<story><title>FCC Proposes Changing Comment System After WSJ Found Thousands of Fakes</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/fcc-proposes-rebuilding-comment-system-after-thousands-revealed-as-fake-1531315654</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>0xbadcafebee</author><text>Some background:&lt;p&gt;28 senators, and the New York Attorney General, had to tell Pai to stop the FCC voting on new rules last year because of all the fraudulent comments. The fake comments were made apparent over a year ago. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cnet.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;net-neutrality-fcc-ajit-pai-bots-senators-letter&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cnet.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;net-neutrality-fcc-ajit-pai-bots-s...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The FCC refused to provide records to the NY AG in order to investigate the possibility of fake comments. In other words, the NY AG was the only part of the government investigating the fake comments, and the FCC actively worked against investigating them. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.slashdot.org&amp;#x2F;story&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;0037222&amp;#x2F;fcc-refuses-records-for-investigation-into-fake-net-neutrality-comments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.slashdot.org&amp;#x2F;story&amp;#x2F;17&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;0037222&amp;#x2F;fcc-refuses...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pai&amp;#x27;s office issued this response to calls to delay the vote:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  This is just evidence that supporters of heavy-handed Internet
  regulations are becoming more desperate by the day as their effort
  to defeat Chairman Pai&amp;#x27;s plan to restore Internet freedom has stalled.
  The vote will proceed as scheduled on December 14.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
As promised, the FCC voted to repeal Net Neutrality.&lt;p&gt;And now, 7 months later, the FCC is saying there were fraudulent comments, and maybe they should redesign their website.</text></comment>
<story><title>FCC Proposes Changing Comment System After WSJ Found Thousands of Fakes</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/fcc-proposes-rebuilding-comment-system-after-thousands-revealed-as-fake-1531315654</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>aresant</author><text>I think this is an interesting problem to solve.&lt;p&gt;The FCC, and other government agencies that require input from Citizens, need to know the comments they are getting are from actual citizens aka taxpayer id, aka social security #.&lt;p&gt;As a Citizen I&amp;#x27;d want to submit comments with some superficial guarantee of anonymity. EG the bureaucrats can&amp;#x27;t attach my comments to my name, only my comments to a valid US Citizen. (1)&lt;p&gt;As a mechanism for verification there should be a preliminary &amp;quot;two-factor&amp;quot; registration system via postal mail to verified citizen addresses. And a secondary &amp;quot;two-factor&amp;quot; to execute comments.&lt;p&gt;Will this cut down on the discourse? Dramatically.&lt;p&gt;Will it improve the integrity of the comments? Absolutely.&lt;p&gt;Will the politicians still ignore the desires of its constituents vs special interests? No question.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;i&gt;This has been a paid ad by the People For Campaign Finance Reform.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;(1)  Of course the NSA is watching everything anyways, and probably reading our minds with lazer brain topography rays, but we&amp;#x27;ll leave that concern out for now.</text></comment>