Dead People Are Posting Anti-Net Neutrality Comments to FCC Website

> Nobody at the FCC is going to read these things

Yes, they will. And the final rule that is issued (and the almost inevitable dissent) will probably directly acknowledge them (though one side dismissively.)

But it does matter, because it shows malice and intent. All three data points have to be taken together (FCC Opens up comments, Comments criminally spammed, FCC decides the issue X). Given the clear and convincing evidence of malfeasance in the comment stream, the FCC's actions can be judged as reasonable or unreasonable.

So what matters is that we shine light on their agenda so that it is not possible for them to credibly deny they are not following their own policies.

This: I heard the NPR interview with Ajit Pai. Basically he had made his mind up. The writeup is very kind to him, the audio is a lot worse.

Q: if public opinon would prefer to treat the internet like the internet like a utility would you vote the other way?

Pai responded with Not really an answer saying they have to look at the evidence, but his answer was no.

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/05/05/526...

His solution to problems with ISPs is for consumers to complain to a regulatory agency. After taking away regulatory authority.

Even if the policy choices are foregone an investigation punishing those responsible for this identity theft seems merited.

For the folks who aren't about to give up so easy, here's the reddit sub where people are brainstorming ways to "make" them listen. Again. I imagine it wil be something along the lines of another blackout or whatever a "march" on the Internet would look like.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MarchForNetNeutrality/

While it's easy to fall into this mindset I think it is important that we do not. Staying engaged is extremely important, and regulators (especially bipartisan commissions) will review these comments and incorporate them. If anything, the sheer number of dissenting comments is a metric that will be important to measure the popularity or lack thereof of any decision.

Of course they've already decided what they're going to do, but even if there's no chance these public comments will stop them, it's still better if there's a record of fierce public opposition that they have to explain.

No, it's big deal, very dangerous AND it's a crime.

This reluctant attitude is what allows them to win.

Sounds just like the previous administration and the one before that.

I wonder how bad it will get before this country finally realizes its going to take more than two parties to run this country well. People are getting sick of this shit.

Dead people have opinions about net neutrality too.

Since ping times from the afterlife have such bad latency, they don't mind letting ISPs get away with whatever they want.

Exactly this.

I've worked with many regulators on industry/public reviews. Submitting opinions or copy pasta achieves nothing, no matter how voluminous. It will at best end up refered to in the final report as something like "Mupltiple unsubstantiated submissions were made supporting net neutralitity."

Things that make a difference, at least to the extent that some time and effort has to be made responding to them in the final report, include:

1. Summarising similar rulings in other jurisdictions. Ideally, including the reasoning why they made their decision, and some analysis of the impact. Comparisons of market similarities (e.g. level/structure of competition) helps to show why those decisions are relevant to the local market.

2. Arguing from local regulatory context. Working from the local competition/telecoms laws and previous decisions by the regulator, construct a structured argument why the desired outcome logically follows.

3. Arguing from first principles. Often involving some market/scenario modelling showing current market behaviour and how that would/would not change under different regulatory outcomes. Most competition/telecoms legislation is framed around benefits to consumers, so the modelling should focus on the consumer impact, not just competitor impact.

Most industry submissions will utilise a combination of the above, and draw upon global experts to strengthen their case and add credibility to their analysis.

I can't speak to the FCC and this particular ruling, but I have seen regulators change their draft recommendations on the basis of submissions received during the public review process. Even when the regulator has predetermined the outcome, having the submissions and the official responses recorded in the final report provides a reference basis for additional lobbying at a later date.

Interestingly, according to that link Mr./Mrs. Firstname Lastname left them a reply indicating his or her support for strong net neutrality. :)

I'm imagining that the dead are just a small fraction of the fake comments: just those who had died since whatever dataset being used was last regenerated/cleaned.

Simpsons did it.

Whoever did this probably did some mass data collection like you are suggesting. But some people died between collection date and message date, or the data was not up to date, so we got dead people commenting on the issue.

> I never understood Americans' obsession of having the government control ISPs

While I agree on principle, I always make exceptions for monopolies: ISPs in the US are local monopolies: they carved up the market geographically and deliberately choose not to compete.

The perverse thing is that the Republicans echo your hands-off sentiment at federal level, while Republican-ruled states are busy passing hands-on laws that ban municipal networks.

The government is always a better steward then the Aristocracy, as the aristocracy tend to be able to ignore both market demand and popular demand where as the government have some accountability to the public.

The free market ideology is based on a assumption that a actual free market exists and that assumption is false when it comes to most forms of infrastructure including Internet cables.

I understand this sentiment, but I also think it can be a little short-sighted. There can be cases where your best interests and those of a corporation can line up. This is one of those cases. It doesn't mean that you're now an evangelist of the company, just that you agree in this particular scenario. Having a stance on something purely because someone you like/dislike has a stance on it is extremely dangerous.

They support it for publicity. Imagine if they wouldn't. They assume net neutrality will not pass, but they will make good face to a bad game.

What you're doing is confusing a second-order signal when you have first-order knowledge. We should expect someone who doesn't understand net-neutrality at all to use second-order signals like "Big company X supports net neutrality, therefore I should do Y". If you actually understand net-neutrality, you can assign much lower weight of evidence to whether or not a company supports it, since you can decide from first principles whether you support the idea yourself.

This is what a lot of partisan media commentary gets wrong, since they tend to focus on "So-and-so is a liberal/conservative, therefore everything they say is tainted. We can't trust anything they say!" When in reality, there are facts to be had, and you can investigate them, and ignore who is saying what. The taint argument is only a good heuristic when you're completely uneducated about a topic.

Isn't Facebook's Internet.org project a direct affront on net neutrality?

This is in fact the crux of the argument that the FCC put forth.

They said that it isn't fair that some companies are restricted from using your private information, but huge companies like Google, Facebook and others have free access and free reign to with it what they want. Instead of making your data private from all the companies, they instead did THE EXACT OPPOSITE and made all the private information readily available to everyone and every company who wants it.

Big telecom companies like Verizon, who make their money by hijacking public infrastructure and then renting access to it, oppose net neutrality.

I think the disappointing thing here is that the anti-neutrality voice is most entirely corporate suggesting someone has paid to get these comments added.

The hard part is not putting out a spec for a decentralized internet (though that's an intellectually hard problem as well). The hard part is getting people to purchase the hardware for your new internet in sufficient volume.

I don't understand why anyone would want telegraph neutrality stop

Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? We're hoping for a higher quality level here.