More Than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments Were Likely Faked (hackernoon.com) 177
Jeff Kao from Hacker Noon used natural language processing techniques to analyze net neutrality comments submitted to the FCC from April-October 2017 and found that at least 1.3 million pro-repeal net neutrality comments were faked. From the report: NY Attorney General Schneiderman estimated that hundreds of thousands of Americans' identities were stolen and used in spam campaigns that support repealing net neutrality. My research found at least 1.3 million fake pro-repeal comments, with suspicions about many more. In fact, the sum of fake pro-repeal comments in the proceeding may number in the millions. In this post, I will point out one particularly egregious spambot submission, make the case that there are likely many more pro-repeal spambots yet to be confirmed, and estimate the public position on net neutrality in the "organic" public submissions. [The key findings include:]
1. One pro-repeal spam campaign used mail-merge to disguise 1.3 million comments as unique grassroots submissions.
2. There were likely multiple other campaigns aimed at injecting what may total several million pro-repeal comments into the system.
3. It's highly likely that more than 99% of the truly unique comments were in favor of keeping net neutrality.
1. One pro-repeal spam campaign used mail-merge to disguise 1.3 million comments as unique grassroots submissions.
2. There were likely multiple other campaigns aimed at injecting what may total several million pro-repeal comments into the system.
3. It's highly likely that more than 99% of the truly unique comments were in favor of keeping net neutrality.
Re:Better proof than stats is needed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Pick 100 names from the tens of thousands of people who supposedly posted "The unprecedented regulatory power the Obama Administration imposed on the internet is smothering innovation..." and look up their phone numbers.
Call them and ask if they posted that comment.
When they all ask what the hell you're talking about, there's your evidence.
Re: Source fallacy (Score:4, Informative)
No, but the likelihood of finding truth on that site approaches zero.
Re: Emprata study: most legit comments FAVOR REPEA (Score:1)
Interesting that the company only publicly published one report, has one leader, and a rather ineligible GSA document.
(I stopped there after reading the report.)
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Wouldn’t have mattered. https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
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Perhaps... but I think, more likely, that was a retaliation they offered afterward in part because of how annoyed they were with the spam. If that had actually been their original intent, there's absolutely no reason that they could not have said so up front unless you presume that they weren't really interested in such opinions from the start.
I'm not saying that this necessarily wasn't the case, mind you.... but I think that an explanation for why they are ignoring so many letters having to do with the
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Yep. Always best to ignore the will of anyone who doesn't live up to your arbitrary standards. Democracy in action!
Re: Better proof than stats is needed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Learn to read, Trumpies.
One of the main reasons I can never forgive Trump or those who supported him, is not just how much he lies, but he actively tries to discredit and destroy legitimate sources of information so that you have no choice but to trust his people. This is the kind of crap that helped him win, just applied to another topic. It will likely be used ever more frequently in the future. Seriously, at this point is their anyone who hasn't had their personal information stolen? I've got two or three of the reports in the past few years, and I'm pretty careful, and none of them were through a mistake on my part.
Years ago, I never could have predicted that truth might become the battle of our time. Sure there will be some that will see through all the BS, but will there be enough?
Either way, if you start to see the internet divided into packages, it might be time to begin to panic, since you can bet most of the major sources of information will end up controlled by only a handful of rather powerful companies like Sinclair does now to local stations.
Just think, maybe in 10-20 years we will have to VPN to a foreign nation for accurate news, well assuming they haven't already blocked VPNs. I vaguely recall that Russia and China already had a somewhat successful program there. No doubt some terrorist will abuse the gun laws to buy infinite firearms, ammunition, and maybe even manage to get lots of bomb making materials, and then somewhere along the way will use a VPN once and then they will have an excuse to ban them.
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It's ridiculous how stupid and ignorant everybody is, except for those who agree with me.
Signed,
Genius
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Years ago, I never could have predicted that truth might become the battle of our time.
Really? You should read a decent history book because it's always been that way.
Galileo wasn't scientifically debated with the merits of geocentrism versus heliocentrism. His observations were declared heretical, he was placed under house arrest, threatened with physical torture, had his books (and those of Copernicus before him) banned and at least some of his opponents refused to even look through a telescope. And he was lucky -- others had been burned at the stake for his level of boldness.
The purpose
Re: Better proof than stats is needed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, the media actively and frequently lies about Trump. Do we not remember the koi pond? That happened a week ago. They used edited video that zooms in on Trump to only show his face and prevents the viewer from seeing what Japanese Prime Minister Abe was doing at a key point of the short event.
Why was Abe edited out? Perhaps because he took his entire box of fish food and dumped it into the pond. Trump followed Abe's lead and did the same seconds later.
In other words - nothing to see here. But with the zoom edit cutting Abe out, the viewer or reader - with an assist from the caption - is led to believe only Trump dumped his box.
The whole world saw them lie, and you're gonna say they're still credible?
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It's not one example, it's just the latest outrage. It happens all the time. Your news doesn't report on it? Well I kind of doubt they're going to tell you when they're lying. I mean, duh. Watch the alternative media, get out of your bubble. It's been lie after lie after lie. Deliberate lies. I mean, just look at this. [imgoat.com]
Here's an example of the kind of propaganda the MSM engages in all the damn time. The following New York Times article contains a "minor factual error" [nytimes.com] that's not at all germane to t
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Years of experience have taught me never to click on anything with the word "goat" in the URL. What the heck were they thinking with that name?
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There's no comparison: Trump is a complete nutjob [twitter.com].
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Re: Better proof than stats is needed. (Score:1)
actually, id say there is a fairly easy comparison.
F!_!cked one way or the other.
Makes you think half the world has a grudge against America and scores to settle....
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Correct! You cannot compare a nutjob with a burlap marionette stuck in a loom.
The first one is completely unpredictable, an unknown quantity. A newcomer, unfamiliar with the centuries old entrenched extra-political infrastructure that molds, forms, and produces political candidates for the entertainment of the masses.
The second one is completely predictable, a known quantity, and beholden to so many interests, both foreign and domestic, that you can rest assured their behavior will be exactly what you exp
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Right, we'll be SO much better served if msmash continues to post stories about mobile homes while marking submissions critical of social media as "spam".
Legal and *practical* issues. I changed 2257,DMCA (Score:2)
> This business of submitting comments to the FCC is not a vote. It was never represented as such. Nobody ever even implied that a huge volume of like-minded submissions would sway their agenda. They wanted legal arguments that they may not have thought of, and that's it.
Legal arguments, yes, and practical arguments and suggestions. I didn't think that the year and a half that the net neutrality rules were in place were all THAT much different than the previous years, so on this issue my participation wa
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As an example, under a set of regulations I successfully commented on, each small business was required to keep certain records which include personal information about people who had made products they sell, people they had no contact with.
Title 18, Section 2257?
Yes (Score:2)
Yep, we went through several drafts of 2257 rules
It was just for show anyway. (Score:1)
It wouldn't have mattered if 100% of the comments were against net neutrality. The politicians are paid for and big businesses wants this, so it's happening. Now bend over and lube up so the raping won't hurt as much.
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It may be happening regardless. But keep working the analysis on the comments. In particular, anything that might identify their source.
IANAL, but this kind of misrepresentation could be grounds for charges under Section 1001, Title 18 USC [wikipedia.org]. A friendlier future administration might pursue charges.
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Specific big business even.
There's plenty of big business that wants NN
Re:It was just for show anyway. (Score:5, Informative)
"big business" doesn't want this (I would say that companies like Facebook (500bn+ market cap as of right now) and Google (700bn+ market cap) are more than big enough to quality as "big business".
The opposition is comming from one type of company specifically and that is the Pay TV industry. Companies that distribute linear TV channels via cable, satellite, fiber or other technologies hate net neutrality because the Internet makes it possible to distribute content easily and bypass these gatekeepers and their dinosaur business model.
The same thing happened in Australia at the last federal elections where Rupert Murdoch (who's empire has control over Foxtel, the main Pay TV company in Australia) used the front pages of his newspapers to declare war on the fiber-to-the-premises National Broadband Network because such a network would have been a big threat to Foxtel.
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Google, Apple, and Facebook are literally three of the top 5 biggest companies on Earth and they are all pro-net neutrality.
Do you trust Zuck and Eric Schmidt to look out for you?
Of course not, that would be naive. I expect them to look out for their own interests, same as any other corporation.
It's just a rare treat when that happens to also be what I want. Usually that isn't the case. Unlike lil 'ol me, they actually stand a good chance of getting what they want. In this particular instance it's a win-win all around.
Who said anything about trusting suspected sociopaths? Did you think you were making a rational argument, there? Ever heard of the fallacy of the excluded middle
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Do you trust Zuck and Eric Schmidt to look out for you?
I trust Zuck and Eric a lot more than I trust Comcast.
Zuck and Eric don't have monopoly control over the series of tubes leading to my house. Comcast does.
Just in time (Score:5, Insightful)
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Uh... he was appointed by Obama. Trump just made him the chair.
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Uh... he was appointed by Obama. Trump just made him the chair.
Uh... you don't understand English. He was appointed by Obama, and appointed again by Trump.
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The rules guarantee two seats to one party and three to the other, that's why Obama appointed him to the FCC.
It was Trump who appointed him as chairman.
Please do try to get a little bit on knowledge before you post.
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Re:Just in time (Score:5, Funny)
He should be removed from office and charged with bribery and treason.
And so should Ajit Pai.
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I don't know, can you be charged with bribery if you are too dim to realize the difference between bribery and proper business deals? Or if you cannot tell the difference between supporting the U.S. and a KGB thug?
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Ferret
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I don't know shit about him, but found this:
https://ajitvpai.com/ [ajitvpai.com]
"Ajit has spent several years as a lawyer for Verizon"
Hmmm.
I'm inclined to trust ESR's opinion:
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=617 [ibiblio.org]
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Here is what you, and your ilk, all miss: moneyed people are more qualified to make important economic decisions than the rest of you!
We've had the education you haven't. We are invested in the health of the economy in ways that you aren't. We live and breathe fiscal policies and the potential broad range impacts, whereas you just do basic labor and then go play video games. We understand things that you don't, and never will.
If you set all the regulatory policies that guide our economy, it would be an utter disaster, and you know it.. You don't like what I am saying but you absolutely know exactly what would happen if all policies were decided by popular vote. We would tear ourselves apart in a matter of days.
Of course you want dirt-cheap Internet that lets you do whatever you want without restriction, all the major costs being borne on your behalf by a bunch of "greedy rich bastards that should stop trying to make money because they already have too much." Who the hell do you think you are? You want our services, you pay our price.
Deal with it.
(yes, I am trolling. But kinda serious).
I think what people really want (and often fail to articulate very well) is that the system become less exploitative and political in nature and more like a meritocracy. That would lend some much-needed legitimacy and respectability to the big players.
If you become wealthy because you built your business by providing genuine value, dealing fairly, treating your employees with dignity, and honestly being very good at what you do, I doubt most would have a problem with that. This is the kind of "getting ahe
Quick! (Score:2)
We need to do less with HASTE! As long as we do nothing about it the free market will work out a solution and we can avoid communism and loose our freedoms and end up like Cuba if we investigtate.
Re:Quick! (Score:4, Informative)
Really? The free market didn't bust up the trusts at the beginning of the 1900s. It didn't break up the AT&T monopoly. It failed to break up the crock that is Microsoft. And now it is failing to prevent concentration of owners of national media given the latest shit storm from the FCC and Congress. Preventing the AT&T's current merger is no coup, it is merely because the Knob in the oval office doesn't like CNN because they aren't as sycophantic as Fox, so that is not for principled reasons but for one of the most base examples of political stupidity.
Meanwhile, Slashdot hasn't once posted... (Score:1)
.. the actual proposed changes :
http://transition.fcc.gov/Dail... [fcc.gov]
Oh look, this is all about changing back ISP classification from Utilities to Information services. Not so black and white now uh ? Too bad the media is banking on keeping people mad and uninformed.
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Fuck you moron. This is about taking ALL protection away from ISP abuse and rent seeking. Only a moron would claim its "just about reclassifying them as an information service"
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No it's not dipshit, if you reclassify ISP's you don't need to worry about the LEC classification barrier and we can have municipal fibre open up to any little business that wants to run their own ISP and can fill the minimum requirements. As it is big telcos have locked everyone out of LEC [Utility] applications basically by bribing Congress and harassing municipalities with shared fibre infrastructure.
I'm not saying repealing NN was a good idea but NN was a bandaid on a broken leg. The whole thing needs t
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Thats the good change. No longer can a large telco claim they are the only network able to support NN. No other network could enter the market was is not totally federally NN compliant.
That color of law federal lobby effort held back a lot of new network innovation around the USA.
Steep
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Yeah but I'm reserving my optimism. Just because this door is being opened by the NN repeal doesn't mean telcos don't already have a full on assault ready to close it again *without* NN. After all they've surely got plenty of senators they've been sucking off in preparation to this.
All that said I don't actually live in America so despite the fact I find this whole situation interesting it doesn't actually effect me. I've got a 2Gbps fibre line to my home for about $50USD a month because I live in a country
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Did you miss the second sentence of my post?
> Just because this door is being opened by the NN repeal doesn't mean telcos don't already have a full on assault ready to close it again *without* NN
Don't mistake an air of hope for actual optimism.
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This is the future if we are not careful:
https://www.meo.pt/telemovel/t... [www.meo.pt]
This is for mobile, but you end having to pay an extra $5 for every "bundle" of mainstream web sites (Video, Social, Messaging) that you want unlimited access.
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So you agree it would totally fuck the internet? THANKS!
The internet IS a utility and should be protected like one (see below).. if that wasn't possible maybe you'd have a point...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
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A common carrier operates a communications network for hire to carry customers data essentially unchanged. An information service is a commercial publisher that supplies data through a communications network (typically, using a common carrier), or otherwise processes and store customers data. ISPs are common carriers while web site or cloud storage operators are information services.
Reclassifying ISPs as information services is in blatant contradiction with those definitions (written in the telecommunicatio
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The issue is more complex. The reason for the change from IS to Util was because a supreme court case ruled aspects of a 2010 bill were not enforceable. The 2010 bill was a result of another supreme court ruling on a previous bill.
The result is that reverting the classification means that the protections in previous laws -- which have now been overturned -- are known not to exist.
The FCC proposal is essentially that the ISP industry can self-regulate. The opposing position is that the ISP industry -- con
Just a hunch (Score:5, Insightful)
Nerd equivalent. (Score:2)
I have a feeling that, and let me go out on a limb here, this may not be the last story we see about net neutrality.
I suppose it's the nerd equivalent of the 2016 elections.
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I have a feeling that, and let me go out on a limb here, this may not be the last story we see about net neutrality.
Is that because people in general don't just roll over and call it quits when a corrupt official goes against the will of the general public in order to appease a few small corporations?
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I bet they were considered anyway (Score:2)
I bet they were considered anyway [vocativ.com] even if they made no serious legal argument [slashdot.org] whatsoever
Stupid Idiots (Score:1)
No identities were "stolen". It is not possible to "steal" an identity.
What should be said is that the crime of IMPERSONATION occurred and the RELYING PARTY made a MISTAKE of fact and law in RELYING on the IMPERSONATOR and is therefore liable both criminally and civilly for the result/consequence of that mistaken reliance.
At least that is how it works in the free world (China, Russia, Burma, Canada, etc.). Perhaps communist/fascist countries such as the US have somewhat different law from the rest of the
Doesn’t matter. (Score:1)
The cork-schnorkeler in charge of the FCC would have schnorkled the corks he was beholden to schnorkel no matter how the comments would have shaken out.
How many were Russian bots? (Score:2, Insightful)
With the apparent integration between the Republican party and Russia it's getting harder to tell the home-grown corruption from the interference of a hostile foreign power.
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No, we're mostly only blaming Trump and related politics on the Russians. Maybe if Trump was more successful at well.. anything.. in office, we'd be more concerned on a wider scale but for now its closer to an orange joke than a red scare.
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As I've pointed out elsewhere, the sheer volume of comments on either side of an issue is irrelevant to the U.S. administrative rulemaking process. That being the case, the "Rooshun interference" meme sorta loses its bite here.
But to the extent you feel otherwise, comments from Russia were actually pro Net Neutrality [washingtonpost.com]:
Brian Hart, an FCC spokesman, said the agency lacks the resources to investigate every comment. Supporters of the net neutrality rules are not blameless either, he added, pointing to 7.5 million comments filed in favor of the regulations that appeared to come from 45,000 distinct email addresses, "all generated by a single fake e-mail generator website." Some 400,000 comments backing the rules, he said, appeared to originate from a mailing address based in Russia.
"The most suspicious activity has been by those supporting Internet regulation," said Hart.
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You know, you'd think after a year of the most intense scrutiny by official (Mueller) and unofficial (every media organization ever) organizations, there'd be something like, well, actual proof - right?
If the Republicans are that good at running a covert operation with the Russians, well hell, they may indeed be the best party to run government.
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Yes, I'd like to see someone convicted of what the crowd is actually baying for.
The charges (not a conviction, btw) against Manafort are basically all about HIS stuff, still nothing about Trump, nor Russian "manipulation" of the election (however that's being defined this moment).
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Without net neutrality, companies would be free to filter information however they want. It would be trivial to influence elections and policies, and they would have all the rights in the world to do so. Don't like it? Switch to another ISP...awww you don't have another ISP? Welcome to RT injected ads 24/7.
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The US and reconstituted Soviet government could join forces to make a world government. We could call it the CoDominium with different areas represented by Grand Senators.
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You must be disappointed that all of Vlad's butt-buddies are getting exposed for what they are, one by one, slowly but surely--but still faster than The Donald can fire FBI directors.
This is about building the great Firewall of USA. (Score:2, Troll)
This is about building the great Firewall of USA. The Public internet Started under Title II in the 90s, as just an aspect of Phone Service. During the Bush years, they were reclassified as Title I, for a while, then Obama got in office and his FCC head made it Title II again.
The problem really is this: 2016's election was a kind of political Coup of sorts on both parties.
What happened was, that there was racist blowback from Obama by racist white voters, and displaced workers. Some of the complaints were l
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I think I've found my candidate for the 2017 Poe's Law [wikipedia.org] Award.
Re:And there we stopped reading. (Score:4, Insightful)
it might be more accurate to say there is very little overt racism. The racism is still there, but much diminished and driven underground. It doesn't manifest as 'I won't accept a black president,' but rather as 'are we sure he is a real American?'
Do you think that the birther conspiracy theory could ever have thrived for a white president?
There's also statistical evidence that even unconscious racism is very much alive. You can see it in fields like criminal sentencing - when comparing convictions for the same crime across race, some races get noticeably higher average sentences than others.
America may have embarked towards a post-racist society, and it's gone a long way down that road, but it hasn't reached the destination yet.
Re:And there we stopped reading. (Score:4, Insightful)
it might be more accurate to say there is very little overt racism. The racism is still there, but much diminished and driven underground.
The big problem is we use the same semantics to describe a phenomenon that really operates on a spectrum, not a binary value. I don't know that describing a 1935 KKK lynching supporter and some guy who doesn't like contemporary urban black culture as both being "racist" tells us very much about racism.
I also think it sets up a permanent state of racial hostility. At the end of the day, racism is much more about cultural and values conflict than it is about the collection of biological factors we call race. It's perfectly legitimate to dislike elements of cultures different than your own, but if we keep describing personal cultural preferences as "racism" we will always have racism. You can't ever achieve a world where every person accepts every person different than them equally, especially when it involves wide gaps in cultural beliefs and practices.
Do you think that the birther conspiracy theory could ever have thrived for a white president?
John Kennedy was accused of being a papist. It was widely questioned whether Kennedy would uphold the Constitution or whether he would obey edicts from the pope. He gave a major speech to a group of Protestants to defend his personal Catholic faith and stand up for the separation of church and state. I find it very similar to the birther controversy.
The largest problem with racial equality as a whole is that the goalposts are constantly moving and after a while it feel like they're being moved intentionally and cynically to maintain a political coalition, not because there's meaningful racial inequality.
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Us Irish didn't get to be really white until the Catholics were integrated into the religious right. The Ku Klux Klan in specific hated us as much as the black people. I disagree with your point because, skin tone to the contrary, we weren't white enough to count. See also the gag at the end of "Blazing Saddles".
Also, moving goalposts? Man, first black people can't be slaves, then they get to vote, now they expect traffic stops to not end in extrajudicial death sentences. Where oh where will it end? And the
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Also, moving goalposts? Man, first black people can't be slaves, then they get to vote, now they expect traffic stops to not end in extrajudicial death sentences. Where oh where will it end? And they just keep voting Democratic!
This is an example of moving the goalposts. The cops stop something like 2 million people per year and the number of "extrajudicial death sentences" is in the single digits per year. Nearly all are litigated by juries and the police found not guilty by juries. The evidence presented have shown the "community narrative" to be factually wrong at best and outright lies at worst.
None of this is to suggest that the police abuse of power isn't happening, but that it's not really a byproduct of racism, it' a by
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Do you think that the birther conspiracy theory could ever have thrived for a white president?
Yes, I do, if he had "written" an autobiography claiming that he was foreign born, and if his background as presented by the media was largely mysterious, as if he had sprung full grown from the head of Zeus.
Obama is the only president so far who even could have had such a birth controversy swirling around him, and it wasn't because he is half black.
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Well, in the blue states at least (especially in the diverse ones like CA). The red states, not so much. Exhibit A: Alabama where an racist bigot pedophile will likely win the senate seat.
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Do you think that the birther conspiracy theory could ever have thrived for a white president?
Only if McCain had become President.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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Charlottesville was how long ago exactly? I'm pretty sure it happened after 1991 but maybe someone should fact check me on that..
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There is almost no real racism in the US,
Fuck you, and also, fuck you.
We've had equality since about 1991 when Clarence Thomas was appointed to the supreme court.
You're either a compleat idiot or a racist piece of shit. There's no third way, unless it's both.
Jail Time Needed (Score:1)
Ok, this was clearly an organized campaign by one of the big providers, and is it is blatantly illegal on many fronts, not to mention a direct attack on the democratic process.
There needs to be a full scale no holds barred investigation into this, and the corporations responsible need to be held accountable, including jail time and fund freezing for every traitor who new about this, and a literal fine so large that the treasonous companies will have difficult recovering from it.
Ajit Pai is corrupt and need
And who wins in all of this? (Score:1)
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Probably not. It would just reduce utility to the customer too much - there would be the type of public outcry that even the mighty telecoms lobbyists would struggle to counteract.
More likely you'll still be able to connect to unapproved sites, but only at what the ISP may call 'high speed' - actually consisting of an old gigabit ethernet cable serving each thousand-customer node, where you get to enjoy constant buffering any time you want video, failed downloads and general unpleasantness. While those site
No low (Score:2)
Seems like a waste of time (Score:3)
Not saying that the entire process isn't shady as hell, but I'm honestly a bit puzzled why anyone would bother... it's been obvious to anyone with half a clue that Pai was going to ram this through with zero consideration of opposing viewpoints, so what's the point in faking a million comments either way?
Comments on proposed rules aren't a popular vote (Score:2)
A description of the process from the Federal Register [federalregister.gov]:
The notice-and-comment process enables anyone to submit a comment on any part of the proposed rule. This process is not like a ballot initiative or an up-or-down vote in a legislature. An agency is not permitted to base its final rule on the number of comments in support of the rule over those in opposition to it. At the end of the process, the agency must base its reasoning and conclusions on the rulemaking record, consisting of the comments, scientific data, expert opinions, and facts accumulated during the prerule and proposed rule stages.
So whoever thought that flooding the site with automated comments could tip the balance either way (and there were millions
on both sides of the issue [washingtonpost.com]) was just flat wrong.
As is everyone on here moaning that this is a harbinger of the fall of democracy in the USA.
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At the end of the process, the agency must base its reasoning and conclusions on the rulemaking record, consisting of the comments, scientific data, expert opinions, and facts accumulated during the prerule and proposed rule stages.
That they're supposed to do that, but instead and in direct contradiction to that, while openly lying about what the facts are, are simply doing the bidding of the big telecom companies, who the chairman is very clearly a shill for, acting indisputably against the best interests of the country, is why this is a problem for democracy. I don't think anyone is claiming that the *only* problem is that they don't base their policies on the popular vote of submitted comments. But as the passage you cited suggests
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I don't think anyone is claiming that the *only* problem is that they don't base their policies on the popular vote of submitted comments. But as the passage you cited suggests, that is *part* of it.
I read that part of the passage as referring to the content of the comments, not the volume (and relevant, substantive content at that -- not stuff that reduces down to "the future of our democracy hangs on my ability to receive unlimited NetFlix for a low fixed price"). That's consistent with what I've read about the process elsewhere. But please let me know if you know of something that clearly states otherwise.