from Hacker News

Opposition to net neutrality was faked, New York says

by u678u on 5/6/21, 4:33 PM with 260 comments

  • by rectang on 5/6/21, 5:10 PM

    It was obvious at the time. I recall many people reporting that fake comments antithetical to their own beliefs had been submitted using their identities.

    Why was FCC head Ajit Pai able to get away with citing fraudulent evidence? How can we stop such blatant corruption of the FCC's policy-making process in the future?

  • by wolverine876 on 5/6/21, 6:25 PM

    The headline news is that they do so with impunity and achieved their goals at no cost. The corporations ("like AT&T, Comcast and Charter"), their association (Broadband for America), the lobbying firm (unnamed - who is it?), and the FCC, to the degree it failed its duties, suffer no consequences - and indeed the corporations get what they wanted; their plan worked.

    > The report said investigators had not found evidence that Broadband for America or the lobbying firm it used for the campaign were aware of the fraud. But, the attorney general said, several “significant red flags” had “appeared shortly after the campaign started, and continued for months yet still remained unheeded.”

    > The attorney general’s office said it had reached agreements with three “lead generation” services that were involved — Fluent, Opt-Intelligence and React2Media, companies that gather customers for clients as part of marketing efforts. Under the agreements, the companies said they would more clearly disclose to individuals how their personal information was being used. The companies also agreed to pay over $4 million in penalties.

  • by betwixthewires on 5/6/21, 7:32 PM

    So was the support.

    The NN debate online was a massive propaganda warfare campaign between two teams of huge corporations, neither of which had any of our interests in mind. We were squeezed in the middle of it and everyone was pressured to take sides.

  • by brokenkebab on 5/6/21, 5:44 PM

    Companies opposing to NN paid for astroturfing campaign. While proponents based their marketing on fear-mongering ("The internet is dying" - NYT, "Death of the internet" - CNBC). Would be interesting to measure which was more efficient in terms of mobilizing voters, but worth keeping in mind that it's tangential to the discussion about NN's virtues, and deficiencies
  • by binarymax on 5/6/21, 8:09 PM

    Why the misnomer in the headline? Let’s call this what it is: fraud. These companies committed fraud. All involved should be prosecuted accordingly and the regulation rolled back and re-reviewed.
  • by neilv on 5/6/21, 5:35 PM

    There are some attacks against our system of government that we seem to tolerate, maybe because they are so familiar.

    This particular attack seems less familiar.

    I'm wondering whether we'll deliver such a firm corrective "no" on this attack, that actors decide not to do anything too similar in the future.

  • by barbazoo on 5/6/21, 4:55 PM

    Is this different than what was reported more than 3 years ago [0]?

    [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

  • by floren on 5/6/21, 11:34 PM

    We did some analysis back in 2017 and found some interesting stuff. Highlights: automated comment submission with broken templates so comments were coming from {STATE} and {CITY}, and over a million submissions from @pornhub.com email addresses.

    Analysis here: https://www.gravwell.io/blog/discovering-truth-through-lies-... (disclaimer: I work for Gravwell)

  • by splitrocket on 5/6/21, 6:21 PM

    If your identity was used without your consent, I wonder if you could sue?
  • by bmmayer1 on 5/6/21, 7:41 PM

    Maybe, but also maybe we shouldn't be making policy based on how many people wrote things on an internet comment forum.
  • by ffggvv on 5/7/21, 1:52 AM

    for all the crying, none of the doomsday scenarios people were claiming would happen have happened at all. and the internet is the same as it’s ever been. tel me why i should care now
  • by spanktheuser on 5/7/21, 2:49 AM

    If these companies fraudulently stole the identity of individual Americans why aren’t they facing criminal charges?

    The Francis Wilhoit definition of conservatism as a form of aristocracy seems applicable:

    “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

  • by briantakita on 5/6/21, 7:09 PM

    Not all opposition to Net Neutrality was faked. An argument is that Net Neutrality regulation can be gamed to harm independent ISPs via regulatory capture, where NN protects against throttling traffic by ISP's to harm independent content providers. The people who thought the cure of regulation was worse than the disease opposed Net Neutrality.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but would Net Neutrality effectively subsidize high bandwidth providers, such as Netflix & torrent providers, presumably creating latency across the network? It may no longer be an issue, as rate-limiting can be applied to the consumer.

    The context of the Net Neutrality debate is different today than it was a few years, as content providers have more capitalization compared to ISPs, technology has improved, & new markets are in play. A big benefactor to NN nowdays seems to be distributing computing platforms such as IPFS, cryptos, Holochain, etc; which I find beneficial.

    But then, as systems are designed, where does Net Neutrality stop? If there were a bill that includes NN, would it be written in a way where lawfare can be abused to require any load balancer or proxy service to provide NN? Which leads back to the primary legitimate (IMO) concern of regulation being abused by entrenched powers to stifle competition. Is regulation better or is less more? At this time, what harm is being perpetrated that NN would solve?

  • by WarOnPrivacy on 5/7/21, 2:18 AM

    It's awesome what isn't a crime when you're a major campaign donor.
  • by chaosharmonic on 5/6/21, 6:46 PM

    The real irony of NN opposition is that the dial-up era, which one would otherwise characterize as exactly the kind of thriving market-based competition that conservatives love, only existed in the first place because the phone lines that these small providers used to operate their businesses were regulated as utilities.

    In effect, we had net neutrality in all but name until the Internet started to move to other, more vertically-integrated forms of infrastructure like DSL and cable.

    I would really love to see a Ted Cruz or Dan Crenshaw or some other disingenuous right-wing hack try to argue that, had it not already been illegal to do so, AT&T wouldn't have done the exact same things to AOL that Verizon and Comcast have gotten caught doing to Netflix.

    (EDIT: At least, it would amuse me in theory. In practice, my blood would probably start boiling about 30 seconds in.)

  • by u678u on 5/6/21, 5:33 PM

  • by brightball on 5/6/21, 6:09 PM

    NN is one of those things that I never really understood. I get that people want to "stick it" to their ISPs, but since the NN talk began my internet connection at home has gone from 8mb to 200mb without me having to pay another dime via Spectrum. They called me and just said, "Here, we're upgrading you. You need a new modem to get the speed so that's free too."

    I could get 400mb or 1gb if I wanted but 200mb has been more than enough.

    I assume there's just very different issues in other parts of the country, but where I live I haven't seen any need for NN so it makes me wonder if there will be some negative effect to my currently good experience?

  • by pessimizer on 5/6/21, 5:05 PM

    This announcement may be an intentional excuse to give Biden a new progressive thing to do domestically (it's not new information.) Maybe I'm just hopeful. The administration seems (to me) to be trying to convert/retain the left-of-Democrats audience who only reluctantly turned out for him. They're going to need it.

    edit: I'd love a net neutrality bill or order, but I'd prefer net neutrality + prison time for those responsible for the fraud.

  • by lakecresva on 5/6/21, 6:14 PM

    The whataboutism is already strong in here. Net neutrality is the battleground, but the issue is pretty universal. Corporate actors are signing off on illegal activity to directly undermine the democratic process in a way that should frighten you, and even when they're caught for it they're not being punished. Investigators with the NY AG's office "said that Broadband for America acted to give Mr. Pai “cover” to repeal the broadband regulations.". The companies fingered by the AG didn't even pay as much in penalties as they made under their contracts with the telecom companies.

    The fact that some other corporate actors might be doing similar shit in the other direction is totally irrelevant; if they got caught, we should all want to bring the hammer down on them too.

  • by dantheman on 5/6/21, 5:42 PM

    Net neutrality was a solution in search of a problem, and massive overreach.
  • by briandear on 5/7/21, 2:16 AM

    Without NN for a few years now, have any of the bad things promised happened?

    It seems to me that there should be “social media neutrality” — the very real effects of corporate-sponsored censorship have caused more harm than a lack of NN.

  • by CyberRabbi on 5/6/21, 5:23 PM

    In reality the whole debacle was astroturfed from both sides, one side just did it better. The pro “net neutrality” movement was funded by google and Netflix and promoted laughable propaganda such as:

    What. If. Every. Thing. You. Did. On. The. Internet. Took. This. Long.

    Give me a break. There were no “good guys” in this debate, just corporations scrambling to control the popular narrative to suit their business interests.

  • by bjt2n3904 on 5/6/21, 5:43 PM

    Petition to re-title this, "No, you're a towel"?

    We're in this incredibly undesirable place where instead of debating something, we have this meta debate. "Net neutrality is valid because it's opponents astroturf."

    It's pretty funny, because I have the same opinion, but in reverse. Net Neutrality disappeared off the radar, and now all of a sudden it's on HN every other week. Looks like astroturfing to me! "No, you're a towel!"

    But you know what? Whether or not something is being AstroTurfed is entirely irrelevant, and debate is fruitless. We can have a debate on Net Neutrality without pointing fingers at who has genuine interest, and who is astro turfing.