4 ms·

Shady Conservative Group Is Flooding the FCC with Anti-Net Neutrality Comments

50 points by MilnerRoute 10y ago

empressplay 10y ago
To be fair, groups on both sides of politics do this all the time, in fact change.org campaigns basically send a million copies of the same e-mail (with only the sender's name changed) to "targets" and we don't seem to think there's anything wrong with that. I've seen many many LGBT campaigns targeting conservative websites and facebook pages with copy-and-paste content as well. Also, calling this "brigading" is a bit of a reach, given it seems that real unpaid people are copying and pasting the comments in their own names. But then again, if these people were pro-neutrality, Vice would probably be calling it a "grassroots internet campaign". What's good for the goose...
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Most congresspeople and some other political types have constituent management systems that handle this stuff. One system I evaluated would detect this kind of blather, and would rate lower when tallying constituent support for an issue. Paper letters got a bonus. In the FCCs case, they don't really answer to anyone, so this sort of campaign may be more valuable, as it gives puppets like Chairman Pai something to demonstrate public support. Bureaucrats just need CYA.
- astaroth360 10y ago
  Yeah, but I don't remember hearing chants of "lock him up" during the election, despite his nearly endless list of unethical and potentially illegal financial transactions. Oh, and let's not forgot about Russia hacking the DNC and giving it WikiLeaks. Little by little, they gave up more to Assange, so that the outrage machine would never die out. Putin threw the democrats into complete chaos, and Sanders didn't do much to help, what with his, "oh it's a rigged election" BS. Trump took that line straight from Bernie: "This election is rigged you know". Pathological liars and unethical monsters should not be running the only real superpower in the world, barring China.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    Polls indicated Sanders would have beaten Trump. The DNC damaged itself at least as much as it was damaged by hacking.
Spooky23 10y ago
It's amazing to me how lock step the conservatives are on the ground. I grew up in a rural area and worked for farmers as a teenager. Many folks were very baptist or evangelical (my family were transplants... I was called a papist idolator in high school once) definitely right wing. There was a smaller, older, and shrinking group that I would call "new deal" country people. All of these folks were principled people who distrusted big business as much or more than big government. Nobody liked seed patents or consolidating tractor or feed companies. None of these folks I knew would be signing petitions supporting the phone company!?! Wtf is happening?
- olewhalehunter 10y ago
  current mainstream liberal mobilization is on identity politics or local catastrophic efforts like Flint/environment/ICE raids
astaroth360 10y ago
Trump is bought and paid for by corporations. He may pretend to be POTUS, but all he is doing is serving his own self-interest, which most of the time screws anyone who doesn't make 60k+ a year. All the tax breaks he's proposing would bankrupt our country. Frankly FCC rules are low on my list of fears with this maniac. It's time to impeach already. Every single thing he has done in office has been detrimental to the American people.
christinefalow 10y ago
These are real people that data is available on the net. These people DO NOT know that their data is being used by a fraudulent company saying that these people signed up when they didn't. My name was used to sign up and I never gave anyone permission to. Plus they used maiden name which I haven't used for 15 years. Class action lawsuit coming and someone should goto jail for identity theft!

50 points by MilnerRoute 10y ago

To be fair, groups on both sides of politics do this all the time, in fact change.org campaigns basically send a million copies of the same e-mail (with only the sender's name changed) to "targets" and we don't seem to think there's anything wrong with that. I've seen many many LGBT campaigns targeting conservative websites and facebook pages with copy-and-paste content as well. Also, calling this "brigading" is a bit of a reach, given it seems that real unpaid people are copying and pasting the comments in their own names. But then again, if these people were pro-neutrality, Vice would probably be calling it a "grassroots internet campaign". What's good for the goose...

Spooky23 10y ago
Most congresspeople and some other political types have constituent management systems that handle this stuff. One system I evaluated would detect this kind of blather, and would rate lower when tallying constituent support for an issue. Paper letters got a bonus. In the FCCs case, they don't really answer to anyone, so this sort of campaign may be more valuable, as it gives puppets like Chairman Pai something to demonstrate public support. Bureaucrats just need CYA.
astaroth360 10y ago
Yeah, but I don't remember hearing chants of "lock him up" during the election, despite his nearly endless list of unethical and potentially illegal financial transactions. Oh, and let's not forgot about Russia hacking the DNC and giving it WikiLeaks. Little by little, they gave up more to Assange, so that the outrage machine would never die out. Putin threw the democrats into complete chaos, and Sanders didn't do much to help, what with his, "oh it's a rigged election" BS. Trump took that line straight from Bernie: "This election is rigged you know". Pathological liars and unethical monsters should not be running the only real superpower in the world, barring China.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Polls indicated Sanders would have beaten Trump. The DNC damaged itself at least as much as it was damaged by hacking.

Spooky23 10y ago

It's amazing to me how lock step the conservatives are on the ground. I grew up in a rural area and worked for farmers as a teenager. Many folks were very baptist or evangelical (my family were transplants... I was called a papist idolator in high school once) definitely right wing. There was a smaller, older, and shrinking group that I would call "new deal" country people. All of these folks were principled people who distrusted big business as much or more than big government. Nobody liked seed patents or consolidating tractor or feed companies. None of these folks I knew would be signing petitions supporting the phone company!?! Wtf is happening?

olewhalehunter 10y ago
current mainstream liberal mobilization is on identity politics or local catastrophic efforts like Flint/environment/ICE raids

astaroth360 10y ago

Trump is bought and paid for by corporations. He may pretend to be POTUS, but all he is doing is serving his own self-interest, which most of the time screws anyone who doesn't make 60k+ a year. All the tax breaks he's proposing would bankrupt our country. Frankly FCC rules are low on my list of fears with this maniac. It's time to impeach already. Every single thing he has done in office has been detrimental to the American people.

christinefalow 10y ago

These are real people that data is available on the net. These people DO NOT know that their data is being used by a fraudulent company saying that these people signed up when they didn't. My name was used to sign up and I never gave anyone permission to. Plus they used maiden name which I haven't used for 15 years. Class action lawsuit coming and someone should goto jail for identity theft!