2 ms·

It was widely reported at the time; here are a couple of cites, several of which were also linked in the OP: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170510/08191137

It was widely reported at the time; here are a couple of cites, several of which were also linked in the OP: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170510/08191137334/bot-is-flooding-fcc-website-with-fake-anti-net-neutrality-comments-alphabetical-order.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170510/08191137334/bot-i... https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2017/12/14/earth-to-pai-those-fake-anti-net-neutrality-comments-used-stolen-identities/#5a05dd776c6a https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetwburns/2017/12/14/earth-to... https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-bot-is-flooding-the-fccs-website-with-fake-anti-net-neutrality-comments/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-bot-is-flooding-the-fccs-web... (Also, FWIW I personally witnessed it while trying to submit my own comment on the issue; the viewable posted comments were about 98% duplicates of that one "The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the internet" etc, and the names were somewhere in the E's.)

ikeboy 8y ago
And do you have any reason to think they were submitted to CQ in alphabetical order, as opposed to the obvious possibility that CQ or their client sorted them prior to submission to the FCC?
- outsidetheparty 8y ago
  They're timestamped.
  - ikeboy 8y ago
    Those timestamps are the time the FCC received them. If you read through the email chain you'll see they had many comments ready (the email says he was expecting to send over 250k comments/day) prior to submitting any or getting the API access set up. This wasn't real-time submission, and this should be clear from OP.
    - outsidetheparty 8y ago
      If you read through the email chain you'll see that it occurred before the docket even was made public to be commented on: "The docket will be on internet privacy, it is not yet published. We believe it will be published later this month"; if they already had prewritten comments ready at that time, that confirms fraud by CQ, because the public can't write comments on something that doesn't yet exist. Meanwhile CQ is repeatedly insistent that the submissions be recorded individually, and not by the bulk csv method; and when the API limits turn out to be too strict they go to great effort to do it anyway: "We will need to set up multiple servers to feed the API simultaneously to meet the delivery needs of our clients" -- 114 api keys compared to one or two for most other groups. None of which sits well with your idea that they'd intentionally sort them first. Bulk submissions might be expected to be sorted. The assumption for individually submitted comments is that they're individually submitted; it exposes the astroturfiness very clearly when all the identical comments show up in strict order in the docket. (Or at the very least, if this was just a dumb goofup or excessive tidiness, why wouldn't they have simply explained that as the obvious excuse the moment it started being reported? There'd be plenty of supporting evidence, the stage space alone would have had to have been significant)
      - ikeboy 8y ago
        What's the difference between the bulk csv method and individual submissions on the FCC end? It's not clear from the emails.

ikeboy 8y ago

And do you have any reason to think they were submitted to CQ in alphabetical order, as opposed to the obvious possibility that CQ or their client sorted them prior to submission to the FCC?

outsidetheparty 8y ago
They're timestamped.
- ikeboy 8y ago
  Those timestamps are the time the FCC received them. If you read through the email chain you'll see they had many comments ready (the email says he was expecting to send over 250k comments/day) prior to submitting any or getting the API access set up. This wasn't real-time submission, and this should be clear from OP.
  - outsidetheparty 8y ago
    If you read through the email chain you'll see that it occurred before the docket even was made public to be commented on: "The docket will be on internet privacy, it is not yet published. We believe it will be published later this month"; if they already had prewritten comments ready at that time, that confirms fraud by CQ, because the public can't write comments on something that doesn't yet exist. Meanwhile CQ is repeatedly insistent that the submissions be recorded individually, and not by the bulk csv method; and when the API limits turn out to be too strict they go to great effort to do it anyway: "We will need to set up multiple servers to feed the API simultaneously to meet the delivery needs of our clients" -- 114 api keys compared to one or two for most other groups. None of which sits well with your idea that they'd intentionally sort them first. Bulk submissions might be expected to be sorted. The assumption for individually submitted comments is that they're individually submitted; it exposes the astroturfiness very clearly when all the identical comments show up in strict order in the docket. (Or at the very least, if this was just a dumb goofup or excessive tidiness, why wouldn't they have simply explained that as the obvious excuse the moment it started being reported? There'd be plenty of supporting evidence, the stage space alone would have had to have been significant)
    - ikeboy 8y ago
      What's the difference between the bulk csv method and individual submissions on the FCC end? It's not clear from the emails.