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80% of the 22M comments on net neutrality rollback were fake

techcrunch.com

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Re: 80% of the 22M comments on net neutrality rollback were fake

#5
post #4

Isn't there a law that makes it a crime to knowingly submit false information to the federal government?

Yes but the government doesn't prosecute itself (see the director of the NSA lying to congress while under oath) and corporations are only ever hit with tiny fines they can pretty much ignore.

Re: 80% of the 22M comments on net neutrality rollback were fake

#6
post #3

My dead mothers identity was used to spread lies. I was livid then and livid now. This fine doesn’t go nearly far enough.

It's appalling, though the Techcrunch piece doesn't provide the annoying detail that the 19yr-old who submitted 7.7M fakes did it in support of Net Neutrality[1] - with friends like this...

1: https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-technolog...

Re: 80% of the 22M comments on net neutrality rollback were fake

#8
post #3

My dead mothers identity was used to spread lies. I was livid then and livid now. This fine doesn’t go nearly far enough.

It's appalling, though the Techcrunch piece doesn't provide the annoying detail that the 19yr-old who submitted 7.7M fakes did it in support of Net Neutrality[1] - with friends like this... 1: https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-technolog...

> The broadband industry funded the fraudulent creation of about 8.5 million of those, while a 19-year-old college student submitted 7.7 million, and the remainder came from unknown but spurious sources.

The article doesn’t explicitly say that the comments funded by the broadband industry were in favour of rolling back net neutrality, so I had to guess on that one too.

Thinking about it some more makes me question these assumptions. It seems plausible that putting forward straw-man arguments to be robustly demolished could be a useful tactic to those interested in manipulation.

Re: 80% of the 22M comments on net neutrality rollback were fake

#9
post #4

Isn't there a law that makes it a crime to knowingly submit false information to the federal government?

Yes but the government doesn't prosecute itself (see the director of the NSA lying to congress while under oath) and corporations are only ever hit with tiny fines they can pretty much ignore.

How about 19 year olds as was the case here?
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