many fakes can be identified by their origins in IP blocks from places like Vietnam and Russia and India
Bolded for emphasis – nothing about putting blocks in place. That sentence makes no grammatical sense for any definition of IP blocks other than the following:
Allocation
IP addresses are assigned to networks in different sized ‘blocks’. The size of the ‘block’ assigned is written after an oblique (/), which shows the number of IP addresses contained in that block. For example, if an Internet Service Provider (ISP) is assigned a “/16”, they receive around 64,000 IPv4 addresses. A “/26” network provides 64 IPv4 addresses. The lower the number after the oblique, the more addresses contained in that “block”.
An honest mistake on your part, but please read more carefully in the future. If you’re still confused by something (like a technical term you’re not familiar with), feel free to ask before imposing your own definition to support your own contention.
Yeah, as I say it wouldn’t be difficult to tell if it was a bulk posting but it’s something to consider. If for some reason the company involved didn’t look at the time or origin and just analysed the responses there wouldn’t be much to separate legit and non-legit.
(They’d be fools not to but apparently we’re dealing with fools.)
I’m quite familiar with IP blocks. I mistyped after a long period of being talked at. My apologies.
Your initial post made it sound like filtering out these comments is a simple task that the FCC actively was choosing not to do:
People don’t usually like being told they’re wrong, so I tried asking you a few questions that might lead you to arrive at a different conclusion.
I pointed out many people use VPNs or Tor. Someone familiar with information technology would have intuited that I was implying that a large number of posts coming from one IP address in a foreign country couldn’t safely be attributed to spam. It was a failure of communication on my part not to make that explicit, judging by your reply
You replied [quote=“gracchus, post:14, topic:101340”]
1000s of nearly identical comments from IP blocks in Vietnam on an FCC comment server would raise the eyebrows of most sysops.
[/quote]
Your reply also didn’t seem to fully grasp that there are serious legal issues associate with blocking comments, so I expressly stated that.
Which then led us circling back to this most recent post, where you claim… your post was talking about disregarding comments based on geographic origin…
I won’t copy and paste my original comment below, lest we get stuck in an infinite loop
You did more than mistype – you misread and attributed a view to me I did not hold right from your initial response. For the final time, my initial post did not discuss filtering out those comments at all. Please do not put words in my mouth.
I have 20+ years familiarity with information technology. I use and set up VPNs and proxies also use Tor. I was also not talking about posts coming from one IP address, but from an IP block associated with a network provider in a foreign country known as a spambot haven (comments posted via Tor aren’t relevant in that regard, because the apparent originating IP comes from a randomised country for each individual session). I followed up to your question by noting that it was one of several indicators that work in combination to indicate a high probability fake.
I fully grasp those issues, but didn’t mention them because they were irrelevant to my initial point. My response didn’t address that because (again) I wasn’t talking about blocking comments, but identifying them and reporting them as possible fakes to a manager who, like the regime he works for, doesn’t care about the distinction between false and true.
I did read your comment, responded clearly that I don’t think restricting commenting to US IP addresses would be a good solution and in fact never said that. I apparently gave your comment more consideration than you gave my initial one.
I know you’re new to commenting here and don’t want to discourage you from doing so in the future. Putting words in people’s mouths or turning them into strawmen is strongly discouraged by management here, especially if you’re trying to cover for your own honest error. I’ve made my points and am confident that others reading have seen them, even if you refuse to. I’ll consider this discussion ended.
Let’s try to stay on-topic here, please. This particular topic is interesting to me since I’ve personally dealt with these sorts of decisions from the realm of small (here at the BBS) to huge (Wikipedia) as parts of my job. I can categorically say that the answer is, at a minimum: “There’s no easy answer”.
The discussion, however, doesn’t need to veer off into commentary on specific posters, however. Please try to debate the points raised, and don’t try to infer things about your fellow posters from them. Assuming good faith, flag if necessary.
Having been a “bureaucrat” myself, I must say I trust them more than elected officials, or the political appointees. But then I was a humble engineer trying to do technical reviews in a regulatory setting. I find it interesting that they are being “inclusive” here, while at the same time people with a similar viewpoint are doing their best to exclude people from voting.
As I recall, Pai wasn’t being so “inclusive” when discussing all the (non-spambot and non-corporate person) pro-Net Neutrality comments sent the FCC’s way thanks to John Oliver. They only err on the side of inclusivity when the comments support their political agendas and those of their corporate masters.
Elected and appointed officials acting in good faith have the potential to work very well with the permanent bureaucracy and career government employees.
