FCC's website has been flooded with 128K+ identical fake anti-net neutrality comments via its public comment system API
Not John Oliver — Crashed Its Website. But Nobody Seems To Believe Them David McCabe / Axios : Net neutrality comments already dogged by controversy Aaron Pressman / Fortune : FCC Buried By Fake and Hate-Filled Comments on Net Neutrality William Gayde / TechSpot : Tens of thousands of fake comments are being spammed on the FCC's net neutrality page Charlie Nash / Breitbart : Comments criticizing Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai are “full … Tony Romm / Recode : The FCC is being flooded by fake, vicious comments as it begins debating net neutrality Rob Price / Business Insider : 10 things in tech you need to know today WeLiveSecurity : FCC confirms DDoS attacks Grant Gross / InfoWorld : Bot-generated comments swamp FCC, urging overturn of net neutrality Ali Breland / The Hill : FCC flooded with fake comments opposing net neutrality AJ Dellinger / International Business Times : FCC Net Neutrality News: A Bot Is Flooding Commission's Website With Anti-Net Neutrality Comments Jeff Dunn / Business Insider : Thousands of identical messages attacking Obama's net-neutrality rules have been suspiciously flooding the FCC website Tweets: Sunlight Foundation / @sunfoundation : Real people's names were used without their permission in a surge of anti-#NetNeutrality filings sent to the @FCC: http://www.theverge.com/... http://twitter.com/... Alex Howard / @digiphile : “Begun, the bot war has.” More seriously, it's not clear who's behind fake comments: http://www.zdnet.com/... I hope @AjitPaiFCC investigates http://twitter.com/... Jake Williams / @malwarejake : Why is there an API to submit comments? What problem does this solve? http://www.zdnet.com/... http://twitter.com/... Alex Howard / @digiphile : It's critical for advocates on all sides of the #netneutrality debate to be transparent about actions in rulemaking. http://www.recode.net/... http://twitter.com/... Emil Protalinski / @epro : At least make them different, this doesn't help the cause at all. http://twitter.com/... Dan Gillmor / @dangillmor : Bots are forging real people's names to post anti-net-neutrality messages at FCC. http://www.zdnet.com/... Zack Whittaker / @zackwhittaker :
Context & Ripple Effects
In May 2017, as Ajit Pai's FCC opened its proceeding on repealing net neutrality, bots pushed more than 128,000 identical anti-net-neutrality comments through the agency's public comment API — and separately confirmed DDoS attacks that had taken its website offline, muddying the picture of what was organic opposition versus manufactured volume.
The flood became a defining feature of the whole docket: within weeks, 14 people whose names were attached to roughly 450K comments without their permission demanded disclosure and removal, and by November an analysis concluded [[a:924321|over 1M pro-repeal comments were likely faked while 99% of organic comments favored keeping the rules]] — turning the comment record itself into the controversy.
First-order effects
- The FCC's own comment record is compromised at the moment it matters most: Chairman Pai's repeal docket now rests on a corpus where bot-forged submissions and DDoS outages make genuine public sentiment impossible to read directly.
Second-order effects
- Real citizens whose identities were forged are forced into remediation — demanding the FCC disclose and strip fake comments — while the eventual attribution trail points toward lobbying intermediaries like CQ Roll Call rather than grassroots senders.
Third-order effects
- If open-API comment systems stay forgeable, every federal rulemaking becomes contestable by whoever can generate volume cheaply, pushing regulators toward some form of identity verification for civic input — and handing ammunition to both sides who claim the process is illegitimate.
The trend: Public comment mechanisms are becoming an attack surface for automated astroturfing, forcing agencies to treat identity verification as core civic infrastructure.