80% of the 22M comments on net neutrality rollback were fake

belltaco 5 years ago |

Isn't there a law that makes it a crime to knowingly submit false information to the federal government?

hnnnnnnng 5 years ago | |

Yes but the government doesn't prosecute itself (see the director of the NSA lying to congress while under oath) and corporations are only ever hit with tiny fines they can pretty much ignore.

jjcon 5 years ago | | |

How about 19 year olds as was the case here?

op00to 5 years ago |

My dead mothers identity was used to spread lies. I was livid then and livid now. This fine doesn’t go nearly far enough.

blacksmith_tb 5 years ago | |

It's appalling, though the Techcrunch piece doesn't provide the annoying detail that the 19yr-old who submitted 7.7M fakes did it in support of Net Neutrality[1] - with friends like this...

1: https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-technolog...

dpwm 5 years ago | | |

> The broadband industry funded the fraudulent creation of about 8.5 million of those, while a 19-year-old college student submitted 7.7 million, and the remainder came from unknown but spurious sources.

The article doesn’t explicitly say that the comments funded by the broadband industry were in favour of rolling back net neutrality, so I had to guess on that one too.

Thinking about it some more makes me question these assumptions. It seems plausible that putting forward straw-man arguments to be robustly demolished could be a useful tactic to those interested in manipulation.

crumpled 5 years ago |

I've been pondering the problem this plays into. It's likely that at least some portion of the remaining 20% of commenters were influenced by the fakes. Those people could see the techcrunch article as bogus, fake news.

I wonder how we can somehow slow (slower than fact) disinfo and test information for credibility. People's GPUs are gonna spin up an information hellscape.

Where can I find the solutions that show promise so I can advocate for them? The outlook is depressing.

mint2 5 years ago |

If someone submits a comment and impersonates you, can they be sued for one of slander/libel/defamation?

Can they also be sued for identify theft?

If someone can be sued for making a false statement about you, why not when they willfully and knowingly steal your identify to make others believe you did something that you didn’t?

jimmygrapes 5 years ago |

I am of the 20% I guess. My argument, which I can go into more (but only on demand: I believe I am shadowbanned so I need some proof otherwise before putting forth such effort), is that the Net Neutrality advocates did not recognize that existing regulation already addresses the concerns.

yummypaint 5 years ago | |

You are not shadowbanned, people probably just disagree with you

bigzyg33k 5 years ago | |

I don’t think you’re shadowbanned - at least, I can see your comment

whateveracct 5 years ago | | |

everyone can lmao

jjeaff 5 years ago | |

If existing regulations already solved the issues, then you wouldn't see existing ISPs giving unlimited data as long as you are using their special pet services or partner services.

jimmygrapes 5 years ago | | |

But not to the explicit exclusion of other data streams, which was the primary concern of most proponents. And the mechanisms for implicitly excluded providers does already exist for them to challenge any such exclusion, were it to be proven.

jjeaff 5 years ago | | |

That wasn't the only concern. If you only give free data for certain services because they are a) already very popular or b) have enough money to pay for it, then you create a huge moat for the incumbents and make it much more difficult for any new, better alternatives to compete.

tmaly 5 years ago |

Pareto principle at play

lamp987 5 years ago | |

not really, this percentage is coincidence

ezekg 5 years ago |

*surprised pikachu face*