18 million fake comments to deregulate the US net neutrality?

In the United States, under the Obama administration in 2015, network neutrality, a rule prohibiting the handling of certain content to Internet service provider ISPs, was enacted. However, the regulation on net neutrality was abolished by the FCC of the Federal Communications Commission in 2017, just two years after the enactment. The investigation revealed that more than 18 million counterfeit comments were written by industry organizations in which major ISPs participate in such activities surrounding the elimination of net neutrality.

Network neutrality is a rule that prohibits the ISP from handling certain contents unfavorably for the fair processing of Internet contents. It was enacted under the Obama administration in 2015. This rule was expected to prevent discrimination by ISP operators of allocating high-speed communications to services favorable to the company, slowing down the communication speed of competing services, or providing high-speed communications only to users who paid a premium.

However, in 2017, just two years after the enactment of the network neutrality regulation, the FCC said that according to the network neutrality regulation, ISP operator infrastructure maintenance and maintenance costs were increasing. For this reason, the network neutrality regulation was abolished.

Regarding this abolition, the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out that the claim that the cost of maintaining and maintaining the infrastructure for ISP operators is increasing is not true, and condemned the FCC decision that the removal of network neutrality regulations was unfair. Other controversy was that Mozilla filed an appeal against the FCC decision in Washington DC federal court, or the Internet Association (IA), a lobbying organization involving major technology companies, filed a complaint against the FCC.

After several years of research on companies that affected the deregulation of network neutrality by the FCC, the industry group BFA (Broadband for America), which major US ISPs such as AT&T and Comcast, participated, spent $8.2 million as a secret to deregulate network neutrality. They spent $4.2 million on campaigns and found that they were spending $4.2 million on writing fake comments or writing fake letters.

In addition, among the 22 million cases the FCC received in 2017, 18 million counterfeit comments related to network neutrality regulations were made by the BFA. It was also revealed that 500,000 fake letters were sent to Congress in support of the deregulation of net neutrality.

According to the report, BFA commissioned several marketing companies to write fake comments. Marketing companies created mass fake comments by obtaining permission to use usernames and addresses in exchange for small compensation or product discounts, and using software to arbitrarily change the contents of fake comments.

Three of the marketing firms involved in writing fake comments are demanding fines of $4.4 million and payment of fraudulent profits for three major marketing companies (Fluent, Opt-Intelligence, and React2Media). Related information can be found here.