A study has found more than 7.75 million comments were submitted from email domains attributed to FakeMailGenerator.com, and they had nearly identical wording.
The FCC says some of the nearly 23 million comments on Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to gut Obama-era rules were filed under the same name more than 90 times each.
And then there were the 444,938 from Russian email addresses, which also raised eyebrows, even though it’s unclear if they were from actual Russian citizens or computer bots originating in the U.S. or elsewhere.
Hart said in an email that there had been “concerning activity” regarding public comments on both sides of the issue.
Many submissions seemed to include false or misleading personal information, with 57 percent of comments analyzed using temporary or duplicate email addresses, the Pew Research Center said in a study published Wednesday.
“There’s something not right in the @FCC record,” FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said in a Nov. 22 tweet that cited “bots, bogus comments, stolen names.”.
Another set of 1.4 million took the opposite view, saying "I strongly urge the FCC to repeal" the rules. »