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Three Companies Impersonated Millions to Influence Internet Policy
- musTY8 3y agoAnd this will happen again and again, if nothing changes. People need to be aware of stuff like this, but the news pull them in the path to ignorance instead. This is why public awareness is important.
- RecycledEle 3y agoNew York Attorney General James Secures $615,000 from Companies that Supplied Fake Comments to Influence FCC’s Repeal of Net Neutrality Rules
- emodendroket 3y agoAll told that doesn't seem like that much of a deterrent. I have to imagine the rule change was worth more than that to them.
- gabereiser 3y agoI agree, I pittance compared to what they were paid to provide. $600k~ should be $600m~ to be a better deterrent.
- heavyset_go 3y agoI'm no advocate of the CCP, but China has seized assets from, imprisoned, exiled and executed white collar criminals that committed fraud, engaged in corruption, etc. Risking your assets, freedom and life might make brazen fraud less enticing.
- bigmattystyles 3y agoLikely less than the cost of the investigation
- nr2x 3y agoI remember analyzing this data, it’s was pure AstroTurf.
- young_breezy 3y agoIs it possible to contact the people impersonated so they can sue these companies?
- heavyset_go 3y agoI think individuals would have to prove some sort of damages if they want to win a suit, unfortunately.
- nr2x 3y agoMisappropriation of likeness, fraud, etc.
- nr2x 3y agoAt the time you could download the public comments on the FCC website. It was just a ton of copy/paste entries. Useless.
- koboll 3y agoThey got fined $600k, the telecoms saved billions Pretty good deal if you ask me
- captainkrtek 3y agoCame to write this exact comment. The press release makes this sound like a victory? Just call it the cost of doing business hah
- nerdponx 3y agoNY is corrupt enough that it might have been intended as both an underhanded victory announcement and as a public quelling measure to make people think justice was done.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- astrange 3y agoThose two things aren't related. This was during a Republican FCC adminstration and Ajit Pai would've repealed net neutrality even if every comment was for it. He doesn't care what public comments say nor does he need to. That not mattering was then canceled out by another not mattering, because California passed the same rules so they effectively apply to everyone anyway.
- jackmott 3y ago[dead]
- heavyset_go 3y agoIt's also about public sentiment towards the companies and their interests. Comcast, for example, as a long history of trying to silence its critics[1][2]. They want to make their critics look like a minority or as if they don't exist at all, especially when much of the criticism is grassroots and organic from actual telecom customers who are often stuck with a monopoly's service. [1] https://www.salon.com/2008/06/09/comcast_2/ https://www.salon.com/2008/06/09/comcast_2/ [2] https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/comcast-accused-of-trying-to-censor-anti-comcast-site/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/comcast-accu...
- ummonk 3y ago"An investigation by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) found that the fake comments used the identities of millions of consumers, including thousands of New Yorkers, without their knowledge or consent." $615k seems like a slap on the wrist for what they did.
- jasonm23 3y agoTheir "suspected" employers just inhaled that amount of money before I finished this comment.
- asdadsdad 3y agoI kinda refuse to believe the US gov doesn't undertake astroturfing for its own needs
- heavyset_go 3y agoIf an individual committed fraud by impersonating millions of people, they'd be in prison.
- EGreg 3y agoIt seems the thing to do, before you dump toxic chemicals into the water or whatever, is to open a corporation. "Mistakes were made", after all. This is only trumped by by sovereign immunity, for starting wars or oil spills or releasing viruses or whatever. "Bush is gone, let's move on - why are you still on that?" State Power is great isn't it?
- mherdeg 3y agoHas Ajit Pai commented on this?
- frob 3y agoHe hasn't heard about this. His ears are clogged full of private equity funds.
- habitue 3y agoIt says "the nation's largest broadband companies" but doesn't say which ones. Does anyone have more context here?
- heavyset_go 3y agoI remember a case from a few years ago where Comcast/Xfinity did exactly this, using other people's identities to flood legislators with letters when there were hearings for public comments on legislation that would impact the company. I think it was during hearings on net neutrality bills. It's a great way to drown out the public's actual comments and drum up fake support.
- habitue 3y agotbh, this sounds like Comcast, but I didn't want to assume
- arp242 3y ago"Comcast, Charter, and AT&T" https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/biggest-isps-paid-for-8-5-million-fake-fcc-comments-opposing-net-neutrality/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/biggest-isps-pai...
- 1-6 3y agoThree companies wouldn't be doing such a crime if big money wasn't involved. An investigation to dig deeper must happen.
- sva_ 3y agoThis kind of shit is one of the reasons why people stop believing in western democracy.
- EMCymatics 3y ago[flagged]
- whitemary 3y ago"Stop" should be past tense and you forgot the quotation marks around "democracy"
- astrange 3y agoPublic comments aren't votes so they aren't part of democracy. Influencing an unelected official like the FCC chair who gets to rule however he wants isn't democracy.
- Pulcinella 3y agoDemocracy is far, far, far more than just mere voting and that fact that you believe this basically just proves the original point.
- astrange 3y agoComments that have no legal force (because they're not actually required to respond or respect them) surely aren't. There's other situations like community meetings for land use that are far more democratic. Although, those are mostly bad, because it means only people with lots of free time can attend them!
- omniglottal 3y agoYet public commentary was requested and even required to be evaluated. Therefor, fraud existed. Either is was the US government implying this was a democratic process, or the perpetrators of identity theft committed a crime. Which was it?
- olliej 3y ago3 companies defrauded the government and pretended to be millions of US citizens in order to make billions in illegitimate profits. Were fined a few hundred thousand. Why isn’t every individual involved in jail? Why haven’t all the company assets been seized? Also, given that they were impersonating real living people, can we please get a list of those people? Or at least have the victims of identity theft, fraud, and I think for many on HN defamation? The _only_ reason those details should not be available is to further protect these shit stains.
- 1101010010 3y agoSimply put: limited liability, lobbying (political donations) and general ignorance of the subject matter by a majority of the population.
- olliej 3y agoLimited liability only protects the "owners", not the employees, including the board. So while piercing the LLC veil seems unreasonably hard, putting every individual involved in jail seems not unreasonable.
- 1101010010 3y agoYet reality defies your "reasonable" expectations.
- ridgeguy 3y agoToothless and useless without criminal prosecution and jail time.
- FpUser 3y agoSo who is going to jail? This is the impersonation multiplied by millions. Must be a major crime
- TobyTheDog123 3y agoOnce again nothing being done to stop the pillaging of western civilization by large corporations, executives building as much personal wealth as possible before the entire system eventually comes crumbling down, just like civilizations before it.
- smegsicle 3y ago[flagged]
- wnevets 3y agoTrump's FTC was gonna kill Net Neutrality without these fake comments. Everyone knew they were bogus from the get go.
- bigmattystyles 3y agoAre they open to more charges in other states? Why is this done by a state AG? The FCC is federal, shouldn’t this Garland and not James?
- 1101010010 3y agoThis is only the tip of the iceberg. A majority of the "user content" (product reviews, brand engagement, comments on social media sites, etc) is completely fake, bought for and paid by big money interest aka bots. No different than automated scans of the IPv4 address space: simple, unsophisticated, low-cost and without any repercussion.
- heavyset_go 3y agoI've been burned to the tune of thousands of dollars because I took star ratings on Google at face value without looking into the actual reviews to see if they were real or not. I still feel like an idiot because of it.
- dmbche 3y agoI keep getting this eerie feeling when seeing product reviews and the rest of things you list here - I would never in a million year consider writing a paragraph long glowing review of my car jack on amazon, and yet there are millions of such interactions all over the web.
- adriand 3y agoI was startled to recently discover that a local gastroenterologist has numerous excellent reviews on Google Maps by people talking about what a lovely colonoscopy they had, some of whom related the specific medical condition that brought them there. Never in a million years would I consider doing this either. It turns out people are pretty weird.
- callalex 3y agoMedicine is run by big business in the USA, I wouldn’t trust those reviews at all.
- oefnak 3y ago> I was startled to recently discover that a local gastroenterologist has numerous excellent reviews on Google Maps by people talking about what a lovely colonoscopy they had, some of whom related the specific medical condition that brought them there. Never in a million years would I consider doing this either. It turns out people are pretty weird. I mean, you kinda are talking about visiting a colonoscopist on hacker news, so there's that.
- frob 3y ago$615 million dollars seems like chump change for 9 million counts of identity fraud. I recently read a story where the local DA in Portland charged a homeless man for identity theft for stealing a wallet. He hadn't tried to represent himself as the other person; he literally just had the wallet and ID. Yet again, turns out it's OK if you're a corporation.
- whitemary 3y agoWell, those are the rules. That's how capitalism works.
- maxbond 3y agoThis isn't a meaningful tautology. "The system is unjust because it is unjust and therefore must always be unjust." We can and should improve society.
- quadrangle 3y agoYeah, but the other poster was probably being sarcastic and just frustrated in a tone that is hard to describe in plain text.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- maxbond 3y agoETA: Upon rereading, this feels pretty weasely and I don't stand by it, so I'd like to add this was my bad & I'm sorry for being overly literal. Ultimately it's as much my responsibility to understand the sarcasm as it is other people to make it clear to me. I feel this way when I'm misunderstood despite being fairly clear, so it's only fair that I apologize and accept responsibility when I am the one to misunderstand. Looking deeper I see you're likely correct, but honestly I disclaim responsibility for misunderstandings caused by Poe's law when I'm on this end. I see this trip people up all the time, so I know it's not just me. I see the sincere version of this statement made, defended, and doubled down on regularly, so no, I can't reliably tell the difference without a sarcasm marker (/s). I admit this is a weakness on my part, but I don't really feel responsible for it.
- AHOHA 3y agoYesterday I saw a graph of how money these operators make each second, revenue is in billions, a ~600k is like a business trip cost for one of the executives.
- EGreg 3y agoThis will seem quaint after everyone starts using the generative AI models in sybil attacks.
- AgentK20 3y agoWhy are the people who ran these companies not in jail?
- oreally 3y agoI wanna know how did they did it and how they got found out. Is it as simple as a VPN + bots?
- boomboomsubban 3y agoThere's some information about it on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_States#Public_commenting_period_and_analysis_of_fraudulent_activities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_S... I'm not even positive a VPN was necessary.
- Jupe 3y agohttps://www.buzzfeed.com/jsvine/net-neutrality-fcc-fake-comments-impersonation https://www.buzzfeed.com/jsvine/net-neutrality-fcc-fake-comm...
- antigravity42 3y ago[flagged]
- secret-noun 3y agoWhat's a compelling argument in rejection of net neutrality (that these fake identities hypothetically would use)? Better delivery of in-network content, perhaps?
- bombcar 3y agoThe best argument against it is you would be mandating that companies peer and increase the peering regardless of anything else; and that companies would have to peer with other companies even if they didn’t want to.
- calibas 3y agoCriminal organizations conspiring to subvert democratic processes... The companies should be dissolved, the people who organized it should go to jail, and the broadband companies should be fined millions.
- iandanforth 3y agoThe irony here is that none of that mattered for the purpose of this agreement. They committed fraud by saying they'd subvert the democratic process in one way, but did it in a lazy way instead.
- hbarka 3y agoWhat are chances of this news making your local news?
- zzzeek 3y ago$615K for three companies, this is not even a parking ticket. This just puts a pretty discount price to pay for companies that want to impersonate their customers for fraudulent purposes.
- exabrial 3y agoMy problem with Net Neutrality is what is its the "wrong way" to deal with a pesky problem: entrenched local monopolies. Net Neutrality is "oking" monopolistic behavior, under a narrow set of stipulations. I don't trust Comcast any farther than I could throw their CEO. I just don't see this ending well. I think the alternatives: expanding access, increasing competition, improving technology and promoting innovation, busting oligopolies at the state and municipal level is the way to go. This is my opinion, so feel free to disagree. There are definite upsides to net neutrality right now for "here and now" problems, but it's not a good long term solution IMHO.
- dclowd9901 3y agoInfrastructure building is NOT an activity that benefits from free and open markets. The only way this works is if things change such that only government can build out infra, but it can be serviced by the best provider.
- lost_tourist 3y agoIt's a step in the right direction. Enabling localities to set up their own competing internet services would be the logical follow up to that.
- exabrial 3y agoThat I can absolutely agree with, as long as the taxes are usage based and opt-in only!
- lost_tourist 3y agoThat's not the way public utilities, work everyone pays taxes on roads and schools without directly benefitting, I don't have any children yet a large portion of my income goes to school, but I understandt the utility of it. the same would go for public internet.
- croes 3y agoWithout net neutrality you are oking monopolistic behavior on the internet service level.
- fortran77 3y agoThese were real people they impersonated. Not even $1 penalty per. I wonder if individuals who were impersonated have any grounds to sue?
- Jupe 3y ago> LCX and Lead ID were responsible for many of these fake comments, letters, and petition signatures. Across four advocacy campaigns in 2017 and 2018, LCX fabricated consumer responses used in approximately 900,000 public comments submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) at the U.S. Department of the Interior. Similarly, in advocacy campaigns between 2017 and 2019, Lead ID fabricated more than half a million consumer responses. These campaigns targeted a variety of government agencies and officials at the federal and state levels. Wow. Just wow. How can anyone at these companies be avoiding jail time? And who hired them? Is there no money trail?
- fshbbdssbbgdd 3y agoI’m curious if prosecutors could try someone for 900k counts of a crime.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Fezzik 3y agoI don’t believe there’s a limit to the number of charges in an indictment… I know I have seen 100+ count charging instruments (for credit card fraud).
- tootie 3y agoI found this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/technology/internet-providers-fake-comments-net-neutrality-new-york.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/technology/internet-provi... Says a bunch of companies received millions in fines a few years ago and it names AT&T, Charter, Comcast and some lobbying group.
- HlessClaudesman 3y agoImagine if your water pipe decided to only serve you water occasionally, and when it did threw some random bull-crap in there? Who would vote for that system?
- TheCaptain4815 3y agoStarlink would not exist if liberals passed net neutrality. I trust the market over politicians.
- kid64 3y agoI don't understand your position. Are you saying the fraud is justified, or do you make remarks like this to help you feel like you're "owning the libs"?
- p-e-w 3y agoNot being very familiar with US government webdesign, it took a while for me to realize that this is in fact the official website of the NY attorney general, rather than the personal website of an individual. The AG's name is written in huge letters on top, as if it was her, rather than her office, that mattered most. The name appears three times before the first paragraph of the article, and again in large, bold letters below the article. To an outside observer, this looks like a political personality cult, and the article itself reads like a PR fluff piece. For comparison, this[1] is the official website of the German chancellor, the head of government, infinitely more important than an AG. His name is written as a regular-sized menu item, clearly subordinate to the office he occupies, and most of the articles use the term "The Federal Chancellor" to refer to him, rather than his name. Taken as a whole, those websites paint a picture of radically contrasting administration styles, and aptly demonstrate just how incomprehensible US politics is for Europeans, and vice versa. [1] https://www.bundeskanzler.de/bk-en https://www.bundeskanzler.de/bk-en
- Mezzie 3y agoOh man. I worked with a lot of local and state governmental officials at my last job and some of the websites are bonkers. I've also done fact checking for academic publishers on topics that required deep diving into a lot of non-Western governmental resources and the web design (where there was a web presence) could get really interesting. I highly recommend going to peruse the websites of governmental entities in countries you don't ever think of - you see some weird/cool stuff.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aftbit 3y agoYou're not wrong, but at least whitehouse.gov doesn't have Joe Biden's name in giant letters.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nerdponx 3y agoTo be fair, this is atypical among US government websites. NY leadership in particular seems to tend towards egotism. Lest we forget that governor Cuomo spent millions of taxpayers dollars on new highway signs to rename a bridge after his father, who by many accounts would have abhorred the idea of having a bridge named after him.
- glitcher 3y agoMore than anything this seems to highlight how naive this approach is for polling public opinion - using an easily gamed internet connected form. Really the whole thing was just a dog and pony show to begin with. The FCC leadership at the time showed absolutely zero intention of being persuaded by the public comments as their minds were already made up beforehand. It was just some kind of hand wavy bs attempt to pretend to perform their due diligence before doing what they were already going to do anyways.
- yalogin 3y agoHow is this monetary loss calculated? This is absurdly low. Something that even a small size company will easily afford. On a humorous note, may be they started with how much a politician takes from lobbyists for their soul. We have seen them proposing absurd laws for very less.
- RajT88 3y agoI remember debating with a guy I know about Net Neutrality leading up to this. He was a sales director at a company that ran network backbone and fiber lines. He was insistent that the Net Neutrality debate was dumb, because it was trying to negate the peering agreements that make the industry run. The way he told it, anyone with a big backbone chooses to invest in peering arrangements with other companies who also make similar arrangements. If you are pushing an undue amount of traffic relative to the other party, you invest more. His take was that Netflix was supporting Net Neutrality so they wouldn't have to invest more in their peering arrangements. Now - this is a guy who historically is almost always on the wrong side of history. I thought it an interesting talking point, but even now having had some exposure to the peering arrangements between (say) Microsoft and Akamai, I still don't know enough to be able to say whether this is even a valid talking point. I'm very sure this is just something he was told, and repeated ad nauseum. This seems like the right audience (since I wasn't posting here back then), to ask if there's any legitimacy to this talking point?
- bombcar 3y agoThere’s something there - Netflix had just moved to a tier 2/3 provider and they weren’t peered well and Netflix was trying to get the big ISPs to peer instead of selling transit - peering for an almost entirely one way connection. The t1s weren’t having it. The moment Netflix setup caching servers in isp COs around the world they stopped caring about net neutrality. Strange.
- zamnos 3y agoNetflix couldn't know what the outcome was going to be, so they hedged by creating a technical solution to the problem. They still pay the ISPs, but for colo services instead of the net neutrality ransom. The problem with paying ransom is it'll just keep going up. Colo services could also keep going up, but it's much more constrained because there's an actual good/service being provided and not just paying money to change a firewall/QoS box rule.
- ShroudedNight 3y agoMy understanding was that the retail ISP monopolies were refusing Netflix's caching servers unless Netflix agreed to pay 'value'-priced access contracts.
- twunde 3y agoTechdirt has a good writeup of this press release https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/12/ny-ag-doles-out-wrist-slap-fine-to-companies-that-helped-telecom-giants-use-fake-and-dead-people-to-lie-about-net-neutrality/ https://www.techdirt.com/2023/05/12/ny-ag-doles-out-wrist-sl...
- tootie 3y agoIn theory it's possible the settlement was done in exchange for evidence against the telcos. One can dream at least.
- lost_tourist 3y agowhy are companies like this allowed to continue to exist? Why aren't their corporations simply dissolved for doing illegal activities. This is flat out fraud.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- janosdebugs 3y agoI have to wonder how on Earth this is not a criminal matter. Where I live, signing a document with someone else's name is, AFAIK, something you could potentially go to jail for.
- anbeliever 3y agoI believe, this has become a big industry. Fake comments are everywhere.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- EMCymatics 3y agoCompanies be like "Whoops" It's difficult to say how much this 'influenced' policy but it sure gives a good smoke screen. With the amount of money we have spent de-anonymizing the internet for profit we should have been able to disclose this earlier.
- courseofaction 3y agoThis is a completely acceptable cost of business for these companies, and everybody knows it. Put them in jail. Review the law.
- g42gregory 3y agoHere is my simple reasoning: (1) Large internet companies fight feverishly for net neutrality. (2) Based on past experience, it is inconceivable to me that they would so feverishly fight for the end-users' benefit. (3) Therefore, they fight for the net neutrality because it very beneficial to them. I am guessing there is something inside Internet backbone data transfer that allows these companies to make tons of money/get large subsidies, provided that net neutrality is in place. I would love to understand that it is.
- pmontra 3y agoOr by the same logic: (1) Large ISP companies fight feverishly against net neutrality. (2) Based on past experience, it is inconceivable to me that they would so feverishly fight for the end-users' benefit. (3) Therefore, they fight against net neutrality because ending it is very beneficial to them. (4) If it's so beneficial to them, ending net neutrality is probably not so good for the end-users. Which one?
- g42gregory 3y agoI am not sure (2) works in this logic chain. The net neutrality is presented in the infospace as beneficial to the end-users. If ISPs fight against it, they would be fighting against the end-users' benefit. This is not so inconceivable, yes?
- pmontra 3y agoIf I remember well they were saying that the extra income from the internet companies would allow them to improve the network and that would benefit end users.
- caust1c 3y agoLast mile service providers were forced to serve traffic generated from any legitimate website. Any traffic induces load on their systems/infrastructure and happens disproportionately based on the service being consumed (e.g. Netflix early days, instagram). So the economic fight of Net Neutrality was based on bandwith-intensive services not paying for transit proportionate to their traffic volume (driven by consumers), and the maintenance cost being borne by the last-mile providers. Allegedly. The problem comes from the fact that last-mile providers are monopolies in just about every place in the USA, meaning that they can already charge whatever they want to the consumer for the bandwidth _they_ consume. ISPs shouldn't be allowed to charge both directions for the single link they own going to buildings. And we don't want every building to have thousands of wires going to it for every new telecommunication company in existance, which is why we have Title II of the Communications Act. By repealing net neutrality it allows last-mile providers (largely owned by major national media corporations) to unfairly compete against new technologies and media companies in the marketplace who's growth was fueled largely in part by requiring equal access to bandwidth.
- digitalpacman 3y agoDissolve their fucking business licenses.
- mnot 3y agoWhat a disappointing penalty. People have been freaking out about foreign influence in politics and voter fraud, but when there is an actual, proven and admitted fraud that has significant impact on the legitimacy of governance, it’s a tiny flick to the wrist? SMH
- sroussey 3y agoThey should be made to hand write an apology to every person they impersonated, mailed first class with regular stamps.
- airesearcher 3y agoshouldn’t there be a class-action lawsuit by the people who were impersonated? “Enter your name to check if you were impersonated by these companies and join the class-action lawsuit…”
- airesearcher 3y agoHow about a class action lawsuit by all the people who were fraudulently impersonated?
- asimpleusecase 3y agoHow long before someone looks at the online elections donation systems that are subject to the same type of fraud that would allow wealthy parties in the US and outside the US to funnel money into candidates with no transparency as all the gifts are tiny and below reporting threshold?
- Jimmc414 3y agoThere is a lot more at stake than $615,000
- ShroudedNight 3y agoCould we please investigate Ajit Pai to determine if he was knowledgeable and thus a co-conspirator of this scheme to defraud the United States?
- DoctorNick 3y agoLanguage models are going to make this problem way, way worse
- mnky9800n 3y agoLife pro tip: be a company and you can get away with anything.
- nielsbot 3y ago“the three companies have agreed to pay $615,000 in penalties and disgorgement” Is this actually a significant punishment? Will the decisions based on these fake comments be reconsidered or reversed? Someone should sue these companies in civil court for damage done.
- surume 3y agoLol, $600k is quite simply a joke. It's not even a slap on the wrist, compared to the payoff. And spread between three companies? If that's the price of corrupting government policy, then just build it into the cost that you pass onto your clients when lobbying. Mega-corps like Comcast and Verizon would pay that in a microsecond.
- cynicalsecurity 3y agoThose fines are laughable. How is no one of the organisers of this fraud is in jail?
- jonahbenton 3y agoTish is awesome. Getting any kind of judgement against this BS is a real achievement. That she can't put people in jail for this a law problem, not a her problem.
- m3kw9 3y agoCountry level stuff
- stuaxo 3y agoThat fine is nothing it should come with stipulations that hit the people who were running those companies too.
- webdoodle 3y agoIf you think it's just 3 companies, I've got a bridge to sell you.