Millions Of Comments About The FCC's Net Neutrality Rules Were Fake. Now The Feds Are Investigating.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Justice Department is investigating whether crimes were committed when potentially millions of people’s identities were posted to the FCC’s website without their permission, falsely attributing to them opinions about net neutrality rules, BuzzFeed News has learned.
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The comment scheme took place over the course of months beginning in April 2017 after the Trump administration's FCC chair, Ajit Pai, moved to overturn Obama-era rules enforcing net neutrality, a regulation that prevented internet providers from choosing which web traffic gets to flow at full speed.
The rule enjoyed broad public support, according to multiple polls , and required a period of public comment before Pai's change could go into effect. More than 20 million comments have since appeared on the site, with the New York attorney general’s office estimating that up to 9.5 million of those were filed in people’s names without their consent.
As part of the New York attorney general’s previously announced investigation, the agency in October issued subpoenas to 14 organizations — 11 of which are either politically conservative or related to the telecommunications industry and opposed net neutrality, and three of which supported it. The offices of the attorneys general of both Massachusetts and Washington, DC, are supporting the New York investigation, and also issued subpoenas. Their participation has not been previously reported.
The federal subpoenas arrived a few days after the state ones, the two organizations told BuzzFeed News.
read more...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kevincollier/feds-investigation-net-neutrality-comments
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The internet can be a vast tool for knowledge
but it is apparently a two edged sword.
Phony opinions attributed to real people to push a political agenda during a public policy comment period by the FCC chair to overturn popular Obama era rules enforcing net neutrality.
Opps, hand in the cookie jar so to speak.
Maybe it was the Russians, lol...
Whatever happened, I would hope that the people considering those comments would evaluate them based on their content and not on how many of them there were.
If the comments were phony, what/why would their content matter or be considered ?
Someone went to great lengths to make it appear that the public approved of Pai's ( the Administration's ) changes to the net neutrality rules.
If I were crafting public policy, I would want good information. I wouldn't be picky about where it came from or how many people submitted the same idea.
Ajit Pai, like most Trump appointees, is a crook in service to Big Business.
So it appears.
Verizon especially benefited......
Pai was plucked from Verizon and continues to make rulings and directives that benefit or will benefit Verizon.
He's almost good for a seed a day.
2 days ago he gave carriers the option to block texts, supposedly to block spam texts. ( I have never had a spam text and use my cell phone for business all day, every day )
Yesterday he promised to review the FCC rules about media ownership and merger bans. Can't imagine who that would benefit ( his future employer Verizon? )
https://variety.com/2018/politics/news/fcc-network-merger-media-ownership-rules-1203088140/ ( corrected )
I cannot imagine any other appropriate proverb other than "Don't let the fox guard the chicken coop"
America elected a crook, who has since appointed lots of crooks.
Gosh.
I've said before, and I say again, that the world was a safer and more honest place BEFORE computers and internet.
The internet and computers are tools, man has always been what it is. Now we just see it more and more easily. And yes this tool is used against us, what tool has not been ? Guns, cars, airplanes all used as weapons against ourselves as humans.
Personally I was getting bored I was happy to see he world advance with the computer age.
i don't agree - i just think the world is more transparent since computers and the internet, humans are revealing their true nature and it's easier to capture it now. Humans hadn't suddenly changed drastically since the invention of computers and internet - computers and the internet are just revealing their natures.
Yes, that may well be, because now humans can display their true and latent feelings which they did not want to be identified with previously. That would be one of the explanations for the rise in antisemitism. However, in our collective memory, has there ever been so much anger other than the opposition to the Vietnam War?
oh absolutely ! just depends on point of view, that's all. Plus, now we can readily see and identify all of that anger with the help of computers and the internet - couldn't do that as effectively or as quickly before, one of the only ways to know before would have been massive protests etc (which weren't as easy to organize before computers and the internet).
locked until tomorrow
& unlocked, happy Friday
Thank up all for your comments, good night
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