Franklin, Andrews, Kramer & Edelstein

[scion]

The FCC fakes

The largest number of comments the Journal confirmed as phony were to the FCC, one of few agencies to routinely post email addresses with comments. Its net-neutrality rule has generated 23 million comments, believed to be the most a federal agency has received on a rule.

Suspicions of fakery in net-neutrality comments emerged in May, when thousands of emails poured into the FCC after HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” urged viewers to support the Obama policy. They were followed by thousands backing repeal.

Chicago programmer Chris Sinchok said he spotted a sharp increase in comments that began: “The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation.”

He found a near-constant rate—1,000 every 10 minutes—punctuated by periods of zero comments, as if web robots were turning on and off. He determined many were from hacked accounts.

After Mr. Sinchok and a pro-net-neutrality group, Fight for the Future, blogged that they found indications thousands of FCC comments might be fakes using stolen identities, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in May began a criminal investigation.

The Journal examined those “unprecedented regulatory power” comments and found that duplicates of it exceeded any other comment according to Quid Inc., a San Francisco tech firm that analyzes massive amounts of content and studied the data at the Journal’s request.

The comment has been posted on the FCC website more than 818,000 times. The Journal sent surveys to 531,000 email accounts associated with that comment. More than 7,000 bounced back, the accounts defunct. Of the 2,757 who responded, 1,994, or 72%, said the comment was falsely submitted. The survey’s margin of error was plus or minus 1.86% points.

Millions of People Post Comments on Federal Regulations. Many Are Fake.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/millions-of-people-post-comments-on-federal-regulations-many-are-fake-1513099188