It’s really unfortunate that, as far as I can see, there were zero consequences for this behavior. Maybe it’s lack of evidence tying it to the companies, but there didn’t seem to be serious attempts to investigate or curtail future behavior.
The wealthy and powerful certainly do have us all thoroughly distracted with our race/sexuality/immigration/etc wars don't they.
> The OAG has not found evidence, however, that the broadband companies that funded and organized these lead generators had direct knowledge of fraud.
We need more corporate regulations in that vein.
It should be impossible to outsource regulatory or legal risk. Outsourcing should subject you to a greater burden of oversight, not less.
You could engineer some sort of conspiracy to keep specific misbehavior off the paper trail, but that's difficult. Increasing the difficulty of cheating is a good thing.
IMHO, this is good. Companies should take proactive effort to make sure that their suppliers behave ethically out of a fear they will be held responsible for any violations.
Trust is like a vase. It takes a lot of time and effort to make one. It takes a lot less time and effort to break one. And even if you fix it, you'll always be able to see the cracks.
That evidence is an established track record as an ethical and trustworthy participant in the marketplace. But that takes forever, success isn't guaranteed, and the ROI is worse than just screwing people over.
This particular AG has made a name for herself by being sensationalist and partisan. This is likely just more pandering...
> All told, the investigation found that nearly 18 million of the more than 22 million comments the FCC received in its 2017 proceeding to repeal net neutrality rules were fake. About 8.5 million of those comments were sent by people who simply didn’t exist. Many, however, simply used the names of real people without their knowledge.
Not finding a person's name doesn't mean that wasn't a human that submitted the comment. It's an online form - people will do things to remain anonymous, including making up names.
I'm afraid this is evidence of nothing.
Meanwhile, the goddamn Heritage Foundation lists on their website for voter fraud a total of 1499 instances. https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N2XP2AI/
So how about you not.
There's no identity check for submitting the comment form. It's as simple as lying on the form.
> in favor of Comcast and against Net Neutrality
Also, let's not make up stories about this issue.
Your behavior is not desirable here. Stop attacking people who don’t share your world view.
No, it is certainly not. The assumption a name is unique is a fallacy.
Besides, what did you do - search the millions of public comments for your mother's name on the off chance it was used? And her comment was "in support of Comcast", whatever that means?
Using a dead person's name for a public comment is also not a smart way to poison the outcome either. 95% of citizens weren't going to leave a comment anyway - so just use living people's names if for some reason you feel the need to use a real name at all - it would make it at least plausible a real comment was submitted. After all, wow many Frank Smith's do you think exist in Ohio, for instance?
There's enough real stuff regarding this issue, we don't need to add fake anecdotes.
Can we please for once put some execs behind bars for such obvious fraud??