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Comment by bllguo | Hacker News Reader

Why did they solicit public feedback then? And why did they misrepresent public feedback and refuse to acknowledge that most people want net neutrality? Obviously they aren't beholden to what the public wants, but the latter is clearly scummy, is it not?

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It is often required to solicit feedback before a rule change. Those in charge of the rule change are not generally required to follow the feedback.

The direct feedback mechanism is voting for those who determine the composition of the rule-making bodies.

One more step.

The direct feedback mechanism is voting, for people who draw maps that determine who get's elected to have the power to determine the composition of the rule-making bodies.

You could even argue it's how people spend their money that determines who has money to chose who get's to draw the maps etc.

Agreed, especially upon the final point.

I try to engage in commerce with entities that do/make good things.

I'm not sure I'd use the term "direct feedback mechanism" to describe voting for an elector who votes on a President who appoints a commissioner to a five person committee for five year terms.

It's required because it's supposed to help inform the FCC of pending legal challenges. FCC and other government agencies are supposed to take those comments seriously to avoid implementing bad rules and attracting expensive lawsuits in order to save the government (and ultimately the peoples') money.

They are not legally beholden to follow the feedback, but if the FCC is supposed to be an unelected dictatorship, why even require feedback?

Isn't it because this is required by the Administrative Procedures Act?

Soliciting and addressing public feedback is; ignoring and/or misrepresenting it is not (and may, in fact, help support a finding that the act was arbitrary and capricious in the light of the information available to the agency at the time of the decision, though that's—even with that fact established—a fairly difficult case to make.)

Yes, the intent is to let the public weigh in, help the committee make an informed decision as opposed to a capricious and arbitrary one. The decision is clearly arbitrary, as Pai has stated from the beginning he's going to do this, has blatantly ignored everyone, and is now on record as having insulted us. In terms of capricious, that's harder to prove. Between the EFF and the various attorneys general, this will be tied up in federal court.

Arbitrary means random. I don't think that Ajit Pai flipped a coin to make this decision.

adjective

based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

"his mealtimes were entirely arbitrary"

synonyms: capricious, whimsical, random, chance, unpredictable;

(of power or a ruling body) unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.

"arbitrary rule by King and bishops has been made impossible"

synonyms: autocratic, dictatorial, autarchic, undemocratic, despotic, tyrannical, authoritarian, high-handed;

mathematics. (of a constant or other quantity) of unspecified value.

> Arbitrary means random.

This is false both in mathematics and in everyday language.

It also means due to personal whim. I don't think it was this either. Pai has reasons for his choice. Many, of course, disagree with these reasons or think they are bad reasons but they are reasons nonetheless. It wasn't an arbitrary decision.

It's "arbitrary" because Pai, on multiple occasions, indicated he will not take the comments into effect. Even after the reports of the faked comments, the calls to delay the vote by some senators, the faked DDoS attack, he still went through with it. There's also allegation he violated the FCC's process. He was determined to ram this through no matter what. That's arbitrary.

No, that just means it's not a democracy. One can listen to a bunch of comments, disagree with them, and choose to do the opposite of what they say without being arbitrary.

His determination actually demonstrates the lack of arbitrariness. Arbitrary choices are held lightly and easily changed. This was the opposite.

That's capricious, not arbitrary. If Pai wanted this to go by the book, he would have pushed the vote out until the investigations into the fraudulent comments was completed, at the least. Someone who was determined to see this go through, but not in an arbitrary fashion, would have waited until the various issues with the process were resolved, and then held the vote. Pai was determined to hold this vote no matter what, that's arbitrary.

Capricious means "given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior."

AFAIK at no point during the process did Pai change much at all. He made it clear what he was going to do from the beginning and stuck to it the whole way through.

Here is the definition of arbitrary:

"The term arbitrary describes a course of action or a decision that is not based on reason or judgment but on personal will or discretion without regard to rules or standards."

Most of Pai's arguments are half-truths or out right lies. There have been several instances where his claims were fact checked against the data and proved to be false.

Furthermore: "In many instances, the term implies an element of bad faith, and it may be used synonymously with tyrannical or despotic."

I think there's a good case that Pai's actions and statements could be shown to be despotic.

The intent is to let different parties bring their concerns to the attention of the FCC. It is not a vote. Every public comment could advocate for one thing, and the FCC is perfectly in its right to do the other.

The only federal elections are for the President, Senators, and Representatives. This is not a direct democracy.

Administrative Review Act.

They are required to solicit comments and to consider them. Many comments are cited in the Order.

Could you give examples of them "misrepresenting public feedback"?

The FCC has dismissed the public's feedback[1]--they never considered it and did a poor job of soliciting it in the first place. The servers went down during the feed back process, the interface for solicitation was confusing and there wasn't much effort to prevent spam. There were 22 million replies (the previous record was 3.7 million during the last net neutrality debate). Even if you write most of that off as spam or duplicate, form-comments, that's still an immense amount of feedback. To dismiss it all is misrepresenting it.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/why-the-fcc-igno...

You're complaining about servers going down while acknowledging that the number of comments was unprecedented?

And your link doesn't support your claim:

>The Pai staffer who spoke with reporters acknowledged that there were legitimate comments from both sides in the net neutrality docket. In Pai's draft order, the FCC comprehensively addresses all the serious comments that made factual and legal arguments, the official said.

> You're complaining about servers going down while acknowledging that the number of comments was unprecedented?

Yes I am. My point is that they did a poor job at soliciting feedback--not that they didn't get a lot. The fact the volume was so high just shows how important it was for this issue. If servers are going offline, then you can show good faith by extending the comment period or addressing it in some other manor.

Being "required to solicit comments and to consider them" doesn't mean you only consider a subset containing legal arguments.

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