<story><title>New York Attorney General Expands Inquiry into Net Neutrality Comments</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/technology/net-neutrality-inquiry-comments.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tombert</author><text>At the risk of coming off as some bleeding heart liberal, what&amp;#x27;s to stop corporations from doing this kind of stuff all the time?  What percentage of it goes unnoticed?&lt;p&gt;Everyone knows about lobbying, but until very recently, I didn&amp;#x27;t know about the whole &amp;quot;astroturfing&amp;quot; thing.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Not sure why I&amp;#x27;m being downvoted for this... I didn&amp;#x27;t really intend to make my post partisan, though I realize that the self-deprecating &amp;quot;bleeding-heard-liberal&amp;quot; might appear that way.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DoofusOfDeath</author><text>&amp;gt; At the risk of coming off as some bleeding heart liberal, what&amp;#x27;s to stop corporations from doing this kind of stuff all the time?&lt;p&gt;This doesn&amp;#x27;t strike as being a conservative vs. liberal issue. Most of us can probably agree that it&amp;#x27;s an unacceptable attack on the foundations of a representative democracy.&lt;p&gt;And as a social conservative with strong &amp;quot;law and order&amp;quot; leanings, the apparent fraud and identity theft make me very angry. The unwillingness of the federal government to investigate this only adds to my frustration and anger, because it smacks of (at least) passive corruption.</text></comment>
<story><title>New York Attorney General Expands Inquiry into Net Neutrality Comments</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/technology/net-neutrality-inquiry-comments.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tombert</author><text>At the risk of coming off as some bleeding heart liberal, what&amp;#x27;s to stop corporations from doing this kind of stuff all the time?  What percentage of it goes unnoticed?&lt;p&gt;Everyone knows about lobbying, but until very recently, I didn&amp;#x27;t know about the whole &amp;quot;astroturfing&amp;quot; thing.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Not sure why I&amp;#x27;m being downvoted for this... I didn&amp;#x27;t really intend to make my post partisan, though I realize that the self-deprecating &amp;quot;bleeding-heard-liberal&amp;quot; might appear that way.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dragonwriter</author><text>Because regulatory comments aren&amp;#x27;t a vote or popularity contest, or even subject to much public attention, but are instead, in the normal case, subject to substantive review and response, ballot box stuffing in a way which makes them appear to come from less expert general public commenters doesn&amp;#x27;t really help the corporation. It only really helps on an issue where the regulatory process has public attention where the substantive outcome is a foregone conclusion but wants additional public political cover. This is &lt;i&gt;quite&lt;/i&gt; rare for federal rulemaking.&lt;p&gt;(A milder—in volume terms—version where you try to make substantive comments seem like they are coming from involved parties with a different interest than yours—say, on a healthcare reg, a payer presenting fraudulent provider comments, might be useful, except in that case there is a lot more risk that someone would follow up on the particular comment and turn up something fishy.)</text></comment>