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Comment by snypher | Hacker News Reader

Why would anyone bother engaging with this after the way net neutrality was handled by the FCC?

Edit: a 15 day comment period in the holiday season shows exactly how much they care about your comments.

Good question. Treasury and FCC are VERY different departments. FCC is ~1k people and dominated by political commissioners. Treasury is ~80k people and has politically appointed leadership but also a much deeper bench of career civil servants. Those people will read those comments and will make changes to their proposed rules based on thoughtful comments and feedback from stakeholders. They may not make the change you want, but they will read your feedback and take it into account. If you do choose to comment, DO NOT use form letters or go on rants. Establish your interest, perspective, and authority, and state your position clearly with supporting data. And remember: everything you say goes into the public record

Source: got a large US govt to tweak regs based on data, common sense, 0 lobbying and 0 money.

I feel your frustration, but worry that this sort of defeatist attitude (if adopted by many) will end poorly.

We have to be resilient. If we as citizens want to have any say in government, we need to engage despite frustrations, setbacks, and what even appears to be bad faith attempts to circumvent established procedures like this seems to be (and the FCC net neutrality comment process was).

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