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The original comment here says "Why is Ajit Pai not in jail?"

by ikeboy 8y ago

imgabe 8y ago
I assume that person believes that, as former general counsel of a major telecom company and then head of the FCC, if there were wrongdoing, Pai would have been aware of it, if not involved. Do you think that's an unreasonable assumption? Even if it happened without his knowledge, he's the leader so it's ultimately his responsibility. In the best case, we could say he was negligent in assessing the validity of the comments that were submitted to his agency. After all, subsequent investigations have been able to determine the comments were fraudulent, so why didn't he? If he knew they were fake and just ignored that fact because they supported what he wanted to do anyway, that's another thing. If he was being compensated in some backdoor way from the industry for ignoring that the comments were fake, that's yet another thing. These are things that should be investigated.
- ikeboy 8y ago
  Yes, it's incredibly unreasonable to go from "fake comments were submitted" to "Pai is responsible".
  - imgabe 8y ago
    Ok, see if I were a government official in charge of reviewing comments from the public, I would consider it my responsibility to ensure that those comments were an accurate reflection of public sentiment and had not been manipulated by an interested party to benefit themselves. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about what sorts of responsibilities government officials have.
    - ikeboy 8y ago
      It was incredibly obvious to anyone paying attention that they were manipulated. 2.8 million comments were identical and were from a pro-net neutrality site called "Battle for the Net". That's not organic. Do you think he should have blocked comments from there? Or what, specific, actions should he have taken?
      - imgabe 8y ago
        > 2.8 million comments were identical and were from a pro-net neutrality site called "Battle for the Net". That's not organic. Lots of advocacy groups offered a form for users to submit comments with a pre-filled comment field in support of net neutrality. I used one myself. The fact that the text is the same does not necessarily imply the comment is fake. There are many other comments where the person who supposedly submitted the comment says that they didn't. That would be a fake comment. > Or what, specific, actions should he have taken? I don't know, how about something besides "not a damn thing"? How about tracking down the source of the fake comments and fining or otherwise holding them accountable if it's within his jurisdiction to do so, or turning them over to the appropriate authorities if not? How about cancelling the comment period due to the rampant fraud, implementing some measures to verify user and re-opening comments to try to get something accurate? How about giving the tiniest shit about the public he's supposed to be serving? Is that too much ask?
        ikeboy 8y ago
        You seem to be operating under a severe misunderstanding of the point of the public comment system. It is not to figure out whether or not the public supports a particular action. Polls are much better at that particular goal. Rather, the purpose is to surface relevant arguments so the committee can consider those arguments in their decisions.
        imgabe 8y ago
        > Rather, the purpose is to surface relevant arguments so the committee can consider those arguments in their decisions. And would you say that having one side flood the system with millions of fraudulent comments is conducive to this purpose? Before you object, yes it was overwhelmingly one side. FTA of the 14 organizations being investigated, 11 were anti-NN and only 3 are pro. If what you say were true, all they should have had to do was submit their one comment with their best argument against net neutrality so that the committee could consider it. Surely their sound argument would be enough to win the day, right? But that's not what they did, is it? Instead of submitting one argument, they tried to overload the system. It's almost as if they wanted to prevent the committee from considering the other side's argument, rather than presenting their own, isn't it? Does that sound like a healthy, functional democracy to you? Is that the sort of tactic that you would like to have deciding how our government is run?
    - marcosdumay 8y ago
      As a rule, bureaucrats are not concerned with public opinion. The comments are there for a technical analysis of merit, it is very common for a political process to not take very obvious and large flaws into account, and the public comments are there for fixing this. That said, wether there was some crime or not is an orthogonal issue.

The original comment here says "Why is Ajit Pai not in jail?"

by ikeboy 8y ago

The original comment here says "Why is Ajit Pai not in jail?"

I assume that person believes that, as former general counsel of a major telecom company and then head of the FCC, if there were wrongdoing, Pai would have been aware of it, if not involved. Do you think that's an unreasonable assumption? Even if it happened without his knowledge, he's the leader so it's ultimately his responsibility. In the best case, we could say he was negligent in assessing the validity of the comments that were submitted to his agency. After all, subsequent investigations have been able to determine the comments were fraudulent, so why didn't he? If he knew they were fake and just ignored that fact because they supported what he wanted to do anyway, that's another thing. If he was being compensated in some backdoor way from the industry for ignoring that the comments were fake, that's yet another thing. These are things that should be investigated.

ikeboy 8y ago
Yes, it's incredibly unreasonable to go from "fake comments were submitted" to "Pai is responsible".
- imgabe 8y ago
  Ok, see if I were a government official in charge of reviewing comments from the public, I would consider it my responsibility to ensure that those comments were an accurate reflection of public sentiment and had not been manipulated by an interested party to benefit themselves. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about what sorts of responsibilities government officials have.
  - ikeboy 8y ago
    It was incredibly obvious to anyone paying attention that they were manipulated. 2.8 million comments were identical and were from a pro-net neutrality site called "Battle for the Net". That's not organic. Do you think he should have blocked comments from there? Or what, specific, actions should he have taken?
    - imgabe 8y ago
      > 2.8 million comments were identical and were from a pro-net neutrality site called "Battle for the Net". That's not organic. Lots of advocacy groups offered a form for users to submit comments with a pre-filled comment field in support of net neutrality. I used one myself. The fact that the text is the same does not necessarily imply the comment is fake. There are many other comments where the person who supposedly submitted the comment says that they didn't. That would be a fake comment. > Or what, specific, actions should he have taken? I don't know, how about something besides "not a damn thing"? How about tracking down the source of the fake comments and fining or otherwise holding them accountable if it's within his jurisdiction to do so, or turning them over to the appropriate authorities if not? How about cancelling the comment period due to the rampant fraud, implementing some measures to verify user and re-opening comments to try to get something accurate? How about giving the tiniest shit about the public he's supposed to be serving? Is that too much ask?
      - ikeboy 8y ago
        You seem to be operating under a severe misunderstanding of the point of the public comment system. It is not to figure out whether or not the public supports a particular action. Polls are much better at that particular goal. Rather, the purpose is to surface relevant arguments so the committee can consider those arguments in their decisions.
        imgabe 8y ago
        > Rather, the purpose is to surface relevant arguments so the committee can consider those arguments in their decisions. And would you say that having one side flood the system with millions of fraudulent comments is conducive to this purpose? Before you object, yes it was overwhelmingly one side. FTA of the 14 organizations being investigated, 11 were anti-NN and only 3 are pro. If what you say were true, all they should have had to do was submit their one comment with their best argument against net neutrality so that the committee could consider it. Surely their sound argument would be enough to win the day, right? But that's not what they did, is it? Instead of submitting one argument, they tried to overload the system. It's almost as if they wanted to prevent the committee from considering the other side's argument, rather than presenting their own, isn't it? Does that sound like a healthy, functional democracy to you? Is that the sort of tactic that you would like to have deciding how our government is run?
  - marcosdumay 8y ago
    As a rule, bureaucrats are not concerned with public opinion. The comments are there for a technical analysis of merit, it is very common for a political process to not take very obvious and large flaws into account, and the public comments are there for fixing this. That said, wether there was some crime or not is an orthogonal issue.