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Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

ag.ny.gov

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Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#71

Post by ajross »

boomerango wrote: post #62
ummonk wrote: post #6

"An investigation by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) found that the fake comments used the identities of millions of consumers, including thousands of New Yorkers, without their knowledge or consent." $615k seems like a slap on the wrist for what they did.

Puts on conspiracy hat What if killing net neutrality was a given, but the administration wanted the appearance of due process… God, I’ve grown jaded.

Are you really positing that the NY State AG was colluding across four years of time with the Trump administration's FCC? That's getting a big beyond "jaded" and into tinfoil territory, to be honest.

No, there's no collusion here. These are just state laws that are insufficient to compel the behavior we want. She got what she could and called it a victory. But a very progressive AG is clearly not in the pocket of the internet content industry.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#72

Post by explorer83 »

boomerango wrote: post #62
ummonk wrote: post #6

"An investigation by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) found that the fake comments used the identities of millions of consumers, including thousands of New Yorkers, without their knowledge or consent." $615k seems like a slap on the wrist for what they did.

Puts on conspiracy hat What if killing net neutrality was a given, but the administration wanted the appearance of due process… God, I’ve grown jaded.

I mean, the rhetoric for net neutrality was pretty extreme. According to the rhetoric of the time, we would be living in a world of internet "fast lanes" right now if net neutrality didn't pass. Only services affiliated with the big greedy telcos were going to be given a pass while all the other services on the web were going to require additional fees to get adequate bandwidth to/from. That was a major fear mongering argument that hasn't come to pass. All the major tech sites were publishing the same rhetoric.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#73

Post by adriand »

dmbche wrote: post #59
1101010010 wrote: post #29

This is only the tip of the iceberg. A majority of the "user content" (product reviews, brand engagement, comments on social media sites, etc) is completely fake, bought for and paid by big money interest aka bots. No different than automated scans of the IPv4 address space: simple, unsophisticated, low-cost and without any repercussion.

I keep getting this eerie feeling when seeing product reviews and the rest of things you list here - I would never in a million year consider writing a paragraph long glowing review of my car jack on amazon, and yet there are millions of such interactions all over the web.

I was startled to recently discover that a local gastroenterologist has numerous excellent reviews on Google Maps by people talking about what a lovely colonoscopy they had, some of whom related the specific medical condition that brought them there. Never in a million years would I consider doing this either. It turns out people are pretty weird.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#76

Post by ummonk »

cavisne wrote: post #70
ummonk wrote: post #6

"An investigation by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) found that the fake comments used the identities of millions of consumers, including thousands of New Yorkers, without their knowledge or consent." $615k seems like a slap on the wrist for what they did.

Interestingly the actual judgement is significantly higher (still single digit millions). I dont really know what a "Statement of Financial Condition" is but I assume it means they are taking basically all the money these companies + their directors have. These are not big operations, they were charging 7c a "lead", so each company made ~100k, and the CEO was running the script to send fake data himself.

Yeah I mean without looking into specifics of what criminal laws would or wouldn’t be applicable, that definitely seems like something the CEO should do a bit of prison time for.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#77

Post by astrange »

7speter wrote: post #65
astrange wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public comments aren't votes so they aren't part of democracy. Influencing an unelected official like the FCC chair who gets to rule however he wants isn't democracy.

Being able to influence (both up and down the social pecking order) seems to be a very prominent characteristic of Democracy, but I could be wrong.

Seems more like petitioning a monarch to me. A more democratic system would be that if an official doesn't listen to you, they lose their election. Ajit Pai doesn't have an election.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#78

Post by astrange »

Pulcinella wrote: post #44
astrange wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public comments aren't votes so they aren't part of democracy. Influencing an unelected official like the FCC chair who gets to rule however he wants isn't democracy.

Democracy is far, far, far more than just mere voting and that fact that you believe this basically just proves the original point.

Comments that have no legal force (because they're not actually required to respond or respect them) surely aren't.

There's other situations like community meetings for land use that are far more democratic. Although, those are mostly bad, because it means only people with lots of free time can attend them!

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#79

Post by boomboomsubban »

oreally wrote: post #69

I wanna know how did they did it and how they got found out. Is it as simple as a VPN + bots?

There's some information about it on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_S... I'm not even positive a VPN was necessary.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#80

Post by robocat »

sva_ wrote: post #11

This kind of shit is one of the reasons why people stop believing in western democracy.

And yet democracy so tarnished still appears better to me than the alternatives we have tried so far.

I haven’t lived in some of the alternatives, but I have visited some, and I feel fortunate to have been born in New Zealand.

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