Doing it fraudulently

Yesterday in my post about Ajit Pai of the FCC wanting to end an open internet I wrote, “1.52 comments in opposition left on the cumbersome FCC website versus only 23,000 in favor.”

A correction to that sentence. It should be “1.52 million comments…” I apologize for leaving out a very important word.

And an explanation. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reports that data scientist Jeff Kao analyzed the comments. He determined that 1.3 million of the comments in favor of ending an open internet were generated by bots and thus were fake. Kao calculated that “more than 99% of the truly unique comments were in favor of keeping net neutrality.” So my corrected sentence above shows data after Kao’s analysis. All those fake comments – and the acknowledgment that they are fake – allows “Pai’s office to argue that the comments should not be seen as a legitimate expression of public opinion.”

Eric Boehlert of Shareblue reports the corrupted the comments aren’t a new revelation. The comment page was opened in April. By May, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman started investigating. Some of those fake comments came from people whose identities were misused (a better word might be “stolen.” That includes tens of thousands of New Yorkers and hundreds of thousands nationwide. Schneiderman has repeatedly asked the FCC to hand over records. He hasn’t received any reply.

Wrote McCarter:

Pai is going to ignore what the American people want, and give the internet away to a few players like Comcast and Verizon. He's doing it fraudulently, by ignoring cheating and lying. Because of course he is. That's how Republicans get everything they want.