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According to the article, the FCC received 22 million comments. If they spent a modest 2 minutes per comment - that would be 83 man years of time to process the

According to the article, the FCC received 22 million comments. If they spent a modest 2 minutes per comment - that would be 83 man years of time to process the comments. They obviously need to filter it down. For a system with no meaningful requirements to comment or even proof of uniqueness, quantity says absolutely nothing and fraud is a given. Even if we were able to prove uniqueness -- how should informal internet petitions, which will almost certainly not be representative of any population, be viewed? So it makes one kind of wonder, what would be a reasonable alternative? Without proposing any viable alternatives, this article just feels like ragebaiting.

Fej 9y ago
I wonder how many comments they received with > n words, for, say, n = 10.
xenadu02 9y ago
The simplest explanation is that Pai coordinates with the ISPs to stuff the comment boxes with spam so they would have a justification for ignoring them; courts have occasionally struck down rules because agencies didn’t properly consider public input. That’s because the conclusion was foregone: Pai will do what his benefactors want then sail to a cushy consulting job as a reward for his work.
- twblalock 9y ago
  No, the simplest explanation is that the FCC just received a bunch of comments. I have no problem believing that -- I've seen quite a few Facebook and Reddit posts encouraging people to comment. Once you start arguing that a conspiracy exists between the FCC and ISPs to game an online comment system, you're far beyond a simple explanation.
  - failrate 9y ago
    The problem with your theory is that the comment system was gamed. Numerous spam comments that are anti-Net Neutrality were made from people who either support Neutrality or are dead.
rubicon33 9y ago
I would expect a government capable of launching nuclear warheads to any location on the planet and sending a man to the moon to also be capable of filtering out spam in a comment system. This is a 'solved' AI/NLP problem and lack of doing so is almost surely intentional as it allows them to muddy the waters even more.
JohnTHaller 9y ago
It would be fewer than 22 million considering that a majority of those comments were duplicates from bots using citizen names from one of the many identity leaks.

Fej 9y ago

I wonder how many comments they received with > n words, for, say, n = 10.

xenadu02 9y ago

The simplest explanation is that Pai coordinates with the ISPs to stuff the comment boxes with spam so they would have a justification for ignoring them; courts have occasionally struck down rules because agencies didn’t properly consider public input. That’s because the conclusion was foregone: Pai will do what his benefactors want then sail to a cushy consulting job as a reward for his work.

twblalock 9y ago
No, the simplest explanation is that the FCC just received a bunch of comments. I have no problem believing that -- I've seen quite a few Facebook and Reddit posts encouraging people to comment. Once you start arguing that a conspiracy exists between the FCC and ISPs to game an online comment system, you're far beyond a simple explanation.
- failrate 9y ago
  The problem with your theory is that the comment system was gamed. Numerous spam comments that are anti-Net Neutrality were made from people who either support Neutrality or are dead.

rubicon33 9y ago

I would expect a government capable of launching nuclear warheads to any location on the planet and sending a man to the moon to also be capable of filtering out spam in a comment system. This is a 'solved' AI/NLP problem and lack of doing so is almost surely intentional as it allows them to muddy the waters even more.

JohnTHaller 9y ago

It would be fewer than 22 million considering that a majority of those comments were duplicates from bots using citizen names from one of the many identity leaks.