LF: Two Separate Studies Show That The Vast Majority Of People Who Said They Support Ajit Pai's Plan... Were Fake (Net Neutrality)

Title: Two Separate Studies Show That The Vast Majority Of People Who Said They Support Ajit Pai's Plan... Were Fake (Net Neutrality)
Source: TechDirt
URL Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2 ... ajit-pais-plan-were-fake.shtml
Published: Dec 14, 2017
Author: Mike Masnick
Post Date: 2017-12-19 08:54:45 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 948
Comments: 24

from the fake-news dept

The fact that the FCC comments for Ajit Pai's net neutrality repeal were stuffed with fake comments is nothing new at all. We first reported on it back in May, and reports of comments from totally fake people or long dead people continue to pop up. Even worse are multiple stories of people having their own identities used to file comments, often opposed to their own views. The FCC has consistently responded that it doesn't care. New York's Attorney General has been investigating this as fraud, and asked the FCC to delay its net neutrality repeal until after the investigation was complete -- a request the FCC completely ignored. And, as we just noted a little while ago, Schneiderman recently announced that he's found over 2 million fake comments.

But it's easy to say "well, all these fake comments mean all the comments can be ignored." But it's important to look at the source of these fake comments and on which side they ended up. And just this week two new studies have come out, both taking a really deep dive into the fake comments. The Wall Street Journal did an investigation and reached out to 2,757 people who had supposedly commented. 72% of them said they had not posted the comments.

But even more thorough and more interesting is a new report that just came out this morning, from Startup Policy Lab's "Truth in Public Comments" project. Its methodology was even more thorough than the Wall Street Journal's. It took a random sample of 450,000 public commenters, and asked them "did you submit the comment quoted below to the FCC, yes or no?" The results are astounding:

88% of survey respondents whose emails were used to submit pro-repeal comments replied, “no,” that they did not submit the comment . Conversely, only 4% of pro-net neutrality respondents said that they did not submit the comment attributed to them.

Let's unpack that again to make it clear. Out of a fairly massive sample of FCC commenters nearly all of the ones supporting Pai's plan were fake. And nearly all of the ones supporting the existing rules were real. Here, see it in graphical form:

And this happened across multiple samples that the TiPC project ran. Each time, it showed that nearly all of the support for Pai's plan was fake. And nearly all the support for existing rules was real.

Also, quite telling: in sending out these emails asking people whether or not they filed, most of the responses they got came from people who supported net neutrality. The response rate among those who supported Pai? Tiny. Because most of them appear to be fake.

This is not to say that there weren't fake comments in support of the old rules. They did exist. But as the TiPC report notes, the "fakes" in support of the old rule were fairly obvious -- using obviously fake emails and names. The comments in support of Pai, while fake, used real emails and names that tried to appear real:

The FCC received spam comments that supported both the pro-net neutrality and pro-repeal. The difference, however, is that the majority of spam comments associated with email addresses supporting pro-net neutrality were ignored by the FCC because they were obviously fake. Conversely, we must conclude that the spam comments associated with email addresses that supported pro-repeal email addresses were a deliberate campaign to evade the eyes of regulators and influence the rulemaking process.
The discrepancy rests in the nature of the bounceback of emails. The survey resulted in a high bounce rate for emails associated with pro-net neutrality using unsophisticated approaches. Examples of an unsophisticated spam comment are those the FCC acknowledged are, “[o] bviously, fake comments [...] by the Flash, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Superman are not going to dramatically impact our deliberations on this issue. ”
By contrast, it appears that the spam comments for emails associated with pro-repeal comments reflect deliberate action to use stolen identities. In these instances, millions of Americans may have had their identity harvested for the political objectives of supporting the repeal of net neutrality laws, regardless of whether that individual agreed with the position or even had a position on the proposal. Accordingly, unlike the submission from Batman, which the FCC was correct to ignore, millions of Americans had their voice taken and repurposed without their consent.

No matter where you stand on the question of net neutrality, this should be a major concern. Public commenting is important, but when the system is totally hijacked in a way that appears designed to deliberately skew or merely taint the results, it does no one any good at all.

This chart is posted from an article about fake news.
How are we to know this chart is not also fake news?
Have you validated its accuracy and authenticity?

Deckard, you either have to be the most gullible or
the most stupid person on the face of God’s earth.

Two Separate Studies Show That The Vast Majority Of People Who Said They Support Ajit Pai's Plan... Were Fake

Oh, I see why you're confused - "from the fake-news dept." You read that and assumed the rest was fake.

Let me explain it to you. On second thought - you claim to be smart. You figure it out.

You are posting something you cannot validate and you want me to accept it as the Gospel.

Okay, GOT IT …
I studied the chart very carefully and analyzed each of those minute lines.
I went out on the Internet and triple checked six different sources.
I even made a couple of phone calls.
I desperately needed someone to confirm my startling discovery.
I am shocked…I cannot believe it.
Say it ain’t so.

I don’t want to disappoint you too much, but YOU are the ONLY one supporting your position anywhere I can find on LF.

Good luck with your crusade….carry lots of food and water for the long trip, alone.

Just 2 big companies, Netflix and YouTube, are using 55% of total bandwidth. YouTube is an adjunct to Google's ad services and they are operating their own $35/month cable package for paying customers as well.

It seems that porn downloads and various torrent piracy apps comprise another 30% or so.

So why should the average corporate customer or home user who don't use all these video services pay for all the infrastructure being used to support Netflix and the other bandwidth hogs?

The answer is they shouldn't. If you want to use the network for delivery of your video entertainment instead of cable/satellite, why should everyone else be forced to subsidize your excessive consumption of data packets?

So it doesn't matter at all who commented or what the comments were. Net neutrality was a huge giveaway to the bandwidth hogs at the expense of everyone else. And it was contrary to the interests of a majority of internet users, used to justify continuing to raise access prices for everyone. Which hurt the poor and working class the most, as usual.

The only thing surprising is how unified the tech companies and many others were in protecting Netflix/YouTube from any examination of whether they should pay for their use of over half of all download traffic on the internet. And subsidizing the torrent pirates and the porn sites really isn't a freedom-of-access issue to most people.

All video services delivered via internet should be subject to common carrier fees to cover the costs of delivering those services to consumers. No free rides for Netflix/YouTube/Hulu/AmazonVideo/etc.

Video services via internet consume tens to hundreds of times more bandwidth than other internet services. Pricing should reflect that and those big users should pay commensurate carriage fees for access.

Take a deep breath, look around you, reach with one hand over to your other lower arm and feel your vein. Wow! How does the new freedom smell, look and feel? Makes you happy....right? Sure it does.

So, get up out of your chair right this minute....go over to the window and open it....stick your head out and yell at the top of your voice: HEY EVERYONE....I FEEL FREE....I FEEL THE INTERNET FREEDOM.

There, I’ll bet that made you feel so much better, didn’t it? Sure it did. It was exhilarating, wasn’t it? Sure it was. It was greatly satisfying and so emotionally rewarding, right? You betcha it was....be a man and admit it.

Olay....now you can return to you chair to sit back, relax and join gleefully in singing along with Mitch.

Only during primetime hours. But the way I read it, that is a percentage of downstream traffic, not a percentage of available downstream bandwidth.

If there are 100 cars on the road during primetime hours, 55 of them are Netflix and YouTube. But the road can handle more than 100 cars.

How is netflix getting a free ride when consumers choose to use the internet plan they purchased to watch netflix?

There's so much government meddling with the phone companies, FCC, and cable that any possibility of free market forces taking over, is slim to none. At this point it's all about putting band-aids on previous screw ups.

We're returning to a simpler level of corruption from an earlier time, when Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and Aristotle Onassis ran the world.

Come on...lol. Chyeah right -- NOT one, but TWO "studies" were commissioned? How convenient. Meh. Wall Street Journal is a FAKE LIBERAL OUTLET which has ZERO cred.

0bama's Regime were the ones who implemented this...THING...IN THE FIRST PLACE, back in 2015.

Let's unpack that again to make it clear. Out of a fairly massive sample of FCC commenters nearly all of the ones supporting Pai's plan were fake. And nearly all of the ones supporting the existing rules were real.

Once again the ruling elites show that they are out of touch with American citizens.

Same here, Deckard. We share far much more in common (much of that a suspicious suspicion of blatant gubint overreach, over-officiousness, authoritarian fascism, AND...ESPECIALLY the presumptuous suggestion: "Move on -- nothing at all to see here.")

Believe it or not TC, I also highly respect you -- (Except when you disagree with me ;-)....yes, despite our own passionate disagreements. Who else could I disparage like a Drama Queen for totally ignoring CTs and for running down Uncle Alex??

Heck, I've agreed and dis-agreed with everyone at LF. Impossible not to. Some of the exchanges as you both know get contentious. Pete and I have had nasty wars, mostly on the subject of God, but that's Pete. He's probably long forgotten about them, yet we still engage in other convos as I look forward to his unique perspective.

We all more or less come from different places and careers in life. That guarantees a diverse cross section of opinion, perspective, AND importantly, a sense of humor. Sometimes I...and we all take things too seriously.

If we can't engage with one another, and get informed or challenged, then by/with who or whom? Frankly, not many people "out there" are well-versed in the issues we address/opine on. Moreover, we all have a history with one another. We aren't strangers, we're virtual friends chatting at the virtual water cooler...

Personally, I miss several posters, good people from the past -- many from Liberty Post. We never know for how long each one of us has -- we should appreciate each other more. Some of us thought Goldie and others would/could go on forever. That was an excellent group on a whole. Many a laugh was had, and that is/was priceless.

That said, a bit of gratitude should go out to A K A Stone for keeping this watering hole alive. And I appreciate those who are here. Even if it appears NO woman exists here.

(btw Boris, what's the weather like today??) Say what you want, but fwiw, BORIS GETS IT.

I agree. It sure would have been nice if they had all came here. BTW,I was the last person to post on LP.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

from the fake-news dept

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul

Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.