[Infowarrior] - Fwd: More than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments were Likely Faked

[Richard Forno]

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk at gsp.org>
> Subject: More than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments were Likely Faked
> Date: November 26, 2017 at 12:20:36 PM EST
> To: Dave Farber <dave at farber.net>, Richard Forno <rforno at infowarrior.org>, Lauren Weinstein <lauren at vortex.com>
> 
> (for IP, if you wish)
> 
> 
> 	More than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments were Likely Faked
> 	https://hackernoon.com/more-than-a-million-pro-repeal-net-neutrality-comments-were-likely-faked-e9f0e3ed36a6
> 
> Excerpts:
> 
> 	NY Attorney General Schneiderman estimated that hundreds of
> 	thousands of Americans' identities were stolen and used in spam
> 	campaigns that support repealing net neutrality. My research found
> 	at least 1.3 million fake pro-repeal comments, with suspicions
> 	about many more. In fact, the sum of fake pro-repeal comments
> 	in the proceeding may number in the millions.
> 
> 	[...]
> 
> 	Key Findings:
> 
> 	1. One pro-repeal spam campaign used mail-merge to disguise 1.3
> 	million comments as unique grassroots submissions.
> 
> 	2.  There were likely multiple other campaigns aimed at injecting
> 	what may total several million pro-repeal comments into the
> 	system.
> 
> 	3.  It's highly likely that more than 99% of the truly unique
> 	comments were in favor of keeping net neutrality.
> 
> 	[...]
> 
> 	After clustering comment categories and removing duplicates,
> 	I found that less than 800,000 of the 22M+ comments submitted
> 	to the FCC (3-4%) could be considered truly unique.
> 
> ---rsk

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