The creaky comments website at the FCC may or (really) may not have been subject to a denial of service attack, as officials claim but have yet to prove. But independent analysis has proved one thing: thousands of comments that are getting through are anti-net neutrality, all of them say the same thing, and they’re coming from a bot.
[M]ore than 128,000 identical comments have been posted since the feedback doors were opened, now representing a significant slice of the comments on the FCC's feedback docket.
"The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation, damaging the American economy and obstructing job creation," the comment says. "I urge the Federal Communications Commission to end the bureaucratic regulatory overreach of the internet known as Title II and restore the bipartisan light-touch regulatory consensus that enabled the internet to flourish for more than 20 years."
The comments follow the same pattern: the bot appears to cycle through names in an alphabetical order, leaving the person's name, and postal address and zip code.
We reached out to two-dozen people by phone, and we left voicemails when nobody picked up. A couple of people late Tuesday called back and confirmed that they had not left any messages on the FCC's website. One of the returning callers specifically said they didn't know what net neutrality was. A third person reached in a Facebook message Tuesday also confirmed that they had not left any comments on any website.
ZDNet reports that various discussion threads on Reddit point to a 2010 press release from the Center for Individual Freedom, which hates net neutrality with a white-hot passion (for unknown reasons).
This round of comments to the FCC ends Thursday night at midnight, prior to an FCC vote next week on the rollback of the open internet rule. Which means we have to get our comments in. The easiest way to do that is with this petition.
Sign the petition to send the FCC and our elected officials in D.C. a clear message that we won’t stand by and let them kill net neutrality.