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posted by martyb on Saturday December 02 2017, @09:06AM   Printer-friendly
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:

  1. One pro-repeal spam campaign used mail-merge to disguise 1.3 million comments as unique grassroots submissions.
  2. There were likely multiple other campaigns aimed at injecting what may total several million pro-repeal comments into the system.
  3. It's highly likely that more than 99% of the truly unique comments³ were in favor of keeping net neutrality.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @11:01AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @11:01AM (#604212)

    You and I both know that metering and charging a fee directly related for use is absolutely possible. It is also preferable to the current fraud model ("unlimited" Internet - no, wait, it's not really unlimited) or involving more government force in a situation where mere personal economic choice would remedy the situation. (Yes, this also necessitates removing the government-granted monopolies of current ISP corps.)

  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @11:56AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @11:56AM (#604226)

    Mr Troll, I don't know who pissed in your cornflakes this morning, but I wish they would step aside so I could drop a deuce in them. With all the shit you're spouting I'm guessing you're due for a refill.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @12:12PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @12:12PM (#604231)

      It saddens me that your best retort contains two sentences containing three references to bodily waste.

      I'd love to test my argument against an intelligent mind to discover its flaws. I suppose I'll just have to wait for another mind to show up.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @07:38PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 02 2017, @07:38PM (#604370)

        Sorry. You're apparently too stupid for this discussion so poppy flakes is all you get.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @03:22AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @03:22AM (#604546)

          Is that so? [wikipedia.org] Darn, I was so hoping I was the more intelligent of us. Thank you for clarifying the situation.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday December 02 2017, @02:26PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 02 2017, @02:26PM (#604276) Journal

    You and I both know that metering and charging a fee directly related for use is absolutely possible.

    You, I... and a good chunk of this world, Australia included, where "unlimited download" plans do nor exist.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford