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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: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday December 02 2017, @09:45AM (3 children)
People have been hacking write-in campaigns since the Pleistocene. It used to be they handed you a letter and a stamp and an envelope and told you to sign it and mail it. Half the people kept the stamp and the envelope, and tossed the letter.
Now it costs exactly nothing. So everybody will click a button to submit a pre-constructed text email, which is given exactly the weight it deserves when it floods in to an inbox somewhere.
If we NEVER get internet voting, it will be too soon. Anyone who thinks that would ever be trustworthy needs a bitchslap of monumental proportions.
The whole public comment thing was a farce from the day it originated. There's no reason to act all indignant when it goes bad. It was never intended to go well. It was to make you feel good, and shut up and go away.
The analysis in TFA is almost as trustworthy as the public comments:
One Mail Merge was detected on the bad side.
Likely others on the bad side.
Highly Likely none on the good side.
Really?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday December 02 2017, @10:02AM
[Pleistocene citation needed]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Saturday December 02 2017, @10:04AM
From TFA (a letter from the New York State Attorney General to the FCC) [medium.com]:
So the FCC is now obstructing justice as well as boning consumers. Well done, Mr. Pai!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Saturday December 02 2017, @10:09AM
Oh, and what's more. from the other TFA [hackernoon.com]:
This seems pretty up front to me. Let's both go and attempt to reproduce the analysis, Frojack. What? Not interested? Most likely as it won't support your fairy-tale version of reality. Sigh.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr