Stanford study: of the 800,000+ unique comments submitted to the FCC concerning repeal of net neutrality, 99.7% of them opposed what the FCC did
A new study has once again confirmed that the vast, vast majority of the public opposed the FCC's ham-fisted repeal of net neutrality.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Stanford study is the most rigorous entry in a year-long fight over what the public actually told the FCC. The docket had swollen to over 21M comments by the August close, many duplicates or spambot-generated, and an earlier analysis found over 1M pro-repeal comments were likely faked while organic comments ran overwhelmingly the other way.
By isolating unique comments and still landing at 99.7% opposition, Stanford closes off the FCC's main escape hatch — that the raw totals were polluted in both directions. That matters because the agency proceeded anyway, despite internal dissent from its own CTO Eric Burger, and because the nine ISPs surveyed after repeal made few firm commitments not to block, throttle, or prioritize traffic.
First-order effects
- The FCC's record now shows a near-unanimous public filing against the action it took, sharpening the legitimacy challenge to Pai's repeal and handing ammunition to courts and legislators weighing whether the comment record was honestly weighed.
- ISPs' post-repeal posture — few binding commitments from the nine respondents — is directly contradicted by the documented will of commenters, raising the stakes of any future block, throttle, or paid-prioritization decision.
Second-order effects
- With fake-comment campaigns exposed twice, the FCC faces pressure to verify identity in rulemaking dockets, a fix that would raise compliance costs for advocacy groups on every side of telecom fights.
- State-level net neutrality efforts gain a cleaner empirical anchor: lawmakers can cite a peer-reviewed 99.7% figure rather than contested raw comment counts.
Third-order effects
- If comment fraud goes unpunished, the notice-and-comment process degrades into a volume contest won by whoever automates best — pushing agencies toward authenticated submissions and pushing real influence toward litigation and lobbying instead.
- The pattern points toward broadband rules being settled politically rather than procedurally: when the record so clearly diverges from the outcome, each future FCC majority inherits a legitimacy deficit that invites reversal by the next one.
The trend: Public-input mechanisms in US telecom rulemaking are being gamed at scale, shifting the real battleground from the comment record to courts, states, and election cycles.