Security News > 2021 > May > AIs and Fake Comments

The big telecommunications companies paid millions of dollars to specialist "AstroTurf" companies to generate public comments.

These companies then stole people's names and email addresses from old files and from hacked data dumps and attached them to 8.5 million public comments and half a million letters to members of Congress.

All of them said that they supported the corporations' position on something called "Net neutrality," the idea that telecommunications companies must treat all Internet content equally and not prioritize any company or service.

Three AstroTurf companies - Fluent, Opt-Intelligence and React2Media ­- agreed to pay nearly $4 million in fines.

The people who create fake grass-roots organizations have always been enthusiastic early adopters of technology, weaponizing letters, faxes, emails and Web comments to manufacture the appearance of public support or public outrage.

It's impossible to prove or disprove whether telecommunications companies knew their subcontractors would create bogus citizen voices, but a liability standard would at least give such companies an incentive to find out.

News URL

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/05/ais-and-fake-comments.html