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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: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday December 03 2017, @04:42AM (2 children)
You keep using that word.
I think it means what you think it means.
But I never used that word. And nothing I said even implied it.
So what's your point?
Not trying to be a jerk, I honestly don't understand what you're trying to say.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:32AM (1 child)
My point was that local municipalities can't create local telecom monopolies because they are not allowed to make *exclusive* deals. You went off on a tangent on at what level the franchise agreements were made.
However, when searching this I did come across a news item that shows that Comcast and (I think) Verizon did get franchises at the state level. I think that this is how it works in CA and the cost of any local municipality agreement must be actual cost incurred by the municipality.
I still don't think that the issue in California is monopolies created by franchise agreements. The issue is that the last mile is effectively a natural monopoly and that, until a former FCC chairman removed the regulations, incumbents were required to allow access to their last mile wiring to competitors. This is the situation in the UK, where most people have quite a choice of ISPs, because an ISP can access the last mile connections of the incumbent.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday December 03 2017, @08:09AM
All fair and reasonable points.
I wholeheartedly agree that the "last mile" is a natural monopoly (just like electricity distribution which, at least in my city, is not only a monopoly, but is required to deliver electricity generated by others. That creates an interesting dynamic, as delivery charges are ~3x the cost of the electricity) and should be treated as such.
As I've argued repeatedly here, the last mile should just provide links to any ISP that wishes to provide service, with those ISPs competing on features, price, service and reliability.
However (and regardless of how ISPs are vetted/approved to provide last mile services), this is exceedingly difficult to do in the current environment. And that's (which was my original point) why these sorts of arrangements should be implemented at the municipal level.
But given that incumbents are bent on maximizing rent-seeking and raising barriers to competition, and state/local governments in the US are generally quite corrupt, that's a difficult row to hoe.
As such, the stakes in the fate of net neutrality rules are quite high. Unfortunately, the odds are stacked against us.
Because the truth is that we are the weak, and the ISPs are the tyranny of evil men. The FCC has, on occasion, tried to be the shepherd, but not no more. So we're gonna be as dead as fucking fried chicken. [youtube.com]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr