SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the say-it-often-enough-and-people-will-tend-to-believe-you dept.
I used natural language processing techniques to analyze net neutrality comments submitted to the FCC from April-October 2017, and the results were disturbing.
NY Attorney General Schneiderman estimated that hundreds of thousands of Americans' identities were stolen and used in spam campaigns that support repealing net neutrality. My research found at least 1.3 million fake pro-repeal comments, with suspicions about many more. In fact, the sum of fake pro-repeal comments in the proceeding may number in the millions. In this post, I will point out one particularly egregious spambot submission, make the case that there are likely many more pro-repeal spambots yet to be confirmed, and estimate the public position on net neutrality in the "organic" public submissions.
The author's key findings:
- One pro-repeal spam campaign used mail-merge to disguise 1.3 million comments as unique grassroots submissions.
- There were likely multiple other campaigns aimed at injecting what may total several million pro-repeal comments into the system.
- It's highly likely that more than 99% of the truly unique comments³ were in favor of keeping net neutrality.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @09:39AM (28 children)
Nope, no double-billing. My payment for my traffic to and from Soylent News and Soylent News' payment for their traffic to and from me is NOT "double-charging for the same bits", primarily because there is not yet a Omniunicorp Internet Service Company. Charging each Internet participant - client OR server - a fee for bandwidth used is the standard way of conducting business regarding moving data around via the Internet.
With "common carrier" status, ISPs effectively are dumb pipes. Else I'd expect to see a lot of AOL execs dragged off to prison for all the kiddie porn that must have touched their networks.
Do you own a cellphone? Do you pay taxes? Then you've got much more serious problems between your personal homing beacon and the NSA than with scare stories involving ISPs with effective government monopolies that you seem to want to more heavily embeded with government.
You pay for own Internet bill. Don't try to freeload off me by claiming Net Neutrality is good, when in fact it's only good for the traffic hog that doesn't want to pay the actual price for the service he's using.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Saturday December 02 2017, @09:50AM (9 children)
That's not at all what I'm talking about. And I (and half the sane people on the 'net) have been over this time and time again. I'm not going to explain it to you again. You're either misinformed, a shill or just plain stupid to believe such lies.
Right. And the way the fucktards at the FCC are going to do away with all that is to reclassify iSPs out of common carrier status. That's what the entire discussion about net neutrality hinges on. You obviously have no clue what you're blathering on about.
Shill or moron. I still can't tell.
Those are other very important issues that need to be addressed. But they have nothing to do with the current discussion.
I don't freeload off anyone, asshole. I can pretty much guarantee that the ISP I use is not the ISP you use. And I don't use Netfucks or any of that other streaming garbage that the ISPs have been extorting in an effort to raise barriers to competition for their cable programming.
Yep, A shill and a moron. If you ever expect to get paid by those assholes, you really need to up your game. Your "arguments" are weak and easily refuted by these little things called "facts." You should try them some time.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @09:52AM (5 children)
Oooh, ooh, I know this game! "You're wrong and are a big doo-doo head."
What a productive discussion!
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday December 02 2017, @09:57AM (2 children)
I see. You have no rational response, so you resort to argumentum ad idiotum.
Lovely.
Yes, you're wrong. No I won't post the *thousands* of links that explain exactly why you're wrong.
Educate yourself or stop pretending you know what you're talking about.
How does that old saw go again? Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @10:20AM (1 child)
I know a naked ASSertion when I see one.
If a plan involves adding MORE government to enforce MORE arbitrary rules at gunpoint, I'm almost always against it. A fancy name dressed up in scare tactics doesn't change that. Incidentally, without government force, the monopolisitc and abusive ISPs would be shunned and die as they would then need to rely on the quality of their services alone for survival.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday December 02 2017, @10:31AM
I did the research (including actually reading the the law and the regulations, as well as a wide variety of other information).
I won't do your research for you. Remain ignorant if you like. It's no skin off my nose. But it's sad.
Pick one of these [brainyquote.com] and kick yourself in the ass for being lazy.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @07:34PM (1 child)
Shut it neck snapper.
(Score: 3, Touché) by NotSanguine on Saturday December 02 2017, @08:29PM
Oh, so we're going fourth grade now? Make me.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @09:56AM
Facts don't pay. Not even as a journo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday December 02 2017, @01:32PM (1 child)
Note that those two are not mutually exclusive.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday December 02 2017, @09:29PM
At this point, shill implies moron *and* evil, or at the least morally-retarded.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday December 02 2017, @01:25PM (17 children)
Your payment to your ISP entitles you to whatever traffic you request or is requested from you. SN's payments to Linode entitles them to the same. Do please explain to me the logic behind your ISP thinking it should be allowed to charge SN as if it were SN's ISP instead of yours.
Strawman. Net Neutrality has absolutely nothing to do with bandwidth consumed by users. It is entirely about ISPs charging third party content producers as if they were their customers.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @04:10PM (2 children)
If SN was generating a massive imbalance of traffic never before seen that totally breaks the status quo oversubscription model (common in the electrical grid, municipal water systems, etc.), the default reaction would be to extract payment for the new and disruptive pattern from the disruptive source. This is especially the case where "no-charge peering agreements" are in place, and which some large ISPs have with other backbone providers. The breakage of such peering agreements is at the source of the imbalanced traffic (hence Netflix's backbone partners such as Cogent getting their peering agreements revoked due to breaking the balance of traffic from Netflix's new traffic spikes). This is why my claim is not a strawman, as you assert.
"Third party content producers" is just a talk-around phrase for "streaming video" sites. Streaming video sites want to keep a low price tag on their service and as such are keen to offload the actual costs of infrastructure to deliver the new paradigm of "constant stream of high bandwidth, low latency data for hours and hours" to anyone else they can.
Note that I am not trying to assert that the slimy, fraudster, monopolistic ISPs are the good guys in this case.
(Score: 5, Touché) by tibman on Saturday December 02 2017, @07:11PM (1 child)
Your argument doesn't make sense once you realize that the ISP subscribers all bought X$ mbit connections and they cannot exceed their paid limits. At no point can "streaming video" sites offload their costs onto the ISP. If an ISP oversold it's capacity then that is on the ISP, not the consumer or the third party content producer. The ISP is effectively charging customers for more bandwidth than they can actually deliver.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @03:02AM
I agree to a limited extent, in that the prolific "unlimited Internet" which are of course not unlimited are fraudulent. Tiered plans with burst and extra fees beyond the specifically-defined data limits are of course possible to do, and can be reasonably priced since the servers I'm paying for in a remote data center are doing exactly that right now.
The "third party content producer" is just obfuscation for "streaming video site", and the massive traffic imbalance that brings ALSO impacts no-fee peering agreements in addition to the problem with fraudulent ISP access plans you identified. The access costs for such streaming video sites would be/are much higher if they were paying for the data they actually used instead of shopping around for backbone providers with peering agreements they could have the backbone provider violate for a while which is why there was big news a couple years ago regarding Cogent's peering agreements being revoked by some ISPs - it was due to the violation of such peering agreements due to the massive traffic imbalance caused by your "third party content producers" aka streaming video.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday December 02 2017, @05:17PM (13 children)
Simple.
You, one of the people behind Soylentnews, voted for the people who are going to change the policy to allow this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @12:22AM (12 children)
Did he?
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday December 03 2017, @01:18AM (11 children)
Even if he voted for Gary Johnson, and not Trump, Gary Johnson has the same policy stance on net neutrality.
So, yes, TMB voted for the policies he now complains about.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:37AM (10 children)
You agreed with Hillary on every position she held then? Voting for a politician always means you're going to get fucked. You just get to pick which available way you'd prefer.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:41AM (3 children)
No, because there are degrees of being fucked.
You chose the most extreme version of being fucked.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday December 03 2017, @02:55AM (2 children)
No, that's what I usually do. Vote for the absolute worst candidate to bring about revolution quicker. This time I was hoping to throw some third-party chaos into the mix next election cycle. Didn't pan out but I don't bemoan my choice and I'd make the same one again.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @03:06AM (1 child)
I disagree with Buzzard on this matter (less of the thing which caused the problem GOOD), but it's still funny/sad to see all the crabs in the pot clamping furiously at CraBuzzard to make sure he stays firmly within the confines of the pot.
There are no winners. Buzzard sees this. Why can't the rest of you? I think Buzzard's approach (what little I know of) is weaksauce, but then I can't expect EVERYone to decide to pare down all their title-able property and give the IRS the middle finger. You people think you're better than Buzzard? Step up and prove it! Stop voluntarily fueling the Beast!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday December 03 2017, @03:14AM
I do not have crabs, thank you very much. I shave regularly.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday December 03 2017, @06:03PM (5 children)
Your glib response isn't actually relevant. There is a significant difference.
Reducing regulations was a central part of Trump's campaign. It's also a central part of Libertarian philosophy. I am sure that Hillary would have done things that I don't agree with, just as Obama did, but I supported their central campaign promises.
You voted for someone who made reducing regulations central to their campaign; repealing net neutrality is part of that. It's didn't come from left field: Pai has been opposing net neutrality for years.
So, do you support reducing regulations? Or merely support repealing the regulations that you don't benefit from?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday December 03 2017, @08:34PM (4 children)
A) You apparently didn't look further down and read why I vote the way I do.
B) You're trying to trip me up with a logical fallacy that lame? Even had I voted for Johnson because I thought he was "THE BEST CANDIDATE EVAR!!!1!1", I'd think anyone who believed him right in every instance was an absolute idiot. We disagree on many things. Trump and I disagree on a whole lot more. Hillary? She'd make the world a better place by taking up bullfighting as a retirement hobby, which is why I would have voted for her if I hadn't decided to go for a different flavor of chaos this time around.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday December 03 2017, @09:58PM (3 children)
Whatever your attempts at deflection, voters like you are the reason we are losing net neutrality.
Just because you have a ridiculous reason for the way you vote doesn't remove responsibility for the results of your vote.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 04 2017, @02:00AM (2 children)
Of course not. Like everyone else though, I prioritize. Net Neutrality was only one issue among many. That's what you don't seem to understand.
Even if I voted on the issues rather than strategically, there was no acceptable candidate who so much as paid lip service to Net Neutrality. There was Cheeto Jesus, Cruella Deville, and Stoner Boy. Were I voting on the issues, I still would have voted Stoner Boy. Hell, I would have voted Cheeto Jesus before I sold out every other principle I believe in for the sake of Net Neutrality.
Now here's the thing that's really not sinking in: It doesn't matter who I voted for. I'm an American. They're my legitimate government. I have not just a right but an absolute obligation to call bullshit on anything I disagree with. Especially if I voted for the current batch of pricks in office.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday December 04 2017, @02:37AM (1 child)
And it's my right to call you a hypocrite for complaining about the people you voted for implementing one of their main campaign promises.
That's what you seek to obfuscate, if not outright deny: it wasn't a matter of picking a candidate who came with a little shit on the side: this was a central campaign promise. All your bullshit excuses can't change the fact that you are now getting exactly what you voted for.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 04 2017, @11:08AM
Central campaign promise? Are you shitting me? I make my living on the Internet and it wasn't a central issue to me. How fucked up is your head that Net Neutrality was more important than all the real world issues?
As for calling me a hypocrite, well if your priority is flinging your own shit shit like a monkey rather than understanding why people do the things they do, go right ahead. Mind you, that attitude is a large part of why Cheeto Jesus is in office today but you keep right on flinging, little trooper.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.