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Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

gizmodo.com

21–30 of 82 posts

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#21
post #18

What bugs me the most is that the government either doesn't really want to know who's interfering with the democratic process or they know and they're not telling us. The former implies extreme ignorance, the later implies agency capture to the point the FCC is no longer a public institution.

Does it not benefit the current administration?

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#22
post #6

Friendly reminder that there were massive bot compaigns on both sides of the issue. https://archive.fo/sp9Q7 this WSJ article found thousands of people that said they never posted the comments attributed to them. >One 369-word comment supporting the Obama-era net-neutrality rules was posted on the FCC website more than 300,000 times. One of those was attributed to Gloria Burney, 87, a retired speech therapist in Los…

This is actually a practice I shun. I submitted commentary on behalf of most of the people in my relatively meager social circle, but at a minimum I 'asked' them if it was alright to do so, explained to them the position I was advocating and asked them if they were in alignment enough to be comfortable being included.

Scraping names/addresses and blasting comments without actually doing the footwork actually undermines the integrity of the entire thing. For both sides.

I won't deny an automated form filler script didn't pass through my mind as an option; but I have a very intense distaste for people who engage in unauthorized proxy behavior, or who subvert other's identities online. Especially now that everyone has thrown out the prevailing common sense of not linking your real life persona to your digital presence. It's one of those lines you just don't cross.

Then again, I've been called an anachronism by peers before; and with recent behavior by various large companies (Wells Fargo) taking the initiative to sign people up for things they don't ask for, maybe my brand of professional ethos hasn't aged well.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#23
post #21
post #18

What bugs me the most is that the government either doesn't really want to know who's interfering with the democratic process or they know and they're not telling us. The former implies extreme ignorance, the later implies agency capture to the point the FCC is no longer a public institution.

Does it not benefit the current administration?

Big businesses learned long ago that if you back both sides you always win.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#25

The original title is "Judge Orders FCC to Hand Over IP Addresses Linked to Fake Net Neutrality Comments"! Removing "Fake" makes it sound like a completely different thing.

Agreed, and that original title is the actual title of the linked article itself.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#26
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The privacy aspect to this is definitely touchy: > The FCC argued in court that making the millions of IP addresses contained in the logs publicly accessible would constitute an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” And while [Judge Schofield] didn’t entirely disagree, she said the agency had failed to adequately spell out how anyone would be harmed by the disclosure. > Regardless, Schofield said she also decid…

I’m a bit confused about the privacy issue here. Isn’t the (alleged) commenter’s full name and address published along with their comment in the public filing? If the commenter’s address is already published what other information can be gleaned from their IP address? Is the fear that someone could use it to piece together a person’s web history?

The New York times isn't seeking the name or address in their request, just some other metadata about each comment including the IP and user agent header.

Gizmodo failed to link to the actual opinion with this info: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7906482/33/the-new-york...

Edit: upon reading more, now I'm not sure if the NYT already has the names and addresses and is just seeking the metadata or if they don't need that data to do their analysis. Your guess might have been right, the ruling is unclear.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#27
post #6

Friendly reminder that there were massive bot compaigns on both sides of the issue. https://archive.fo/sp9Q7 this WSJ article found thousands of people that said they never posted the comments attributed to them. >One 369-word comment supporting the Obama-era net-neutrality rules was posted on the FCC website more than 300,000 times. One of those was attributed to Gloria Burney, 87, a retired speech therapist in Los…

I don't think the evidence you've posted supports that there were massive bot campaigns. The popular thesis, which the evidence you've presented is consistent with, is

- the pro-net-neutrality side organized virtual letter-writing campaigns, getting lots of actual human people to send in pre-written messages they agree with but did not author

- the anti-net-neutrality side, unable to find large numbers of actual human people who agreed, used bots to pretend to be lots of people

and therefore, to the underlying question of what policy do more actual human people support, we should disregard many more of the received anti-net-neutrality comments.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#28

The original title is "Judge Orders FCC to Hand Over IP Addresses Linked to Fake Net Neutrality Comments"! Removing "Fake" makes it sound like a completely different thing.

For what it's worth, I understood what was meant with the current title. Not saying it shouldn't be added, but for me it was OK.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#29
post #27
post #6

Friendly reminder that there were massive bot compaigns on both sides of the issue. https://archive.fo/sp9Q7 this WSJ article found thousands of people that said they never posted the comments attributed to them. >One 369-word comment supporting the Obama-era net-neutrality rules was posted on the FCC website more than 300,000 times. One of those was attributed to Gloria Burney, 87, a retired speech therapist in Los…

I don't think the evidence you've posted supports that there were massive bot campaigns. The popular thesis, which the evidence you've presented is consistent with, is - the pro-net-neutrality side organized virtual letter-writing campaigns, getting lots of actual human people to send in pre-written messages they agree with but did not author - the anti-net-neutrality side, unable to find large numbers of actual huma…

Did you read the WSJ article I linked to? It shows plenty of fake comments submitted by the pro-net-neutrality side. Just asserting that it was only one side who resorted to fake comments is an evidence-free position.

I struggle to think how you can characterize 7 million fake comments out of 23 million total that came from a "single fake e-mail generator website" as "the pro-net-neutrality side organized virtual letter-writing campaigns, getting lots of actual human people to send in pre-written messages they agree with but did not author"

I get that this narrative is more comfortable for some to believe, but it's plainly contradicted by the facts.

Re: Judge Orders FCC To Hand Over IP Addresses Linked To Net Neutrality Comments

#30
post #6

Friendly reminder that there were massive bot compaigns on both sides of the issue. https://archive.fo/sp9Q7 this WSJ article found thousands of people that said they never posted the comments attributed to them. >One 369-word comment supporting the Obama-era net-neutrality rules was posted on the FCC website more than 300,000 times. One of those was attributed to Gloria Burney, 87, a retired speech therapist in Los…

And it looks like the bots are downvoting _you_ here on Hacker News for raising a valid and interesting point that goes against the party line.
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