in 17 million Copypastas)...

Not surprising

[smooth wombat]

When you had a fake administration lying about fake issues, it's unsurprising companies would take advantage and produce fake comments.

I remember one person posting on Twitter asking Pai how his mother posted a comment against Net Neutrality when she had been dead for five years.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

She voted for trump too.

Re:

[flyingfsck]

Obviously his mum was extremely concerned about net neutrality such that it required divine intervention.

i want to who what companies

[FudRucker]

and be able to know what broadband companies were doing this and search their database to see if my identity was used, if it was my broadband company and my identity then i want to sue them for all i can get out of it

Re:

[smap77]

You can start down the "was my name used" path here:
https://www.comcastroturf.com/ [comcastroturf.com]
and then sleuth down the "who used my name". Let us know how the lawsuit is progressing.

Freedom of speech

[NicknamesAreStupid]

I remember some law class, decades ago, where it was mentioned that the First Amendment was restricted by the Supreme Court in a case where a man used a bullhorn to drown out the voices of everyone else.

How is this not illegal?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

How is this not illegal?

Oh, because a corporation did it, I understand.

Carry on, nothing to see here, etc etc etc.

Re:

[Baconsmoke]

Now, now let's remember that corporations are people too. Well people who are allowed to not pay taxes, spend millions to lobby the government to pillage the economy and will never be held liable for anything they do. But aside from that, they're just like us.

Re:

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Yep, the cool thing about being a corporation is never having to go to prison.

I commented

[imidan]

I personally commented on the issue at the official web site. I commented in favor of net neutrality. As I looked at the site, I could also see other peoples' comments pour in. The comment text was identical in every case, a brief statement against net neutrality. The last names of the person who "submitted" the comments were in perfect alphabetical order. It was blindingly obvious that the comments were being committed to the system by a naive algorithm running through a database of names. The best I could