Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

hackernoon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 343 posts

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#41

Post by IncRnd »

Kodix wrote: post #26
IncRnd wrote: post #8

I'm glad that this is being brought up. However, duplicated comments are not necessarily faked. For instance, there are many times centralized campaigns that people can sign onto for sending messages. The messages from those, while identical, are proper and what the individuals believe. This happens on both sides of issues. So, please continue to investigate, but be careful you don't interject your own biases into yo…

Sure. But where is this campaign located, exactly? And how come dead people are signing up for it in droves, as has been discovered in the past? And how come people who didn't sign up for it find "their" comments sent, too? I'm all for avoiding bias, but we know enough about this campaign by now to say with certainty it's shady.

If you read the article you will see that whether this is a campaign or not is asked rhetorically, but the question it is not answered. These campaigns are extremely common in the world of online commenting, especially around government commenting systems.

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#43

Post by learc83 »

downandout wrote: post #33
everdev wrote: post #2

Just like the election, I wonder if the people behind this care if they get caught as long as they get what they want first. There doesn't seem to be much precedent for overturning laws or elections that were subject to misinformation campaigns.

>Just like the election This seems far worse than what happened with the election. The hacked emails at issue in the election were real, and they revealed bad things that the Clinton campaign was involved in. I have always found it laughable that the complaint seems to be “we lost because the Russians uncovered the bad things I was doing, and it’s not fair that people found out about them”. If the emails had all been…

There was evidence that some of the leaked emails were subtly altered to make them look worse [1].

Additionally every campaign, company, even private individual has emails that wouldn't look good if they were leaked to the public with no context.

I'd bet there were emails from the other side that would have been just as damaging had they been leaked. In fact we know there were, because several damaging emails from Donald Trump Jr. have been leaked since.

One more point. Many of the leaked Clinton emails weren't actually damaging in and of themselves. They were damaging because of the conspiracy theories that they spawned. Innocuous party planning emails morphed into Pizza Gate, which was spread in large part by Russian trolls.

[1] https://www.salon.com/2017/11/03/the-dncs-emails-werent-only...

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#44

Post by colejohnson66 »

retox wrote: post #42

There was also a lot of direct copypaste spam on the pro-NN side https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*Sc4-R2waeRrGnNL90...

I’m sure a lot of the pro duplicates are from websites that help the person post a comment, but they just use the form comment instead of adding their own stuff.

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#45

Post by matt4077 »

downandout wrote: post #33
everdev wrote: post #2

Just like the election, I wonder if the people behind this care if they get caught as long as they get what they want first. There doesn't seem to be much precedent for overturning laws or elections that were subject to misinformation campaigns.

>Just like the election This seems far worse than what happened with the election. The hacked emails at issue in the election were real, and they revealed bad things that the Clinton campaign was involved in. I have always found it laughable that the complaint seems to be “we lost because the Russians uncovered the bad things I was doing, and it’s not fair that people found out about them”. If the emails had all been…

Given that the emails were like one of many necessary factors[0] for the election result, and the FCC's actions are a direct result of that election, it appears that the latter is a strict subset of the former.

It is also important to point out that absolutely nothing illegal was discovered in the hacked emails. Give me 10,000 emails from anybody, and I'll find quotes that people will not like. Yes, maybe HC was too sympathetic to Wall Street in private. So people voted for the other guy, and now banks can continue to add mandatory arbitration to the fine print. The Consumer Financial Services Protection Agency is about to be gutted. That is the agency that fined Wells Fargo and Equifax. The next offenders will probably get off with a stern warning.

But yeah, at least we know HC's chicken recipe.

[0]: The email hack, the social media campaign, the FBI's back-and-forth on its investigations, and, yes, people's antipathy against HC were probably all needed for the result, considering the extremely slim margins and the popular vote/electoral college split.

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#47

Post by eropple »

derwiki wrote: post #36
chronic824 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tried this and after five emails have meetings with my rep and both my senators scheduled less than a week out. Good for you. I'm going to go back to eating my leftover turkey and continue black friday/cyber Monday shopping. Maybe I'll check my Tesla Model 3 preorder status.

You created a new account to demoralize the GP?

He created a new account to troll. It's an ugly trend; while it's minor, HN has a bit of a problem with this sort of thing. I assume that 'dang and 'sctb are on the case when this arises (and I flagged the post because of it), but it's probably a hard one to solve.

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#49

Post by freshboxoffice »

Gaelan wrote: post #35
downandout wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just like the election This seems far worse than what happened with the election. The hacked emails at issue in the election were real, and they revealed bad things that the Clinton campaign was involved in. I have always found it laughable that the complaint seems to be “we lost because the Russians uncovered the bad things I was doing, and it’s not fair that people found out about them”. If the emails had all been…

Given that the FCC resisted efforts to investigate, I wouldn’t be surprised if the FCC was complit in the fake messages (so they could claim they were in line with public opinion)

Pictures Of Bollywood Actors You May Have Never Seen Before

rare and unseen snaps of bollywood stars must watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHam1l8I8nc

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#50

Post by downandout »

learc83 wrote: post #43
downandout wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just like the election This seems far worse than what happened with the election. The hacked emails at issue in the election were real, and they revealed bad things that the Clinton campaign was involved in. I have always found it laughable that the complaint seems to be “we lost because the Russians uncovered the bad things I was doing, and it’s not fair that people found out about them”. If the emails had all been…

There was evidence that some of the leaked emails were subtly altered to make them look worse [1]. Additionally every campaign, company, even private individual has emails that wouldn't look good if they were leaked to the public with no context. I'd bet there were emails from the other side that would have been just as damaging had they been leaked. In fact we know there were, because several damaging emails from Do…

>There was evidence that some of the leaked emails were subtly altered to make them look worse [1].

And yet nobody denied their authenticity. Getting rid of Bernie, leaking debate questions to the Clinton campaign, and on and on were all things that nobody denied doing after they were exposed. Regardless, my point was that the conduct in this case (creating fake data that a very small group of voters may rely on) is far worse than exposing what seems to be undisputed questionable conduct.

Post reply on HN