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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

#221

Post by g42gregory »

caust1c wrote: post #195
g42gregory wrote: post #153

Here is my simple reasoning: (1) Large internet companies fight feverishly for net neutrality. (2) Based on past experience, it is inconceivable to me that they would so feverishly fight for the end-users' benefit. (3) Therefore, they fight for the net neutrality because it very beneficial to them. I am guessing there is something inside Internet backbone data transfer that allows these companies to make tons of mone…

Last mile service providers were forced to serve traffic generated from any legitimate website. Any traffic induces load on their systems/infrastructure and happens disproportionately based on the service being consumed (e.g. Netflix early days, instagram). So the economic fight of Net Neutrality was based on bandwith-intensive services not paying for transit proportionate to their traffic volume (driven by consumers…

Very interesting. Sounds like a complicated issue with lots of trade-offs for various players. Certainly not the impression one might get by reading the news.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#222

Post by gpvos »

hulitu wrote: post #220
dragonwriter wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $615k seems like a slap on the wrist for what they did. It is. But its also state and local officials using state law to try to get any punishment for what is a fairly serious federal crime that, for some reason, the federal government has elected not to prosecute. [0] [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001

> But its also state and local officials using state law to try to get any punishment for what is a fairly serious federal crime that, for some reason, the federal government has elected not to prosecute. Prosecuting that would have lead to a dangerous precedent for a lot of companies and government agencies involved in propaganda.

Not prosecuting it is a dangerous precedent. Especially now we have AI text generation, such actions should lead any company to be sued into bankruptcy, and jail time for its leaders.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#223

Post by throw101010 »

nine_k wrote: post #157
Jupe wrote: post #98

> LCX and Lead ID were responsible for many of these fake comments, letters, and petition signatures. Across four advocacy campaigns in 2017 and 2018, LCX fabricated consumer responses used in approximately 900,000 public comments submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Similarly, in advocacy campaigns between 2017…

This is why, I think, the future is either putting your money (or at least provable identity) where your mouth is, or not being heard (e.g. because everyone will assume a petition without hard proofs of identity fake). Yes, this is disenfranchising. But not being heard while some company pretends to speak for you is even more disenfranchising.

Maybe this will come off as cynical, but aren't the customers of these 3 companies doing what you suggest here? "Putting their money where their mouth is", and since they have a lot of money their voice gets heard over the ones of individuals with no money. I don't think it's your goal.

So your second intuition about proof of identity is better, but the minute you invent a foolproof identity system and it gets widly used (by fiat or even voluntarily), you give a tremendous amount of power to the issuer/manager of it, as they basically hold the power of also removing/altering your public identity at their whims. You also make it harder and harder to remain anonymous and preserve your privacy, two things that might seem useless in a functional democracy, but unfortunately democracies are not perfect and they can turn into totalitarian systems where the wet dream of dictators is exactly this: having total control over every individual, especially the ones who would dare signing petitions against them.

This is by far not something humans have solved systemically, we have the technical solutions to build such systems, and governments tend to push to implement them, but as someone who cares about privacy/censorship resistance I do my best to build alternative, opt-in, systems to go around them.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#224

Post by withinboredom »

nine_k wrote: post #157
Jupe wrote: post #98

> LCX and Lead ID were responsible for many of these fake comments, letters, and petition signatures. Across four advocacy campaigns in 2017 and 2018, LCX fabricated consumer responses used in approximately 900,000 public comments submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Similarly, in advocacy campaigns between 2017…

This is why, I think, the future is either putting your money (or at least provable identity) where your mouth is, or not being heard (e.g. because everyone will assume a petition without hard proofs of identity fake). Yes, this is disenfranchising. But not being heard while some company pretends to speak for you is even more disenfranchising.

> This is why, I think, the future is either putting your money (or at least provable identity) where your mouth is, or not being heard

Oh, I assume this will be run by companies. What is stopping them from impersonating you? Or impersonating you after you're dead? How can we trust these companies not to sell access to identities? Further, why not sell/rent your access to your own identity?

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#225

Post by [deleted] »

ordu wrote: post #162
sva_ wrote: post #11

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

They are wrong here. A regime which is not western democracy probably would pretend that nothing happened. It is much more suspicious when there are not investigations like this. Sometimes it is worse: such kind of investigations are conducted by independent entities, which are then prosecuted and silenced. I agree, that fine is a joke and cast doubt on western democracy, but what I want to say, is like Chircill's: M…

[deleted]

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#226

Post by M95D »

throw101010 wrote: post #223
nine_k wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why, I think, the future is either putting your money (or at least provable identity) where your mouth is, or not being heard (e.g. because everyone will assume a petition without hard proofs of identity fake). Yes, this is disenfranchising. But not being heard while some company pretends to speak for you is even more disenfranchising.

Maybe this will come off as cynical, but aren't the customers of these 3 companies doing what you suggest here? "Putting their money where their mouth is", and since they have a lot of money their voice gets heard over the ones of individuals with no money. I don't think it's your goal. So your second intuition about proof of identity is better, but the minute you invent a foolproof identity system and it gets widly…

No. Public/private keys can be under the control of the individual. You only need the public key to be signed by a trusted 3rd party. That only gives them the power to revoke it, but even the revoking can't cancel what you already signed while the key was valid.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#227

Post by kevingadd »

nine_k wrote: post #157
Jupe wrote: post #98

> LCX and Lead ID were responsible for many of these fake comments, letters, and petition signatures. Across four advocacy campaigns in 2017 and 2018, LCX fabricated consumer responses used in approximately 900,000 public comments submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Similarly, in advocacy campaigns between 2017…

This is why, I think, the future is either putting your money (or at least provable identity) where your mouth is, or not being heard (e.g. because everyone will assume a petition without hard proofs of identity fake). Yes, this is disenfranchising. But not being heard while some company pretends to speak for you is even more disenfranchising.

What makes you think lobbyists and large corporations can't afford the fee to speak?

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#228

Post by pmontra »

g42gregory wrote: post #219
pmontra wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or by the same logic: (1) Large ISP companies fight feverishly against net neutrality. (2) Based on past experience, it is inconceivable to me that they would so feverishly fight for the end-users' benefit. (3) Therefore, they fight against net neutrality because ending it is very beneficial to them. (4) If it's so beneficial to them, ending net neutrality is probably not so good for the end-users. Which one?

I am not sure (2) works in this logic chain. The net neutrality is presented in the infospace as beneficial to the end-users. If ISPs fight against it, they would be fighting against the end-users' benefit. This is not so inconceivable, yes?

If I remember well they were saying that the extra income from the internet companies would allow them to improve the network and that would benefit end users.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#229

Post by anovikov »

csomar wrote: post #163
anovikov wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Vast majority of the crypto money made in 2021-2022 was by swarming ICOs and launchpads with sometimes hundreds of thousands (among people i personally know) and probably millions among those i don't, fake accounts - all having real names, addresses, IPs, passport scans etc. - getting in onto highly deficit launches when like 1 in a 100 trying gets in, and then the coin goes 10x because of immense demand.…

Many went to jail and some celebrities got fines. I'm pretty sure some went under the radar but the prosecution is still working on the years 2016-2019. If you are in the US and you've been involved in such sh*t, you are in really bad position.

People who defrauded "investors" by advertising shitcoins - sure! But that was a purely anonymous, scripted activity.

Re: Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy

#230

Post by nine_k »

kevingadd wrote: post #227
nine_k wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why, I think, the future is either putting your money (or at least provable identity) where your mouth is, or not being heard (e.g. because everyone will assume a petition without hard proofs of identity fake). Yes, this is disenfranchising. But not being heard while some company pretends to speak for you is even more disenfranchising.

What makes you think lobbyists and large corporations can't afford the fee to speak?

It's mostly not the fee to speak, even though a mere $1 per vote could be too expensive for some petition-spamming efforts: 100k payments from the same account would trigger suspicion, and creating 100k legal payment accounts (paypal, google / apple / samsung pay, venmo, etc) just to pay $1 per vote may be onerous.

I mostly say about giving a ton of identifying info so that your vote can be reliably tracked back to you: not only email (with a one-time link to confirm the email works), but also a phone number, postal address, maybe even some government ID like SSN or driver license number. It removes any expectation of anonymity from the vote or signature, and this is by design. Fraud of the kind the article mentions would be easily detectable by a random check of 1-2% of the signatures (and more is suspicious patterns are noticed). As a side effect, it would make a vote or a signature a much more conscious, committed decision.

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