More Than 80 Percent of All Net Neutrality Comments Were Sent By Bots, Researchers Say (vice.com) 108
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Trump administration and its embattled FCC commissioner are on a mission to roll back the pro-net neutrality rules approved during the Obama years, despite the fact that most Americans support those safeguards. But there is a large number of entities that do not: telecom companies, their lobbyists, and hordes of bots. Of all the more than 22 million comments submitted to the FCC website and through the agency's API found that only 3,863,929 comments were "unique," according to a new analysis by Gravwell, a data analytics company. The rest? A bunch of copy-pasted comments, most of them likely by automated astroturfing bots, almost all of them -- curiously -- against net neutrality. "Using our (admittedly) simple classification, over 95 percent of the organic comments are in favor of Title II regulation," Corey Thuen, the founder of Gravwell, told Motherboard in an email.
Ajit Pai and Donald Trump are both traitors. (Score:4, Informative)
Get rid of em.
Sounds Familiar (Score:1)
Bots promoting policy positions that will weaken American world dominance.
I don't want to rush in to judgment but it seems like a familiar pattern...
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This one sounds more like Ajit Pai and his buddies hired a merc bot company to either feign citizen enthusiasm for destroying the net or to sabotage the legitimacy of the comments so the comments could be ignored and the ruling class could get their way. There's no reason to assume Russian involvement when we have so many people here frothing at the mouth to destroy the internet / country.
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Except that the reporting on the facebook ads that the russians bought fits this pattern exactly: Find a divisive issue and amplify.
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C'mon, why go for the lesser evil, it's so Un-American to not want the best!
Re:Ajit Pai and Donald Trump are both traitors. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Ajit Pai and Donald Trump are both traitors. (Score:4)
Observation bias much?
Take a wild guess who gets up and moves once across the globe, the achievers or the couch potatoes? Now compare the handful of "successful fresh off the boat" people to the amount of people in India.
If you try to compare something, at least TRY to make them comparable.
95% of the bots (Score:3, Interesting)
Were 3rd party sites aggregating signatures from a campaign. But yeah, "BOTS!".
Re:95% of the bots (Score:4, Informative)
And by "aggregating signatures", you mean "posting the same anti-neutrality comment using the names of people who did not submit those comments [fightforthefuture.org].
The FCC, of course, refused to remove the comments even when the supposed submitters sent a letter explaining that the comments were fraudulent.
In other words... yes, it was a bot. Whoever did it used a list of names and information to submit the anti-neutrality posts in other people's names. There were no signatures or approvals from the people whose identities were used fraudulently.
Alas, it doesn't matter (Score:2)
No matter what the provenance is of the comments, Ajit Pai and The Donald will use them in their favor as political cover for whatever they want to do.
Re: (Score:2)
That's "Unfit Donald". Seems fair if he speaks of other people with that level of respect that he receives it in kind.
Alas, nothing matters (Score:2)
No matter what the provenance is of the comments, Ajit Pai and The Donald will use them in their favor as political cover for whatever they want to do.
It's unfortunate that the economy is going great, leadership had a strong response to 3 successive hurricanes, we got out of TPP and the Paris accord, and have cracked down on illegal immigration.
Otherwise, what you are moaning about could be construed as a bad thing.
Re: Alas, it doesn't matter (Score:2)
Poor bots, voting against themselves (Score:1)
I wonder if the bots are aware that they will be the first to get throttled once net neutrality has been repealed?
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Then it's time to take back control.
Strangely, though, this is illegal.
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Bots don't have feelings, they are killed when they no longer serve a purpose.
I tried to make an 'execution' pun but it would be fully retarded. And you never go full retard.
Anyway - the immense use of bots indicates how important it must be for commercial interests to get rid of the net neutrality.
I don't even blame Trump so much (Score:1, Insightful)
It's easy to hate on the singularly hateable, and deservingly hated, personage of Donald Trump.
But you know what? Trump did everything humanly possible short of literally strapping on a giant unkempt beard and walking out the front door of Trump Tower naked holding up a giant sign saying "I AM YUGELY UNFIT FOR OFFICE, BIGLY DO NOT VOTE FOR ME" to prove that he was not fit to be president.
Having voted for Trump says more about Trumpers than about him. It was a test of ability to discern right from wrong, and
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And even more about the alternative choice.
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Well, he could have *actually* gone and shot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue. Wait... scary thought... how do we know he didn't and wasn't just gloating about getting away with it? Maybe we should cross index several decades of NYC police reports with his whereabouts.
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Personally, I think Trump's success says more about Hillary than about Trump...
Thanks captn obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thanks captn obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
There are actually two possible solutions here, only one of which is net neutrality.
FWIW, most of the rest of the world uses the first one.
Re: (Score:1)
The first is no option, especially since at this point these monopolies need no more government funding. And it's a similar situation in virtually every industry in the US.
Re:Thanks captn obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
How about net neutrality AND dropping government mandated monopolies? Ever thought about that?
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The Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 outlawed government-granted monopolies. The problem isn't government, its the enormous cost of the cable plant which is a 'natural' barrier to entry. Well, there are a bunch of states that have made it illegal for municipalities to own their own cable plant. All those laws were passed with lots of lobbying money from the cable companies after local goverments like Chattanooga built their own cable plants.
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How about net neutrality AND dropping government mandated monopolies? Ever thought about that?
Sounds good, so long as the "final mile" are turned into common carrier public utilities similar to the electric grid. That removes the barrier to entry, moves the infrastructure backbone to the public's side of the equation removing duplication of resources and allows competition in the service provider part of the equation.
Re:Thanks captn obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with your scenario is that it presents a false choice by framing ISP monopolies only existing because of government approval. That may be true for cable television franchises specifically, but not internet access.
The reality is that utilities are fairly close to a natural monopoly because of the complex infrastructure required. We lack competition not because of government granted monopolies, but because duplicating infrastructure is expensive and the economics of it are poor (essentially your are splitting a fixed market against an entrenched competitor).
What we need is for the government to acknowledge the existing monopoly status and impose a means of regulation that limits exploitation of the monopoly that already exists, and probably further, does something to eliminate the ability of a monopoly to exist (ie, a municipal fiber network with equal access at the head end).
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Canada has tried to implement both. We have net neutrality and the previous government was really trying to get some competition happening, though mostly wireless.
With large sparsely populated countries, it is just too expensive to build the infrastructure and you inevitably end up with a couple of companies splitting the customers with perhaps the mostly densely populated areas having some choice.
Re: (Score:2)
Without Net Neutrality you as a customer would have to pay extra for access to any service that the ISP don't have a payback agreement with. It would also allow ISPs to create their version of YouTube where they decide which videos that you can watch and set the standard for the videos you can post.
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The Republican Party platform is officially against net neutrality, and after the past couple years of them pushing that angle, every Republican I know is against it. It's a lot more than a few straggling brainwashed fools. It's a whole fucking horde of brainwashed fools.
only bots are "left" (Score:2)
This isn't voting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot needs to give its readers more context in these posts about regulation feedback. Specifically, it needs to emphasize that in the US regulatory process, this comment phase is not voting. The numbers don't really enter into it.
The regulator has to address issues raised in comments, but that's about counting issues, not comments. An issue with one comment is to be addressed just as an issue brought up by a thousand comments.
The FCC is subject to the laws our representatives pass. THAT's where we give the marching orders. This regulatory process is only about seeing to it that the commission implements the laws handed to it.
Re:This isn't voting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh you poor naive fool.
Congress deliberately passes broad sweeping laws that leave a lot of discretion for the enacting agencies since Congress can't be bothered by the minutia. In this case it is the FCC that put the current Net-Neutrality provisions in place, not Congress, and the FCC can take them away. The comments aren't a vote, but they will certainly be used by the politicians to justify their actions - "Look, we were doing what the public demanded. 90% of those commenting were against Net Neutrality, so we did what they public wanted us to do."
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That's not quite how the US government works.
Congress cannot give agencies blank checks to do whatever they want. Yes, they can direct that agencies fill in the details of policies, but the policies have to originate in congressional action, passed by law. The granting of discretion has been abused, but even so it's not unlimited.
Regulators are required to show that their actions are the result of legal mandates. They have to show that they were, in one way or another, ordered to come up with the regulation
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Oh, you sweet, summer child.
Basically, what you're saying is that the agencies can basically do what they want and then say, "So sue us". Which, by the way, is exactly what happens. Then you have a fight over standing to sue, and the Justice Department will weigh in, and if
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That's not quite how the US government works.
Exactly, you don't get a law by writing letters to politicians. You get a law by writing checks to politicians.
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That's not true. If it is a law that no business cares about enough to write a check, letters can work fine
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Second, this is a misrepresentation of the situation:
but because they can show that they have a mandate by law to correct the error committed by the previous commission
They most certainly can not show that. The most generous interpretation of events is that the FCC has conflicting mandates: one to promote broadband deployment, and another to promote investment and innovation. Neither this commissi
Re:This isn't voting. (Score:4, Insightful)
While what you say about this not being an election is true, this actually raises an interesting question: if the number of comments support a certain position has no effect on the outcome, why was this bot campaign conducted?
There are broadly speaking two possible answers. The first is that the people who orchestrated the campaign do not understand how these regulatory decisions will be made. The second possibility is that they *do* understand, but believe that the appearance of widespread public support will either influence those decisions, or provide some kind of useful pretext for making unpopular decisions.
Re: (Score:2)
Or third possibility
[tin foil hat]
False flag operation by companies that want net neutrality. Knowing that the comments will be discovered as bots since it is not the first time this has happened so they can say; "look how evil [insert opposition] is. They are using bots to push their agenda! The People(tm) want net neutrality! Evil corporations hate NN. They are using bots to take away your internet! NN is the only answer.".
[/tin foil hat]
The lesson to be learned here (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can't speak for him, but I read it so that the extremely popular idea was Net Neutrality, and that the astroturfing faked opposition to it.
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True, but I think you can safely assume that those copy-and-paste jobs are utterly irrelevant, because:
Re:does not *necessarily* mean bots (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. If it's not worth your time to think for a moment and formulate your own concerns, I guess the matter isn't important enough for you to consider your input valuable, because it's likely you didn't bother to learn about it to make an informed decision whether you're for or against it.
We already have enough idiots parroting what somebody else tells them.
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And they shouldn't be doing that. It causes most intelligent people to assume that the number of people who actually care about the issue is approximately zero. If you don't care enough to actually write something, you probably don't care much about it.
Worse, it does more harm than good. The FCC process is not a vote. It's an opportunity to raise new points about why you think the commissioners are complete idiots. If you aren't raising new valid points, then all you're doing is increasing the noise f
Same Standards (Score:1)
I for one like net neutrality. But let's be honest, the comments I sent in support of net neutrality were standard from the EFF (basically copy pasted). Is it possible the same process is being used for those that oppose net neutrality? A standard website that says "show your support against net neutrality" and then gives the user a standard comment that is most usually clicked out of laziness.
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You're no better than the bots. It's just a matter of quantity, assuming you didn't send millions of comments.
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By what WITCHCRAFT dost thou know the article's contents?
They had to research this? (Score:1)
Hey Gravwell, IP addresses please (Score:2)
Another way to look at this (Score:2)
Roughly 1% of Americans favor net neutrality.
FCC asked questions. Few comments had answers (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it's a really frustrating topic to have a constructive conversation about... most techies qualified to discuss solutions can't keep their eyes open through the NPR, most people who have read the NPR are telcom PHBs, and most people in general have strong opinions without qualifying for either category.
Heard this song before (Score:2)
Bots, fake comments, and the government doing unpopular things.
Are you starting to sense a pattern here?
The robots are coming! (Score:2)
We've been hearing about how robots are coming after our jobs. Now they are even getting into politics!
I'm just glad they are supporting net neutrality!
How about moving ICANN back to the US? (Score:1)
I've got a simpler solution (Score:1)
I, for one, am SHOCKED (Score:2)
I am utterly shocked to hear there is a group of companies who are racing to the bottom on customer care while racing to the top on pricing and bundling.
And this SAME GROUP is having cheap, automated spam thrown at the FCC in an apparent attempt to kill off measures that would encourage fair competition and prevent vertical monopolies.
In all seriousness, I am surprised. I expected outright bribes---or campaign contributions, whatever they call it these days. Maybe they're trying to cheap out on that too.
I call Bull (Score:1)
Well you failed then (Score:2)
but money is free speech (Score:1)
Why shouldn't those who are able to code a bot be welcome to have it cast more votes for them? Capability here is the currency, and money is free speech.
Definitely bots (Score:2)