More than 80 percent were posted in bulk.
(original article from dailydot)
President Donald Trump and FCC chairman Ajit Pai don’t seem interested in what the majority of Americans think about net neutrality, having repeatedly vowed to reverse Obama-era rulings. What they do have on their side—perhaps not for the first time—is an army of bots.
Of the 22 million comments submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) website about net neutrality, only 3,863,929 were unique, according to research by Gravwell, a data analytics company. The other 18-odd million (around 17 percent)—most of which are anti-net neutrality—were copied, pasted, and resubmitted, likely by bots.
Gravwell explained that when it filtered out comments that were submitted organically, not using bulk submissions, the majority were pro-net neutrality: “People who submitted comments directly to the FCC website are overwhelmingly in support of net neutrality regulations.” The “regulations” refer to Title II, part of the Communications Act that outlines safeguards to protect net neutrality.
“So, seeing a clear difference of opinion between bulk submitted comments vs those that came in via the FCC comment page we’re forced to conclude that either the nature of submission method has some direct correlation with political opinion, or someone is telling lies on the internet,” Gravwell wrote in a blog post.
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