Hacker News Reader

Comment by cremp | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: Why is everyones reaction to put {executive} in jail?

People don't understand that corporations, and to a larger extent, governments, are Medusa. You can cut a snake off, but there are more, who were trained by {executive}. (And it doesn't actually stop the {bad_practice} from happening; the head wasn't cut off.) (And for those who really want the myth, the head still turned people to stone, IE 'we've always done it this way.')

Don't get me wrong; as a net-isizen, I want Pai to rot in hell for everything he's done, but what is the rational behind putting people in jail?

USA already has enough people incarcerated from tiny drug charges; what makes this any better? Throwing people in jail won't solve anything, so why is that the biggest reaction to stuff like this?

View on HN

> Why is everyones reaction to put {executive} in jail?

Because the current set of disincentives to act in this way are not adequate, and we further recognize that this is not a new problem.

> but what is the rational behind putting people in jail?

I think the hope is that these people will see the oversized punishment and avoid taking jobs in government service that seem to be taken exclusively to benefit their own agendas rather than to perform any public service.

> what makes this any better?

It actually stands a chance of modifying the behavior of the target group. It's a disincentive that they almost certainly don't want to face, as opposed to drug addicts who see it as a temporary inconvenience to their _addiction_. Are you suggesting that these executives are suffering from an addiction issue?

> so why is that the biggest reaction to stuff like this?

Because we've been watching this happen over and over again for years and we're sick of it being an issue. It's an over-reaction to be sure, but it's well justified given our history of failures here.

What is your proposal to stop this behavior then?

Putting people in jail for doing bad things is a signal to future people who want to do those bad things that they will suffer consequences for it. This will make them rethink doing those things. AKA "deterrence"

If people can do these things and get away with it, why wouldn't they? They make billions of dollars doing this and have no chance of suffering any negative consequences. If you were in a room with a billion dollars on the table and you knew you'd be free to take it and no one would ever come after you for it, wouldn't you take it?

> You can cut a snake off, but there are more, who were trained by {executive}

If your boss told you to do a bunch of things, and then got thrown in jail for doing exactly those things, are you saying that you would keep on doing them? Most people wouldn't.

> What is your proposal to stop this behavior then?

In the 18th century, they used the Guillotine.

Please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

So we're advocating for the death penalty for fake comments? Doesn't that sound a little excessive for fake comments on the internets?

It's not merely fake comments. It's fake comments used by a small group of people to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.

I'm sure the reference to the death penalty is being hyperbolic, but this is a little different from some kid pretending to be a Navy Seal to sound like a tough guy.

I love the fact that one person is correcting me it's hyperbolic, and another is telling me yes I want actual executions. And the downvotes from probably both of you.

There are big corporations doing much more despicable things then registering fake comments over net neutrality. Hyperbole or not, calling for the guillotine over fake comments against net neutrality is over the top compared to say fossil fuel companies and their liability related to global warming, or pharmaceuticals extorting patients for medicines like insulin or the epi-pen. That I could understand wanting the guillotine. Not fake net neutrality comments.

Here's the deal. I am PRO NET NEUTRALITY. I hate that Ajit Pai did away with it. He may have colluded with the Comcasts and AT&Ts of the world to get rid of it, he might have just opened the door for them to do what they did. It's awfully hard to prove if he did help post fake comments. I doubt he cared what was in them to begin with. I suspect most people knew those comments were fake, it was just a smoke screen for doing what the big companies wanted.

For what it's worth, I didn't downvote. And to clarify, it's not the guillotine for fake comments, so much as using money and power for inherently anti-social motives. The wants of the few should never trump the needs of the many.

Eventually the many will get fed-up, and the few will become the none.

Read up on the French Revolution and what actually happened. You'll learn who did what to whom and within what legal framework (or lack thereof).

You may also start to see some parallels.

All I'm saying is there is far worse stuff than fake net neutrality comments. See my other comment regarding big pharma or oil companies.

The fake comments are simply "Let them eat cake." in my analogy.

What, exactly, are the "bad things" you want people to go to jail for?

In this case, manipulating government regulations by submitting false comments. If it's proved that companies fraudulently submitted comments to create the appearance of a grassroots sentiment that did not exist, specifically in order to obtain favorable regulations that would enrich them, don't you think that someone should go to jail for that?

Are there any credible allegations that Ajit Pai, or any other government employees were behind any false comments?

Because I haven't seen any such claims. It seems to me that people are demanding he be put in jail for drafting and voting for a regulation they disagree with.

I honestly don't know what role, if any, Pai specifically may have had. This is why we have a justice system - to investigate crimes and hold trials to determine if someone committed a crime or not.

I agree he should not be put in jail solely on the basis of allegations from the Internet. I don't think anyone is proposing that.

The original comment here says "Why is Ajit Pai not in jail?"

I assume that person believes that, as former general counsel of a major telecom company and then head of the FCC, if there were wrongdoing, Pai would have been aware of it, if not involved. Do you think that's an unreasonable assumption? Even if it happened without his knowledge, he's the leader so it's ultimately his responsibility.

In the best case, we could say he was negligent in assessing the validity of the comments that were submitted to his agency. After all, subsequent investigations have been able to determine the comments were fraudulent, so why didn't he?

If he knew they were fake and just ignored that fact because they supported what he wanted to do anyway, that's another thing. If he was being compensated in some backdoor way from the industry for ignoring that the comments were fake, that's yet another thing. These are things that should be investigated.

Yes, it's incredibly unreasonable to go from "fake comments were submitted" to "Pai is responsible".

Ok, see if I were a government official in charge of reviewing comments from the public, I would consider it my responsibility to ensure that those comments were an accurate reflection of public sentiment and had not been manipulated by an interested party to benefit themselves.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about what sorts of responsibilities government officials have.

As a rule, bureaucrats are not concerned with public opinion. The comments are there for a technical analysis of merit, it is very common for a political process to not take very obvious and large flaws into account, and the public comments are there for fixing this.

That said, wether there was some crime or not is an orthogonal issue.

It was incredibly obvious to anyone paying attention that they were manipulated. 2.8 million comments were identical and were from a pro-net neutrality site called "Battle for the Net". That's not organic.

Do you think he should have blocked comments from there? Or what, specific, actions should he have taken?

> 2.8 million comments were identical and were from a pro-net neutrality site called "Battle for the Net". That's not organic.

Lots of advocacy groups offered a form for users to submit comments with a pre-filled comment field in support of net neutrality. I used one myself. The fact that the text is the same does not necessarily imply the comment is fake.

There are many other comments where the person who supposedly submitted the comment says that they didn't. That would be a fake comment.

> Or what, specific, actions should he have taken?

I don't know, how about something besides "not a damn thing"? How about tracking down the source of the fake comments and fining or otherwise holding them accountable if it's within his jurisdiction to do so, or turning them over to the appropriate authorities if not? How about cancelling the comment period due to the rampant fraud, implementing some measures to verify user and re-opening comments to try to get something accurate? How about giving the tiniest shit about the public he's supposed to be serving? Is that too much ask?

You seem to be operating under a severe misunderstanding of the point of the public comment system. It is not to figure out whether or not the public supports a particular action. Polls are much better at that particular goal. Rather, the purpose is to surface relevant arguments so the committee can consider those arguments in their decisions.

> Rather, the purpose is to surface relevant arguments so the committee can consider those arguments in their decisions.

And would you say that having one side flood the system with millions of fraudulent comments is conducive to this purpose? Before you object, yes it was overwhelmingly one side. FTA of the 14 organizations being investigated, 11 were anti-NN and only 3 are pro.

If what you say were true, all they should have had to do was submit their one comment with their best argument against net neutrality so that the committee could consider it. Surely their sound argument would be enough to win the day, right?

But that's not what they did, is it? Instead of submitting one argument, they tried to overload the system. It's almost as if they wanted to prevent the committee from considering the other side's argument, rather than presenting their own, isn't it? Does that sound like a healthy, functional democracy to you? Is that the sort of tactic that you would like to have deciding how our government is run?

I think basically all the sites that facilitated bulk comments are pointless. Can't think of any cases where bulk comments made a difference (outside petitions are a different story, although they're more useful to make obscure issues get noticed by politicians than for changing positions).

But I think portraying this as part of some broad conspiracy is a stretch. In theory the fraudulent ones (as opposed to the merely manipulated ones facilitated by websites giving one side of the issue) could have been placed by one bored teen script kiddy. I agree it should be investigated, but I don't think there's reason to demonize Pai for that.

Weird, I happened to submit that page to HN and it shot to the top of the front page and stayed there for most of a day. I guess the originators rigged all the HN votes too. You presume good faith on the part of Pai and his affiliations in withholding information from the public about the FCC comment submissions, while simultaneously disputing the right of pro-NN actors to organize and equating such organization with fraudulent submissions.

That's misrepresenting what I said. I never said anyone doesn't have a right to organize.

You directly stated that an effort to solicit and organize submissions means that those submissions were not organic (despite them being initiated by real people), the implication being that those submissions are therefore invalid. What exactly was misrepresented there?

Inorganic is not at all the same as invalid.

And none of those submissions were "initiated by real people" as you claim - they were initiated by the organization, with the support of people some of whom were real (if you think out of millions of people every single one gave their real name, you're naive).

I know that my submission through Battle for the Net's site was indeed initiated by a real person (unless you're claiming I ain't a real person). There's little reason to believe that wasn't the case for the other posts, either (unless you do have specific evidence of that).

At least per the stated/apparent design of BffN's site, there was a 1:1 ratio between submitted comments to the FCC and someone explicitly requesting "yes, please submit this comment on my behalf". If you have evidence contradicting BffN's claimed mode of operation, then let's hear it.

As far as I know, they did no real name verification of submissions. Unless you think it's plausible that 2.8 million people all gave real names in absence of any verification, it's clear at least some submissions had fake names/were submitted by people that didn't put their own name.

So, BattlefortheNet submitted close to 3 million pro-NN comments but without any sort of identity verification, while the cable providers are accused of submitting up to 9.5 million comments and misusing the identities of real people.

I'm sure some comments were submitted via pseudonyms, the same way you and I post under pseudonyms as opposed to one of us representing ourselves as Ajit Pai, a real person who happens to be FCC chair. It's possible some battleofthenet-originated comments involved fake names that were similarly misappropriated but there doesn't seem to be any body of people complaining about that having happened to them, in contrast to the anti-NN comment submissions.

Now if you have any evidence of such an effort, I encourage you to publish or submit it to investigators. But if you don't, it looks like you're trying to undermine the investigation of a big thing by complaining about the potential failings of a smaller thing.

Also, a cursory search shows some of the fake comments were pro-NN, contrary to the narrative being pushed here.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/millions-of-people-post-comment...

>The Journal found instances of fakes that favored antiregulation stances but also comments mirroring consumer-groups’ pro-regulation talking points, posted without permission of people whose names were on 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 Angeles. She isn’t in favor of repealing those rules, she said, “but I never wrote that.”

4,622 people told the WSJ they didn't submit the comment in their name that said "The FCC's open Internet rules (net neutrality rules) are extremely important to me." (this was the Battleforthenet text)

>the cable providers are accused of

Weasel words. Who is making this accusation? Which cable providers are accused? What is the basis for this accusation?

If only there were some way to refer back to the article we're commenting on about that very topic. Perhaps you missed it in your hurry to post a barrage of unresponsive replies.

The OP here doesn't have the word cable in it at all.

I've gone through the whole article again and see no accusation against any cable providers

If you were simply confused you could have just asked for clarification. I think you know perfectly well who the anti-net neutrality group is, and are fully smart enough to read my shorthand of 'cable providers' as a metonym for 'telecommunications service providers who are opposed to net neutrality and have lobbied against it, as well as their associated vendors.' Sure hope that investigation doesn't turn up anything untoward.

Right, but using a pseudonym is a very different situation from using the name of someone who's dead, which is in turn a very different situation from using the name of someone who's alive and actually holds the opposite position.

If the FCC's checking against some list of real names when validating comments, then the BftN-collected comments that didn't use a real name wouldn't go through anyway. If the FCC's not checking against some list of real names, then BtfN possibly getting submissions from people using nicknames is the least of the FCC's worries.

Battle for the Net's comments were each initiated by a real person (like myself). There was a default message that users could either use as-is or edit/replace.

The comments under investigation were outright fake (e.g. using the identities of deceased persons, among other situations where it's demonstrable that the person identified as the "author" of the comment did not actually authorize it).

I'm responding to parent's reference to "ensure that those comments were an accurate reflection of public sentiment and had not been manipulated by an interested party to benefit themselves", not the investigation.

Holy shit, the comments calling for literal execution of Ajit Pai get upvoted and this gets downvoted.

Well done!

Don't ealion here please.

Per guidelines:

>Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken.

This is silly. When Nixon was impeached, future Presidents didn't keep bugging their political opponents' hotel rooms in some Medusa-like fashion. When J. Edgar Hoover died, the Senate put in mandatory term limits on FBI directors, they didn't just appoint more jedgars. When Napolean was exiled, his revolution died... And when he escaped exile, it returned in full force.

We aren't helpless to sanction the powerful and thereby change policies and practices. Sure, sometimes you need a few shots at it — sometimes it really is a machine — but changing the head does in fact change the organization. If you want a closer-to-home example, just look at Uber under Dara vs Uber under Travis.

The whole point of putting people to jail is to discourage behavior. This is exactly what it's for.

May very well be that there's someone in line waiting to be the next Ajit Pai, but what are they gonna do if they just watched five other people go to jail for what they might've tried to do?

We used to throw white collar criminals in jail all the time. Over a thousand bankers were convicted and many jailed during the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 80s. Their harm to the financial system did far more to damage society than weed dealers.

America just doesn’t prosecute and jail white collar criminals anymore, which is why it may seem odd to you that people call for jailing white collar criminals.

For every Martin Shkreli that actually gets prison time, far too many wealthy and powerful people get away with doing great harm to society; if it doesn’t involve blood or drugs, they go home to their families.

During the savings and loans scandal, we convicted over a thousand people. Even if they committed the most minor infraction. I'd argue it cleaned up the banking industry for 20 years.

Jail and a felony conviction which permanently destroys your career is a big motivator. Fines and not admitting wrong doing is as much risk as gambling in Vegas with a lot better odds.

> corporations, and to a larger extent, governments, are Medusa.

You mean Hydra. Medusa would turn anyone who looked at her to stone, Hydra would grow two heads to replace any one that was cut off.

Please define {executive}. A business executive is different from a government official. How do we ensure that an unelected government official does not (continue) to engage in nefarious activity?

The corporation as an entity may not care that an executive got thrown in prison, but the guy who replaced him will think twice before making the same decisions his predecessor did.

> "Don't get me wrong; as a net-isizen, I want Pai to rot in hell for everything he's done"

Settle down. The hatred towards him is unbelievably off the charts.

> Why is everyones reaction to put {executive} in jail?

Perhaps because if it were normal civilians they would be put in jail?

Why should an executive be exempt from laws?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com