FCC halts public comments on Net Neutrality

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/15/a-banana-in-my-ear.html

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When the government is not accountable to its citizens, what redress do we have?

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Don’t forget, the FCC doesn’t control the USPS:

Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554

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FCC = F#%! Citizen Comments

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Judging by the last few years of US politics, the answer is “vote for the most batshit crazy person you can find.”

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I gotta get down there and run for president!

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I’m amazed they even bothered to have a comments address. After all, the only people that would use it are radical anarchist-communist terroristicalists. Probably moooslims too.

Ooh waitaminute… maybe it was a honey trap to get emails for all them trouble-makers.

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You have my vote!

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I actually got a call from the FCC this past weekend to confirm that I was a real human being and that yes, I posted a comment on their website. It’s fortunate that I didn’t just let it go to voicemail, which is what I would typically do for a call that the caller ID said was from Washington. I’m assuming that they are doing this to invalidate as many comments as they can.

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likewise… I don’t know anything about you, but I think the odds are in my favor that you couldn’t be worse

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I hope not, I had a similar call but let it go to voicemail.

They’re calling it a procedural quirk. Bots? Big Data? I imagine the net providers are volunteering to “help” with that.

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The problem is differentiating between bot-generated comments and the canned comments that frequently show up on various politically active groups’ websites. I often get asked to send my reps and other congresscritters comments about this or that piece of legislation, and for my convenience, I am provided a pregenerated message with all the talking points; all I have to do is click the district-relevant name.

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I’d quite happily vote for you to be World President.

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Underlying Techdirt article: “While I’m sure some folks will insist that this is being done to stop the public from commenting, that’s not true. It’s just a dumb rule that the FCC has that it should dump, in part because of just how clueless and out of touch it makes the FCC look.”

Cory: “the FCC has solved the problem by telling the public to go fuck themselves”

So is this a standard application of a stupid rule, or is it the FCC deliberately trying to keep the public from commenting? Because this piece and the article it links to reach wildly differing conclusions on that.

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And they will then proceed to redirect them to the “circular filling cabinet”?

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The founding fathers proposed the First Amendment so that we could reassure the government that it’s doing a good job, and that its hands are of normal size. It’s a shame that so many people have learned to abuse it.

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The current government’s hands are yuuuge! They are the most beautiful hands. Believe me. They are the best hands. Nobody has seen better hands.

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