New York Attorney General Letitia James\u2019 office has revealed after an extensive investigation that the vast majority \u2015 around 80% \u2015 of comments made to the Federal Communications Commission about proposed changes to net neutrality laws were faked.<\/p>\n
Around 40%, or 8.5 million comments, were funded by internet service providers in order to protect their interests. They included fabricated comments from dead people, some of which\u00a0were discovered by their loved ones.<\/p>\n
Although the fact that some of the FCC comments were fake\u00a0was known back in 2017, the new report out of James\u2019 office reveals the massive scale of the operation.<\/p>\n
The report, released Thursday, detailed \u201ca secret campaign, funded by the country\u2019s largest broadband companies, to manufacture support for the repeal of existing net neutrality rules\u201d in 2017.<\/p>\n
It also found that a single teenager using a computer program was able to submit millions of comments in favor of maintaining net neutrality, in opposition to big business interests.<\/p>\n
Net neutrality refers to the concept that internet service providers treat all internet content the same; that is, they cannot let you access some content faster than other content. Before the FCC ultimately voted to repeal net neutrality rules in the United States in late 2017, the agency had opened up a public comment period to encourage the public to weigh in with their preference.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Net neutrality enjoyed overwhelming public support regardless of party affiliation, including support from tech giants like Netflix and Facebook. Broadband providers vehemently oppose it\u00a0in large part because they don\u2019t want to be treated like utility companies, since that opens up the possibility of heavy federal regulation that could eat into profits.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The New York Attorney General\u2019s office was unable to find evidence that any broadband companies had direct knowledge of the scam tactics, which were carried out by \u201clead generators\u201d contracted by the companies. The office found that the broadband companies did not break New York law \u2015 and thus did not name them \u2015 but reached multimillion-dollar settlements with some of the lead generator companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lead generators were supposed to encourage real people to provide information about themselves in exchange for marketing offers that included discounted children\u2019s movies and free trials of male enhancement products.<\/p>\n
Yet James\u2019 office found that \u201cnearly every lead generator that was hired\u201d instead \u201csimply fabricated consumers\u2019 responses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Around 8.5 million FCC comments were faked as a result of the broadband industry\u2019s effort to whip up anti-net neutrality sentiment. As the report notes, \u201cdisguising an orchestrated, paid campaign as a grassroots effort, to create a false appearance of genuine, unpaid public support … is often referred to as astroturfing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The office found that there was some fraud on the part of those who wanted to keep net neutrality protections in place.\u00a0<\/span>A whopping 7.7 million FCC comments supporting net neutrality were sent by one 19-year-old college student, who is unnamed, and another 1.6 million were sent by an unknown source.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n However the report noted that \u201c[u]nlike the broadband industry efforts described above that used the names and addresses of real people without their consent, these comments used fabricated names and addresses generated by software.\u201d<\/p>\n The result was that 18 million of the more than 22 million comments sent to the FCC were not genuine.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis type of fraud has significant consequences for our democracy,\u201d reads the report, titled \u201cHow U.S. Companies & Partisans Hack Democracy to Undermine Your Voice.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFederal and state agencies rely on public comments to set standards that govern many aspects of our lives, from public health to consumer protection to the environment, and, in this case, the rules that govern how we share and consume content over the internet. Public comments can also influence legislators and the laws they enact,\u201d it says.<\/p>\n James\u2019 office made a series of recommendations to prevent such fraud from happening again, and at other agencies, which also use the internet to facilitate public commenting.\u00a0<\/p>\n The office looked at \u201chundreds of millions\u201d of records in the course of its investigation, which was completed with help from attorneys general offices in Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., along with the San Diego district attorney\u2019s office.\u00a0<\/p>\n