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More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

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Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#251
So many in the tech community support Net Neutrality, it's always shocked me that more people don't build bots to submit comments like the opposition do.

Surely the tech community could easily submit a few billion (trillion?) legit-looking comments in support of Net Neutrality that would a) completely cripple the servers or b) produce so much spam that it overwhelms anything useful and all comments are ignored....

why not?

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#252

FCC has explicitly said that they have ignored any opinion comments. They have only considered comments which bring new facts or a legal opinion. So the fact that many comments were faked is irrelevant anyway.

The government governs by the consent of its citizens. It is never acceptable for the government to ignore the opinions of its citizens, and anyone in government claiming otherwise should be removed. I utterly reject your claim that we should just acquiesce in the face of such malignancy.

We live in a republic not a democracy. Lots of unpopular decisions are the right thing to do, civil rights for example.

I'm not for what the FCC is doing but your assessment isn't helpful.

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#253
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume that there is an email that looks bad for the campaign. The email was slightly altered to make it look a bit worse. Do they admit to writing the slightly less awful email, prolonging the coverage and erasing all doubt that they wrote it?

YES! Obviously! Because if the campaign could show that a single email was altered, it casts doubt on the entire set. Many people would immediately jump to the conclusion that many emails were altered and disregard the story entirely.

The AP is confident that one of the documents from podesta's inbox was altered. Yet the campaign never came forward to authenticate the original document. So we have a clear case of altered email, but campaign didn't authenticate original.

It's a political calculation. You may have done it differently, but it's pretty clear we have at least 1 case of it happening.

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#254
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it didn't matter, why do you think somebody spent a lot of time doing it?

I don't know if it mattered, but the comments as shown in the article are pretty much the same copy with various simple replacements for many phrases. This happens in lots of spam campaigns. I'm not sure anyone spent much time doing it - could be few hours for someone who does spam already. It doesn't look like a sophisticated or costly action.

You didn't answer the question. If it didn't matter, why did somebody invest time in doing it?

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#255
post #251

So many in the tech community support Net Neutrality, it's always shocked me that more people don't build bots to submit comments like the opposition do. Surely the tech community could easily submit a few billion (trillion?) legit-looking comments in support of Net Neutrality that would a) completely cripple the servers or b) produce so much spam that it overwhelms anything useful and all comments are ignored.... wh…

[deleted]

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#256
post #251

So many in the tech community support Net Neutrality, it's always shocked me that more people don't build bots to submit comments like the opposition do. Surely the tech community could easily submit a few billion (trillion?) legit-looking comments in support of Net Neutrality that would a) completely cripple the servers or b) produce so much spam that it overwhelms anything useful and all comments are ignored.... wh…

Because so many comments would be instantly recognized as spam. The Anti-Net-Neutrality side would then use that as a narrative that all NN arguments are fake and draw even more stupid conclusions like "This is why we're right". They would spin it to play to their narrative.

The best way is to get as many real people as possible to make as much noise as possible.

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#257
post #2

Just like the election, I wonder if the people behind this care if they get caught as long as they get what they want first. There doesn't seem to be much precedent for overturning laws or elections that were subject to misinformation campaigns.

Like every company in the tech industry? 'Disrupt' ie break all of the laws and grow faster than you can get sued. Then when you do get sued throw mountains of investor money at it and ask for more.

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#258
post #251

So many in the tech community support Net Neutrality, it's always shocked me that more people don't build bots to submit comments like the opposition do. Surely the tech community could easily submit a few billion (trillion?) legit-looking comments in support of Net Neutrality that would a) completely cripple the servers or b) produce so much spam that it overwhelms anything useful and all comments are ignored.... wh…

Because so many comments would be instantly recognized as spam. The Anti-Net-Neutrality side would then use that as a narrative that all NN arguments are fake and draw even more stupid conclusions like "This is why we're right". They would spin it to play to their narrative. The best way is to get as many real people as possible to make as much noise as possible.

[deleted]

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#259
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The majority...many Notice I never said all or even most of the emails were altered. That some of them may have been subtly altered was one point of my argument.

If an email that wasn't part of the public debate was altered, who cares? The simple fact is that, of all the emails that were covered by the media, the Clinton campaign was unable to point to a single one and say it was altered.

It looks like a very large number of the emails from podesta's inbox weren't signed. I have seen no evidence that all or even most of the emails that were part of the public discourse were actually signed.

Re: More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked

#260
post #251

So many in the tech community support Net Neutrality, it's always shocked me that more people don't build bots to submit comments like the opposition do. Surely the tech community could easily submit a few billion (trillion?) legit-looking comments in support of Net Neutrality that would a) completely cripple the servers or b) produce so much spam that it overwhelms anything useful and all comments are ignored.... wh…

Because it's ethically wrong and would backfire horribly. Think about the consequences for a minute.

(a) cripple the servers -- that's bad, then real people can't submit their real opinions and comments.

(b) overwhelm anything useful and all comments are ignored -- why would you want that?? The vast majority of real comments favor net neutrality, why would you want them to be ignored?

Of course, your arguments do make sense for the anti-NN companies who don't want real people's comments heard, which is probably why they did it.

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