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       Broadband Companies Faked 8.5 Million FCC Net Neutrality Comments

   Josh Centers

   Back in 2017, the US Federal Communications Commission under Ajit Pai
   rolled back Obama-era net neutrality rules after a period of public
   comment (see '[1]FCC and Congress Work to Roll Back Net Neutrality,' 5
   May 2017). Now [2]TechCrunch reports that an investigation by the New
   York attorney general's office has revealed that not only were the vast
   majority of the comments submitted to the FCC fake'18 out of 22
   million'but that a consortium of major broadband companies spent $4.2
   million to generate and submit more than 8.5 million of the fake
   comments against net neutrality. In many cases, the companies used the
   names of real people who had no idea comments had been attributed to
   them. So far, three lead generators'Fluent, React2Media, and
   Opt-Intelligence'have had to pay $4.4 million in settlements. Sadly, it
   looks like the broadband companies behind them will avoid charges due
   to having firewalled themselves from the lead generation companies.
   Amusingly, another 7.7 million fake comments in favor of net neutrality
   were submitted by a 19-year-old California college student who combined
   a fake name generation site with a disposable email service. Two
   lessons become clear:
     * The FCC's public comment system is nearly worthless as currently
       coded.
     * Sleazy marketing firms are much more expensive than college student
       hackers.

   [3]Read original article

References

   1. https://tidbits.com/2017/05/05/fcc-and-congress-work-to-roll-back-net-neutrality/
   2. https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/06/80-of-the-22-million-comments-on-net-neutrality-rollback-were-fake-investigation-finds/
   3. https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/06/80-of-the-22-million-comments-on-net-neutrality-rollback-were-fake-investigation-finds/

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