Fake comments plague debate over net neutrality

ON Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission will consider reversing a 2015 Obamaera regulation that declared Internet service providers to be public utilities subject to Title II of the federal Communications Act of 1934. If the regulation is rolled back, the FCC will return to the “light touch” regulations that worked so well for nearly two decades.

Nonetheless, the proposal, which we support, has drawn fierce opposition from some activists. The FCC invited public comment, and roughly 21.7 million comments were submitted electronically and posted online. Many favored the Obama-era regulation, which would be meaningful except that many comments also are apparent frauds.

An analysis by the National Legal and Policy Center found that “the number of fake pro-net neutrality comments posted in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) docket between July 17th and August 4th was more than 5.8 million.”

In August, the National Legal and Policy Center reported, “The FCC continues to be flooded with comments from various fake email domains and U.S. address generator programs found online. In many cases, the same comments are submitted dozens or even hundreds of times by filers using the same name, but coming from various phony email and physical U.S. addresses.”

The NLPC’s analysis found most fake comments came from “one of 10 email domains associated with a fake email generator program found at http://www. fakemailgenerator.com.” Those comments also “all use the same language” and typically used invalid addresses that “don’t match the cities, states or ZIP codes listed.”

Another NLPC analysis found 325,076 comments were submitted from Germany; 325,528 came from one Russian address; 102,192 were submitted from France; and 476,937 were submitted from the United States but entered as “international filer.” And more than 1 million comments had email addresses with a Pornhub. com domain extension.

Based on the NLPC analysis alone, as many as one out of every four comments received by the FCC regarding net neutrality was likely fake. But it may be worse, as a review by the Pew Research Center indicated.

Fifty-seven percent of submitted comments “utilized either duplicate email addresses or temporary email addresses created with the intention of being used for a short period of time and then discarded,” Pew reported. “In addition, many individual names appeared thousands of times in the submissions. As a result, it is often difficult to determine if any given comment came from a specific citizen or from an unknown person (or entity) submitting multiple comments using unverified names and email addresses.”

On nine occasions, Pew found more than 75,000 comments were submitted “at the very same second — often including identical or highly similar comments.” Pew’s review suggested as few as 6 percent of submitted comments were truly unique.

It’s important that government officials consider public response to regulatory proposals. Whether pro or con, genuine public feedback deserves respect. But one hopes FCC commissioners pay attention only to the 6 percent of comments that are real. The opinions of American citizens shouldn’t be negated by the activities of political spammers.