By law, when a federal agency like the FCC proposes to change a rule
such as net neutrality, it’s supposed to call for public comment.
But apparently hundreds of thousands if not millions of comments
seemingly urging repeal of the FCC’s net neutrality rule have been
faked. Just days after the public comment process opened, reporters
began noticing identical comments critical of the Obama-era rule, and
many so-called “signers” say they never sent in comments.
In an open letter
to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman
charges that the FCC’s public comment process “has been corrupted by the
fraudulent use of Americans’ identities,” and that the “perpetrators
have attempted to drown out the views of the real people, businesses,
and others who honestly commented on this important issue.”
Yet the FCC has declined to cooperate with Schneiderman’s
investigation, rebuffing requests for logs and other records associated
with the comments. Schneiderman says he has made at least 9 requests for
records from the FCC between June and November that have gone
unanswered.
Once again, the integrity of the nation’s democratic
process is being threatened. And once again, it’s the Trump
administration that appears to be responsible – and refusing to
investigate.
The FCC have already disregarded millions of emails in suspect of sent by fake bot accounts. If you want to fight, you need to call or message the FCC and your
Senators
yourself!
Ajit Pai – Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov
202-518-7399
Mike O’Rielly – Mike.ORielly@fcc.gov
301-657-9092
Brendan Carr – Brendan.Carr@fcc.gov
202-719-7305
Look up and contact your Senators and inform them why you don’t want Net Neutrality repealed.
And to anyone OUTSIDE the US, Tell your US friends and followers to fight this, but DON’T get involved yourself! They won’t listen to anyone who’s not a US citizen.
We have until DECEMBER 14TH, 2017 before the final vote goes through!
This is a very well meaning post, but there’s a piece of key information missing here that would change the tone of it immensely.
Yes, the FCC discovered that millions of emails were sent to them about Net Neutrality. Yes, the FCC is disregarding those emails.
But here’s the kicker…
MOST OF THE EMAILS THAT IT DISCOVERED THAT WERE SENT BY BOTS WERE AGAINST NET NEUTRALITY
Apparently, if you remove the bot accounts and petitions sent in with no signatures, the overwhelming majority of comments were in favor of net neutrality.
Guys, please be careful to vet that what you choose to signal boost is actually accurate. I’m seeing a lot of well-intentioned posts today about Net Neutrality that are likely to do just as much harm as good due to misinformation in them.
For instance, we are not all suddenly shouting that the sky is falling because the FCC has PASSED the bill abolishing Net Neutrality and the changes are to be put in place some time this month. As claimed by one post I just saw with over 5,000 notes already. This is simply, unequivocally NOT true, and it can actually get in the way of the call to action that very post made, asking people to call and email their congressmen, because a lot of people who see that might think “what’s the point, if its already passed?”
It hasn’t. Chairman Ajit Pai of the FCC unveiled in April his proposed plan to strike back the Net Neutrality regulations Obama’s administration passed in 2015, and which have since 2015 been upheld by the courts in the face of Republican opposition’s attempts to claim they overreached. What has people shouting the sky is falling NOW is because yesterday (November 21st) is when the date of the official vote on this proposed plan was announced. That date is December 14th.
Which means there IS still time to affect the outcome of the vote. People are pessimistic about the chances of this vote because the FCC board is held by a Republican majority at the moment, but make the passing of this bill seem toxic enough to other Republican interests and there is still a chance to keep it from passing.
Which is still a hell of a lot better than assuming the bill has already passed and that there’s really no point.
We have until December 14th to kick up enough of a fuss that the Republicans on the FCC board think twice about voting for this bill. And even after that, there are still legal recourses. The courts have refused to uphold other bills Trump’s administration has attempted to pass as overreaching, unconstitutional, and/or in opposition of the true will of the people – just as the Republicans attempted to do back in 2015 when the FCC under Obama passed the Net Neutrality laws in the first place.
This does not mean be complacent. This does not mean assume enough other people will raise enough of a fuss without adding your voice to the mix. It simply means THERE IS STILL TIME TO ACT. The sky may be falling, but until it finishes falling, there’s still a chance to catch it instead.
We have until December 14th to kick up enough of a fuss that the Republicans on the FCC board think twice about voting for this bill.
there IS still time to affect the outcome of the vote.
The whole net neutrality discussion seems to be focusing on download speeds and access to particular services, but does anybody remember back in 2006 when AOL got caught blocking people from sending or receiving emails that expressed criticism of AOL? There was no sign that it was happening, and the emails would appear to be delivered – AOL’s mail servers would even report a normal “accepted for delivery” status code – but they’d just never show up in the recipient’s inbox. Or how about the incident a year earlier where Telus imposed fake service outages for websites expressing support for the
Telecommunications Workers Union? Again, no indication that any blocking was taking place: just a error page falsely claiming the affected sites were down.
Under the proposed deregulations, this sort of thing would be explicitly permitted, and we know it’s possible because it’s been done. Now consider how much more communication happens via the Internet in 2017 than in 2005/2006. It’s not even email or websites; big chunks of the telephone network now pass through ISP-mediated VOIP channels, and those conversations would likewise be targetable by faked outages.
Like, this isn’t some dystopian sci-fi scenario; we’re talking about horseshit that major ISPs were getting up to on the sly over a decade ago, and are now about to be told can be engaged in without regulatory penalty.
We
should be loud and clear in the coming weeks like we’ve been before: net
neutrality is crucial to helping everyone, regardless of where they
live or how much money they make, get online.
But there’s another way we can fight for an open internet.
Last week, 19 towns across Colorado voted to allow the exploration of creating a local, public alternative to expensive private providers.
Fort
Collins voters went the furthest, passing a measure to finance an
assessment of starting a city-owned broadband utility, which would aim
to provide faster service at a cheaper price. That means residents could
have a say in whether a new public network maintains the principle of
net neutrality, whatever the FCC decides in the future.
“People
who don’t normally get excited or vote actually turned out this time
and actually got energized,” said one resident who had campaigned for
the measure.
Not everyone was excited. Industry groups spent more than $450,000
campaigning against the measure. In fact, the very reason Colorado
towns had to vote “yes” before even exploring public broadband is
because of an industry-backed state law requiring municipalities to jump
through hoops to take control of their internet infrastructure. (The
industry has successfully pushed similar legislation in over 20 states.)
Comcast
and the like are quaking in their boots about a public option, and they
should be. Cities like Chattanooga, Tennessee, which became the first
U.S. city to offer gigabit internet speed after going public, are
outperforming private providers and even forcing them to innovate to
play catch up.
Why
shouldn’t internet access be a public good? The web should be like the
Postal Service, which, because it’s public, provides affordable mail
service to everyone, rich or poor, in all areas of the country.
And why
should a handful of corporate executives and investors get rich while
providing expensive, slow access and unbearable customer service?
Comcast’s CEO, billionaire Brian Roberts, pocketed $33 million last year alone while running America’s most hated corporation.
People
need the internet for life in the 21st century, to communicate, apply
for jobs, and access crucial resources. Everyone should have affordable
access.
This isn’t art-related, but this is EXTREMELY SERIOUS IF YOU LIVE IN THE US. The following message is pasted from Reddit user DrDreamtime. I did not write this, but it
contains all the most important information you should know. It should be spread as far and wide as possible.
For
those that do not know or understand what net neutrality is and would
rather see a video instead of a LOT of text, here is a good video by John Oliver on Net Neutrality.
Please take the time to at least do the first easy step, either of the two options work and take very little time.
If
this fails, the possibility of actually having to pay more to access
reddit, facebook, and any other website or face massive loading speed
increases or even a straight out site-block by your ISP.
You need to contact your representatives and senators about Net Neutrality even if they already support it, but especially if they don’t.
Remember
that this very thread is only possible because of a free and open
internet; kill net neutrality and threads like this might be a thing of
the past.
Text RESIST to 50409
to get help from RESIST Bot. It helps you find your reps, write letters
to them, and sends them faxes FOR FREE. Everyone who cares about Net
Neutrality should take 5 minutes to write to your representatives, once a
week (or a day). Be heard.
The harder, but still very easy way:
Step 1: Find out who your Representative and Senator is/are.
FaxZero has a system set up allowing you to fax your Representatives and Senators
for free! (Faxes are good if you can’t get through on the phone lines,
or just if you want congressional staffers to listen to fax machine
noises until Net Neutrality is safe.)
Step 3: Call, write, or fax to express your feelings on this.
A
lot of people are nervous about calling their elected officials for the
first time, maybe you don’t know what to say, or how to say it, or even
who you’ll be talking to, so here’s what you’ll need to know.
There’s
a 75% chance your call will be answered by a Secretary who is
specifically there to listen to your concerns, there’s a 25% chance your
call will be bumped into a voicemail box which is specifically there to
listen to your concerns, there is a ~0% chance you’ll find yourself on
the phone with your Senator or Representative.
You may be asked for your name and address or zip code, it’s okay not to tell them if you don’t want to, but the information is useful for your elected officials. I usually just give my first name, zip code, and the name of my town.
Don’t
worry about a script, don’t worry about being eloquent, you’re not
writing Shakespeare here, you’re a concerned citizen voicing their
frustrations, fears, and hopes. “I’m really scared of Ajit Pai’s plans
to roll back net neutrality, a free and open internet is important to me
because [Your reason here. Some suggestions: An open internet is
important to democracy/I worry what Donald Trump might do with more
power/Cable bills are already too high/etc.]. Please tell [Senator or
Representative] that I support a free and open internet, I support Net
Neutrality, and I vote.” The only hard and
fast rule is that you need to be polite; these folks are getting dozens,
if not hundreds of calls a day, they don’t need you bitching and
swearing at them for something they have no control over. Be passionate,
but be polite.
Reminder: Only call YOUR OWN elected officials!
Calling Mitch McConnell from sunny Florida won’t do anyone any good,
and might actually harm the cause. Only call your own elected officials,
period.
IF YOU ARE READING THIS, CHANCES ARE YOU GO ON THE INTERNET EVERYDAY. THE FCC IS NOW PLANNING ON REPEALING NET NEUTRALITY. THIS MEANS THAT POPULAR WEBSITES WILL RUN SLOWLY UNTIL YOU PAY AN EXTRA FEE. WE WOULD NO LONGER HAVE THE PRIVILEGE OF USING WEBSITES AND RESEARCHING FOR FREE.
TEXT ‘RESIST’ AT 50409 AND TELL YOUR SENATORS THAT NET NEUTRALITY NEEDS TO STAY.
Seriously. Resistbot is great. Text it. It lets you write a letter it then faxes to the offices of your congresspeople and senators. If you keep getting told that ‘messages are full’ when you try to call on the phone, try Resistbot.
Also, if you have anxiety about speaking to people on the phone, Resistbot requires no human interaction. You write a letter via text, resistbot does the rest.
I just did mine!!! It took less than 3 minutes. seriously guys, taking 3-5 minutes out of your day to contact your senator or congressman for FREE can help save the internet.
It’s so easy, you guys, seriously.
So I’m going to add on that this does work, I literally just did it and it was super simple!
– The OOOONNLY people benefiting from this possible rollback are corporate shareholders.
– The removal of NN would result in few if any new jobs whatsoever, so any argument that it would help the economy is null and void (btw, we’re not actually in a recession anymore, in case anyone still thought that. The US’s economy, while it has plateaued in actual growth at about 2%, it’s actually pretty high in the business cycle.)
– Limitation and partisan censorship is a major concern (I lied that one is what everyone is talking about)
– In fact it will HURT online businesses, which will damage the small business sector in general.
– And last but not least: It is going to have a majorly negative impact on the education system. I just finished highschool in May and let me tell you, even rural schools are getting more and more technology and internet dependent. Students frequently, if not regularly, are sent home with online assignments. How can students possibly be expected to finish an online homework assignment if they can’t even remotely begin to afford internet? This is already an issue in rural and poor and POC dominated areas, and should Net Neutrality be removed and access to the internet be placed back into money hungry corporate hands, it will be an even more massive and far worse problem that will only perpetuate low education levels in these areas. what if their assignment requires research on a website that their partisan provider has decided to censor? You get a zero. Especially if you’re a college student that can’t afford another $150 a month just to get ok-ish internet speeds.
– This gives me great concern for marginalized and outcast kids. The internet has been one of the very, very few places where LGBT+ and POC children and people in general can go and feel safe and accepted and loved and celebrated for how/who they are. Imagine that that’s the ONLY place you feel safe and okay and then that gets taken away from you. Early teen suicide rates are already high enough.
This is all just a disgusting money grab by the GOP and other politicians who are invested in cable and cellular companies. Call or message your congressional representatives to oppose. Drown them in resistance. I’ve already found several posts with links that let you do that.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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