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Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

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Re: Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

#81

Post by calibas »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #76
calibas wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you not read the article? It was two marketing companies, Media Bridge and LCX Digital, working for Broadband for America. According to their site, they represent "the hundreds of millions of Americans who are literally connected through broadband", which is a flat out lie. They're a lobbyist group that works for AT&T, CenturyLink, Charter, Comcast, and Cox, among others. Now it's easy to say it's not such a big…

Pai worked as Associate General Counsel at Verizon from 2001 to 2003, over 15 years ago. Neither Pai nor the FCC didn't orchestrated or have anything to do with the comment campaign. FCC paying the marketing company for fake comments would be psyops. What happened is a problem, but not what the OP was suggesting.

Of course the FCC didn't pay for it, they just looked the other way while it happened. There's just enough separation that people like you can make the argument that it's technically not "psyops".

The FCC is complicit in the whole damned thing, so the result is the same and the industry got it's way. We can argue semantics though...

Re: Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

#82

Post by [deleted] »

bhouston wrote: post #41
irjustin wrote: post #4

This is old news, well known and literally the whole "comments" was a sham anyway. The voting was controlled by 5 people and split on party lines 3-2 [0]. NN was never actually up for debate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_S... - last paragraph

Someone should still go to jail for mass lying to the government. This would deter it in the future. Otherwise we are saying this is just the new standard operating procedure, astroturfing using dead people's identities is totally legal.

[deleted]

Re: Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

#83

Post by WillPostForFood »

calibas wrote: post #81
WillPostForFood wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pai worked as Associate General Counsel at Verizon from 2001 to 2003, over 15 years ago. Neither Pai nor the FCC didn't orchestrated or have anything to do with the comment campaign. FCC paying the marketing company for fake comments would be psyops. What happened is a problem, but not what the OP was suggesting.

Of course the FCC didn't pay for it, they just looked the other way while it happened. There's just enough separation that people like you can make the argument that it's technically not "psyops". The FCC is complicit in the whole damned thing, so the result is the same and the industry got it's way. We can argue semantics though...

FCC didn't plant it, didn't pay for it, didn't orchestrate it, so not really complicit. The worst you can say is they didn't do enough to stop it because it was supporting what they wanted. Guilty of confirmation bias, certainly. Psyops? no.

Re: Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

#84

Post by calibas »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #83
calibas wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the FCC didn't pay for it, they just looked the other way while it happened. There's just enough separation that people like you can make the argument that it's technically not "psyops". The FCC is complicit in the whole damned thing, so the result is the same and the industry got it's way. We can argue semantics though...

FCC didn't plant it, didn't pay for it, didn't orchestrate it, so not really complicit. The worst you can say is they didn't do enough to stop it because it was supporting what they wanted. Guilty of confirmation bias, certainly. Psyops? no.

"it was supporting what they wanted"

Yeah, because the FCC and "Broadband for America" are only separate in theory. When you have the industry controlling the FCC to this point, the only difference between psyops and marketing is who's footing the bill.

You're technically right base upon a very literal definition of psyops, but missing the whole point.

Re: Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

#85

Post by calibas »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #83
calibas wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the FCC didn't pay for it, they just looked the other way while it happened. There's just enough separation that people like you can make the argument that it's technically not "psyops". The FCC is complicit in the whole damned thing, so the result is the same and the industry got it's way. We can argue semantics though...

FCC didn't plant it, didn't pay for it, didn't orchestrate it, so not really complicit. The worst you can say is they didn't do enough to stop it because it was supporting what they wanted. Guilty of confirmation bias, certainly. Psyops? no.

If you look the other way while someone commits a crime, especially when you're a regulatory agency, that makes you a criminal. That makes you complicit, you're helping the criminals get away with it.

To me, you're acting like a jaw-dropping level of corruption is somehow excusable, perhaps because it's "normal"?

Re: Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

#86

Post by Bartweiss »

irjustin wrote: post #4

This is old news, well known and literally the whole "comments" was a sham anyway. The voting was controlled by 5 people and split on party lines 3-2 [0]. NN was never actually up for debate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_S... - last paragraph

Sure, but the focus of the report is that we now have an idea of who faked the comments. Since the FCC shrugged and declined to investigate, that's taken a long time to arrive.

Granted, "small media firms deniably hired by an industry lobby group" is basically what everyone expected, but it's still interesting to see how it panned out.

Re: Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

#87

Post by whamlastxmas »

alwayseasy wrote: post #23
ThalesX wrote: post #16

I try to shy away from politics on this website but I can't shake this nagging feeling that this says something important about the current state of the US and the world. I am not a US citizen nor a resident, nor am I a Russian citizen or resident, so my opinions are absolutely subjective. I feel like whenever an external agent such as Russia opens up the troll farms, the US gets all up in arms about the threat to de…

>and I don't hear about them actively targeting their own citizens in "psyops" with the same fervor as the US. Both countries are well versed in the topic but of course your media diet might affect how much you see on it. Historically more than half the budget and employees of the IRA is dedicated to Russian speaking internet users and have been involved in way more elaborate schemes directed at Russian electors. The…

>traditional media who tend to vet what they air/publish

I think we see more than ever that this isn't the case. The reality is that traditional media simply doesn't share alt-right views and doesn't want to give them a free platform.

Re: Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

#88

Post by willis936 »

nroets wrote: post #53
d--b wrote: post #3

The story is that citizen have nothing to gain from anti net neutrality laws. So basically, all comments against net neutrality are either faked or by someone who has skin in the game. People ought to go to jail for this kind of crap.

Some citizens will argue that net neutrality will kill internet services that's subsidized by advertising. For example free access to Facebook. Or the social network bundles in South Africa[1][2] Furthermore, I've met poor, conservative Americans who hate any form of government regulation. Even if it's patently obvious that they will personally benefit from some proposed regulation, they believe it will be bad for in…

Yes. A whole 0.3% of the non bot submissions said that. There are two legitimate sides to this, it’s just that the overwhelming majority of the public is in favor of one. Representative democracy failed here.

Re: Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

#89

Post by ineedasername »

I don't think the comments mattered at all. At most, they provided political cover for the move. Ajit Pai was always going to ram this through. However, the corruption of the public comment system will also give our next president the political cover to change back and, hopefully, enshrine the change in law rather than easily changeable policy.

Re: Political Operatives Faked Millions of Comments Against Net Nuetrality

#90

Post by Bartweiss »

willis936 wrote: post #36

I noticed this while looking through comments while they were still taking submissions. I was outraged. I told everyone I knew who cared. I can’t understand how this story isn’t bigger. I would be much happier if at the time there was a counter force to spam submissions of the opposite opinion and at least make it abundantly clear that the whole thing was a farce. It’s wild that the FCC chair had the gaul to claim th…

I mean, there was pro-net-neutrality spam, millions of comments worth. It's part of what Pai cited to justify the claim that this wasn't a one-sided problem.

Except... the pro-NN spam mostly came in two batches, which could each have been done by a single person. One batch used FakeEmailGenerator, along with what seem to be identities made by pulling randomly from lists of first names, last names, and streets. The second batch exclusively used "@pornhub.com" as the email domain. Both were discounted from every serious attempt at counting responses on each side.

It's the worst of both worlds, really. There was enough pro-NN spam numerically to claim the anti-NN astroturfing wasn't any worse, but it represented a tiny number of bad actors. Meanwhile, the anti-NN spam was vastly more malicious in both the influence of the perpetrators and the extremity of the behavior used to hide it. Randomly generating a fake name isn't a misdeed on par with identity theft, but it was certainly treated that way.

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