Singel released a report Monday that analyzed the unique comments—as in, they weren’t a copypasta of one or dozens of other letters—filed last year ahead of the FCC’s decision to repeal federal net neutrality protections.
That’s from the 22 million total comments filed, meaning that more than 21 million comments were fake, bots, or organized campaigns.
“This is not to say that all non-unique comments filed to the FCC via online campaigns are fake,” the report says, since many commenters used form letters to share their support for net neutrality.
“However, due to the large amount of noise created by fake comments, it remains very difficult to locate the real signals in the non-unique comments.”.
Before voting to repeal federal net neutrality protections last year, the FCC opened up an online form to collect comments from the public.
In that district, the report found more than 2,300 unique comments filed, the majority of which were opposed to repealing net neutrality.
If this report is any indication, candidates in tight races might want to reexamine their stance on net neutrality. »
