Bots flood government agency seeking comment on Net Neutrality

Source: The Olympian (Olympia, WA) | August 31, 2017 2:39 PM | Tim Johnson

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday swam in a sea of nearly 22 million comments after a deadline passed for the public to offer opinions on an issue that could shape the internet for years to come.

Millions of them appeared to come from robotic networks, or bots, and were the equivalent of spam mail.

The confusion generated by the fake comments left powerful telecommunications and cable companies battling with citizen advocacy groups over the true nature of public sentiment ahead of an open FCC meeting Sept. 28. Both sides said public opinion was on their side.

At stake is a principle known as net neutrality that bars internet service providers from slowing down access to the internet, or forcing consumers and companies to pay more for certain types of web content.

“I’ve seen a lot of dirty tricks out there,” said Timothy Karr, a senior director of Free Press, an advocacy group that supports the digital rights of internet users. He said filling the FCC mailbox with form letters and spam comments appeared to be part of a drive “to delegitimize every comment.”

A study of the FCC comments by a data company, Emprata, found that 19.4 million of the comments came from entities that filed multiple times, originated abroad or used techniques such as fake domain names typical of spam.

“nearly 450,000 comments were filed using Russian addresses.”
 
 
 
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  • Woodcutter #18556

    Rules enforcing net neutrality were codified by the FCC in 2015 with strong support from then-President Barack Obama. Opponents describe it as overregulation and seek to repeal the 2-year-old rules.

    Defenders of net neutrality say a rollback, as proposed by the Trump administration, could create a tiered system that would favor large internet players. They suggested that opponents may be behind the avalanche of fake comments in order to discredit the entire public airing process.

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