> in this post I use the term “spam” to connote an identical bit of text that was repeatedly filed many times
Wow! Nice definition of spam. Remove the most popular opinion, and hey look! everybody supports NN.
> there is some evidence of botting/spamming on the pro-NN side as well (though likely not to the same degree), which is not addressed in this post, and could shift conclusions.
IMO, this is just a blatantly biased attempt to delegitimatize any anti-NN feedback. Many people send their comments thru websites with boilerplate text, but they do it in support of what they believe. The author has presented no evidence that the comments he removed from consideration are actually spam and no evidence that the second most popular phrase (in favor of NN) is not spam.
I mean the below section of the post is fairly contradictory to your claim.
> To further investigate this hypothesis, I randomly sampled 1000 filings that used the repeated text and queried the HaveIBeenPwned API to retrieve a list of known data breaches that the associated emails were involved in. I found that ~76% of emails associated with the repeated comment had been involved in at least one data breach, and ~66% were part of the RCM breach specifically:
My email address has also been part of multiple breaches. But I have changed my passwords quick enough that I am sure my email was not used to spam in this instance. The author's hypothesis would be stronger only if the breaches are fairly recent. Anything > a few months ago is likely not compromised anymore. Also, we need to know the same number for the most popular repeated pro-NN comment.
Edit: apparently the RCM breach occurred quite recently. So I guess there is some legitimacy to the hypothesis. I would still like to see the same number for the pro-NN repeated comments too.
> But I have changed my passwords quick enough that I am sure my email was not used to spam in this instance
Why do you think that would matter? You don't need to give the FCC your email password to post a comment to these proceedings.
All you need to post a comment on the FCC is: name, address, and email. They do not validate that the comment-poster actually controls the email address they used. You can request a filing conformation, but that's optional and only says they received your comment.
There are 345085 "unprecedented" comments and 13744 "outraged" comments in the first million comments.
Only 127 of those comments use emails that are lowercase. Over 300k of those comments have emails typed in ALL CAPS.
Every single one of those comments are exactly the same (ergo copy pasted). This means there's some form of automation. It's NOT people copy pasting manually however because nobody types their email in all caps. 300k people do not do that.
Websites will normally capitalize the email address, since they are case insensitive, when it's saved into the database. When something is case insensitive, you compare the capitilized version of both.
Eg: Is 'Abc'.toUpperCase() == 'AbC'.toUpperCase().
So this means either:
1. A bot is submitting for other people without their permission, using a hacked database(s).
2. A bot is submitting for other people on the behalf of a very large anti-net neutrality community (which I've never heard of).
3. People are clicking links in an email that presents a form with their data already filled out, which they manually submit (requires a large anti-net neutrality community).
4. There's a form on another website which people are filling out, that is using javascript to capitalize the emails before submitting it to the FCC's website.
The first case is much more likely than the other cases.
And the latest cache refresh last night points out that there is now 2 new "repeated" comments. There is (452143+220641+132240+15671 = ) 820k comments now, totalling 54% of the total comments.
There's an even better breakdown here that has graphs showing the submission times of the comments. There is suddenly 15 thousand identical comments submitted in 1 minute before "turning off" the next minute.
Anti-net-neutrality is the government interfering in private business.
Let's compare the Internet to a highway system, since that's the analogy politicians like. The Internet is all private roads. You pay your ISP for your road so that any traffic serving you can come across in either direction. I pay my ISP for any traffic serving me to come across in either direction.
Net neutrality says that if you and I send traffic to one another, your ISP can't charge me for my packets (trucks) carrying data (cargo) to you because you've already paid for use of the road. They also can't charge you more for a truck entering your road from my road than from their own other road, or from Google's road. It's all the same toll (or all included if you have an unlimited traffic plan) and you pay the same for your leg of the trip no matter how the truck got to your road.
Anti-net-neutrality folks think the government should grant the folks running the private toll roads we rent the right to waive tolls on those roads if they have a business relationship with one of the parties. They think the toll road operators should be able to charge you more rent or higher tolls if you do business with someone whose cargo came from a competitor's road to get to your section of road. At the same time, they say it's fine that the government itself has severely limited your choice in local road providers giving you no power to negotiate or find a suitable competitive road provider.
Then anti-neutrality folks call that an open, free market. Free for whom? Open for whom? Your state tells you who can install a road without a fair bidding process, that whoever installed the wholesale road doesn't need to allow a competitive resale market for retail use of the road, that you can't individually negotiate terms with the road operator, and that you can't build your own road to replace it. Now the federal government wants to tell you that the road operator under those terms set by your state can shut out cargo from its roads or charge huge surcharges based on who you bought the cargo from. What's free and open about that?
> Net neutrality says that if you and I send traffic to one another, your ISP can't charge me for my packets (trucks) carrying data (cargo) to you because you've already paid for use of the road.
Net neutrality has no business dictating how an ISP wants to conduct business and what pricing structure it wants. If you or me don't like our ISP's prices, we can switch.
> At the same time, they say it's fine that the government itself has severely limited your choice in local road providers giving you no power to negotiate or find a suitable competitive road provider.
This is the real problem that has led to this issue. Instead of treating the symptoms, the government must ensure that there is healthy competition and customers are able to choose from multiple ISPs. We got to this place because the government granted some companies a defacto monopoly. That must be undone. Net neutrality is trying to solve the bad effects of government overreach with even more regulation!
Lastly, I see many people on hn and reddit implying that NN is an open and shut issue. That any sane person is obviously pro-NN and anybody who speaks against it is either dumb or evil. This is an absolutely wrong position to take. It fosters no real discussion and results in name-calling while politicians muck up the real problem even more. Thank you for being open to discussion.
> If you or me don't like our ISP's prices, we can switch.
Hah.
> Instead of treating the symptoms, the government must ensure that there is healthy competition and customers are able to choose from multiple ISPs. We got to this place because the government granted some companies a defacto monopoly. That must be undone. Net neutrality is trying to solve the bad effects of government overreach with even more regulation!
The net neutrality regulation is to mitigate a symptom. However, it is difficult for the federal government to override what state and local governments have done with franchise fees and line-run regulations. In order to claim authority to undo the disease, the federal government would need to reclassify Internet access as an interstate utility the states have no right to limit as they have. Net neutrality is a much lighter touch when it comes to the federal government overriding state regulations than telling the states who can dig where or who can run overhead lines.
Wow! Nice definition of spam. Remove the most popular opinion, and hey look! everybody supports NN.
> there is some evidence of botting/spamming on the pro-NN side as well (though likely not to the same degree), which is not addressed in this post, and could shift conclusions.
IMO, this is just a blatantly biased attempt to delegitimatize any anti-NN feedback. Many people send their comments thru websites with boilerplate text, but they do it in support of what they believe. The author has presented no evidence that the comments he removed from consideration are actually spam and no evidence that the second most popular phrase (in favor of NN) is not spam.