Security News > 2021 > May > 80% of Net Neutrality Comments to FCC Were Fudged

A secret campaign by the broadband industry to offer support to roll back net neutrality resulted in fake comments comprising more than 40 percent of those sent to the FCC during the public comments phase of its decision, according to the report by the New York State Office of the Attorney General.

On the other side of the debate, a 19-year-old college student who opposed the repeal of net neutrality managed to file more than 7.7 million pro-neutrality comments with the FCC by fabricating people's names and addresses using software.

President Obama ostensibly put net neutrality rules into effect in 2015 when the FCC voted to classify consumer broadband service as a public utility under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act.

The FCC under President Trump repealed net neutrality with a replacement rule crafted in 2017 called the Restoring Internet Freedom Order.

On one side, the three largest telecom companies in the United States and an industry trade group - all of whom had a vested interest in seeing net neutrality fail - tried to manufacture support for repeal by paying lead-generating companies to create comments in support of the repeal.

In terms of the fake comments in support of net neutrality, the FCC lacked safeguards to detect or prevent millions of submissions from a single source, which is how one person managed to submit nearly 8 million comments, according to the report.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/net-neutrality-comments-fcc-fudged/165943/