Bogus Net Neutrality Comments Linked To Trumpland

from the flood-the-zone-with-bullshit dept

As we mentioned last October, there's several state AGs now investigating who was behind those bogus comments that flooded the FCC's website during its controversial net neutrality repeal. Millions of those fake comments used the identities of dead or otherwise oblivious people, and were posted by a bot pulling from a hacked database of some kind. The goal appears to have been to flood the zone with bullshit, undermining trust in the public's only chance to comment on what may just be the least-popular tech policy decision in modern internet history (though SOPA/PIPA got pretty damn close).

Gizmodo's Dell Cameron, who has been an absolute marvel at digging through this bog, has dropped an impressive bombshell that fills in a lot of longstanding gaps in identifying who was behind this astroturfing effort. The subject is weedy, so here's the pertinent bit:

"An organization run by a former Trump campaign statewide director is being investigated by the New York attorney general’s office for its role in submitting potentially hundreds of thousands of fraudulent comments to the Federal Communications Commission during the agency’s 2017 efforts to rollback Obama-era net neutrality rules."

NY's AG had subpoenaed all of the companies that submitted bulk comments to the FCC during the repeal, including consumer groups. Groups on both sides of the debate used what I affectionately like to refer to as "outrage-o-matic" form letter systems, which simply let real people send a form letter comment of complaint or support to government. That's perfectly legal.

What may not be legal is identity fraud, as well as a lot of this murkier, coordinated behavior Gizmodo uncovered by astroturfing organizations like "Free Our Internet," a fake consumer-advocacy firm specifically built to apparently con the gullible into thinking net neutrality was some sordid "globalist" cabal:

"What’s remained unreported until now is the source of the 37 identical Sharpsburg comments, which match those submitted on behalf of more than 300,000 Americans nationwide. That comment, which rails against Google, its former chairman Eric Schmidt, and “global billionaires like George Soros,” was authored by a group known as Free Our Internet, according to a page on its website, which has since been deleted.

Free Our Internet’s campaign against net neutrality, which it presents as a conspiracy by “liberal globalists to take over our Internet,” was first announced in a now-deleted press release on the website of Raven Strategies, a political consultancy whose client list includes, among others, Donald Trump for President."

Christie-Lee McNally, the president of Raven Strategies and the executive director of Free Our Internet, was tapped by Trump two years ago to become his statewide director in Maine, where she formerly served as executive director for the Republican Party. According to the bio on her firm’s website, she also served on the 58th presidential inaugural committee, working with cabinet-level nominees on the day of Trump’s swearing-in.

Free Our Internet was just one of several Trump-linked organizations Gizmodo discovered flooded the FCC comment system, social media, and the newswires with bogus support for the FCC's historically-unpopular handout to big telecom. The utter nonsensical claim that protecting the health of the internet from Comcast and AT&T is a Soros-fueled globalist cabal to "silence Conservative thought" was then in turn parroted by none other than Roger Stone:

Who had also been seeding the field with intellectually incontinent editorials on the subject:

"The Tech Left, funded largely by George Soros, had decided to champion under the banner of a benign-sounding “Net Neutrality” campaign and seize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grab the moral high ground in their determination to allow the giant edge providers to censor the Internet to suit their ideological preferences — ridding the Internet of conservative and libertarian content."

This claim is, as you know if you have even a fleeting understanding of net neutrality, complete and total dog shit.

Here in reality, giant ISPs like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon have spent years abusing the lack of broadband competition to hamstring competitors and drive up your monthly bill in a variety of obnoxious ways. Net neutrality rules were just a stopgap measure to prevent this from happening until somebody in either party grows a spine, stands up to AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon, and embraces policies that actually drive more competition to a clearly broken market (no, this doesn't magically occur on its own if you gut overight of natural telecom monopolies).

Because nobody likes Comcast, Trumpland and the telecom sector needed to figure out some alternative messaging to confuse folks who likely didn't fully understand this complicated subject. It should be clear by now that one of the more favored tactics of Trumpland is to flood the zone with absolute bullshit in a bid to shake the very foundations of truth itself, distracting the easily distracted from what, more often than not, winds up being a ham-handed handout to giant, unpopular corporations. In this case, some of the least popular corporations in America (which is truly saying something).

Flooding the zone with nonsense to disorient those looking for true north is an effective disinformation tactic, especially in a country long-ago rendered intellectually mute by decades of facts-optional, intentionally-divisive partisan infighting. In this instance, Trumplanders (and likely ISP lobbyists) knew that killing net neutrality would result in a massive wave of anger by the bipartisan majority of Americans who (quite correctly) understand the move was little more than a grotesque handout to predatory telecom monopolies.

So Trumpland crafted "alternative" messaging, completely unhinged from the truth, and flooded the internet with it in the hopes this would diminish the impact of the real public backlash. It's not clear it worked, but it likely did achieve its primary goal: creating questions about the validity of user complaints to the FCC, thereby diminishing their importance as a permanent record of consumer anger. It seems that may have been the motivation for the FCC's decision to make up that fake DDOS attack (which you'll note tried to claim angry John Oliver viewers were "attacking" the FCC website) as well.

What's very clear is there's still a lot of information to come on this as numerous state AGs and the GAO continue their investigation into this ouroborus of bullshit, and a lot of these policy shops and lobbying outfits should be very nervous right now. What's also clear is FCC boss Ajit Pai, with his own links to many of these Trumpland allies, went well out of his way to stop law enforcement from learning more. How much coordination occurred between the Pai FCC, incumbent ISPs, and this tangled web of news outlets, lobbying firms, and policy shops is going to be the million dollar question.

None of this is going to be a great look for Pai's FCC as more details are uncovered, and the court system tries to determine whether his agency's hand out to big telecom, propped up by mountains of bogus telecom lobbyist claims, violated federal law or FCC rules.

Filed Under: ajit pai, christie-lee mcnally, comments, fake comments, fcc, identity fraud, net neutrality, open comments, trump campaign
Companies: free our internet, raven strategies

Comcast Network Investment Drops Despite Repeated Claims Killing Net Neutrality Would Trigger Investment Wave

from the ill-communication dept

Why it's almost as if the Ajit Pai FCC and broadband industry haven't been entirely honest with us.

This week we noted how Wall Street is predicting that the telco and cable industries will see notable declines in network investment next year, despite the FCC and industry's repeated, breathless claims that killing net neutrality would somehow spur network investment. This, as we've long noted, was based on the bogus industry claim that net neutrality somehow stifled such investment, a claim repeatedly disproven by public SEC filings, earnings reports, and even statements by more than a dozen major ISP CEOs.

Almost as if on cue, Comcast released the company's latest earnings report showing, you guessed it, that the company saw a 3% dip in cable network CAPEX last quarter despite all of that sweet, potent, "internet freedom" Ajit Pai claims to have been spreading around:

"Comcast's cable division spent 3 percent less on capital expenditures last year, despite promises that the repeal of net neutrality rules would boost broadband network investment. Comcast's cable division spent $7.95 billion on capital expenditures during calendar year 2017, but that fell to $7.72 billion in the 12 months ending on December 31, 2018."

That is, if you're playing a long at home, precisely the opposite of what Comcast and other large ISPs repeatedly proclaimed while successfully convincing the FCC to effectively neuter itself, shoveling any remaining authority to an FTC that lacks the authority or attention span to police bad actors in telecom. In 2014, for example, Comcast repeatedly proclaimed that the FCC's net neutrality rules (arguably modest by international standards) would devastate job creation, network investment, and innovation:

"The sheer uncertainty surrounding such a regulatory environment would produce ‘a profoundly negative impact on capital investment.’ By itself, reduced investment would inhibit job creation, hinder the deployment of broadband infrastructure, and undermine the ‘virtuous circle’ of innovation that the open Internet rules are designed to advance."

By that logic, the inverse should have happened in the wake of the repeal. Instead, facing the one-two punch of little broadband competition and little real oversight of a growing natural monopoly, Comcast and other ISPs did what everybody knew they'd do, pass that savings on to investors and executives, instead of shoring up their networks or historically terrible customer support. All while raising rates higher and higher. And, oh, laying off employees despite nabbing billions in both Trump era tax cuts and regulatory favors, the financial impact of the latter is largely incalculable.

None of this was hard to predict, especially if you've studied history (especially telecom history). This is the same pattern has played out time and time again in telecom. Promise the earth, sea, and sky in exchange for taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks, and regulatory favors, then use the regulatory capture to double down on all of the industry's worst habits. By the time the press and public has figured out you're full of shit, you're off to the next PR ploy, which, in Comcast's case, involves pushing for regulation that hamstrings online ad players you desperately want to compete with in the streaming ad wars to come.

You'd like to think this is a cycle of dysfunction we'd eventually learn our way out of, but there's simply no indication that's occurring any time soon.

Filed Under: ajit pai, capex, fcc, investment, net neutrality
Companies: comcast

Remember When Ajit Pai Said Killing Net Neutrality Would Boost Network Investment? About That...

from the head-fake dept

You'll recall that one of the top reasons for killing popular net neutrality rules was that they had somehow supposedly crushed broadband industry network investment. Of course, a wide array of publicly-available data easily disproved this claim, but that didn't stop FCC boss Ajit Pai and ISPs from repeating it (and in some cases lying before Congress about it) anyway. We were told, more times that we could count, that with net neutrality dead, sector investment would explode since carriers would be "unchained" from "burdensome regulation."

You'll be shocked to learn this purported boon in investment isn't happening.

A few months ago, Verizon made it clear its CAPEX would be declining, and the company's deployment would see no impact despite billions in tax cuts and regulatory favors from the Trump FCC. Both AT&T and Verizon have similarly announced massive workforce reductions as well. Some investment growth is happening in wireless as carriers prepare for fifth-generation (5G) wireless service (which they would have deployed regardless of the attacks on net neutrality). But even that's a bit lower than Wall Street and sector analysis expected.

And according to the latest analysis from MoffettNathanson, both fixed-line telcos and cablecos are expected to see notable declines in CAPEX and investment:

"Telco-related wireline capex, meanwhile, is slated to fall from $20.3 billion in 2018 to $19.6 billion this year. That slight drop comes as AT&T completes the fiber buildout commitments originally promised when it acquired DirecTV by July, and as Verizon redirects capital to wireless, Moffett said. Capital spending among the four publicly traded cable operators covered by the MoffettNathanson -- Comcast, Charter, Altice USA and Cable One Inc. -- is expected to decline significantly this year -- some 5.8%.

My math may be shaky, but a 5.8% decline in cable industry CAPEX doesn't quite sound like the investment revolution Ajit Pai and his squad of industry allies promised.

To be clear, there's a lot of reasons that ISP CAPEX rises and falls. When Pai and friends were trying to claim that net neutrality killed network investment back in 2017, we noted extensively how they were cherry picking very narrow windows of CAPEX decline that had nothing to do with net neutrality. For example, one company's CAPEX had dipped under net neutrality because it had just finished a cable set top box upgrade project.

The same is true here. As MoffettNathanson notes, some of this dip is thanks to AT&T shifting its focus toward paying off debt for its megamergers. Another chunk of it is because streaming competition is reducing the desire for the clunky old cable box. And in the case of the biggest dip at Charter Communications (Spectrum), it was in large part thanks to the completion of an all-digital transition in the wake of its costly acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

None of that changes the fact that Ajit Pai and a chorus of telecom industry sycophants repeatedly misled the public and Congress about the net benefits of their historically-unpopular policies. Repeatedly. Now, we're left with the end result; a coalition of natural monopolies with even less competition or accountability than ever, eager to get to work not on investing back into the network, but extracting higher and higher consumer and competitor costs courtesy of limited competition. Limited competition Ajit Pai and friends can't even admit is real, much less have a plan to do anything about.

I know this is a crazy thought, but it's almost as if when you appoint industry sycophants to positions of oversight, their primary goal is to improve carrier revenues, leaving everything else (competition, consumer welfare, innovation) foundering in the rear view mirror.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, capex, fcc, investment, lies, net neutrality
Companies: at&t, verizon

No, BitTorrent's Plan for Cryptocurrency-Fueled Speed Boosts Doesn't Violate 'Net Neutrality'

from the ill-communication dept

For a subject we've been collectively discussing ad nauseum for the better part of two decades, it's kind of astounding how many people still don't really understand how net neutrality works.

Case in point: last week, BitTorrent (or what's left of it under new owner TRON) announced yet another business model revision, stating it would be integrating cryptocurrency into their BitTorrent platform. One of the goals of this "Project Atlas" is to develop a system that would financially-reward folks who seed files. TRON put the project plan this way:

"The new token, also called BitTorrent (BTT), will be issued by BitTorrent Foundation, established in Singapore and will enable users to exchange tokens to improve network speed. By providing users with the ability to use BTT tokens for faster downloads, the company aims to accelerate the overall speed of torrents. “BitTorrent token is the first in a series of steps to support a decentralized internet,” said Justin Sun, founder of TRON and CEO of BitTorrent. “In one giant leap, the BitTorrent client can introduce blockchain to hundreds of millions of users around the world and empower a new generation of content creators with the tools to distribute their content directly to others on the web."

Whether the blockchain can magically somehow make BitTorrent a sustainable business (a decade long quest at this point) is a subject for another day. More interesting to me was some of the reaction to TRON's announcement, including this piece over at TorrentFreak attempting to paint BitTorrent as a hypocrite for advocating for net neutrality, then itself embracing "fast lanes" on the internet:

"While details are scarce, it’s clear that with the BTT token users will be able to pay to speed up their downloads. It’s not clear how this will work, but it’s likely that a paying downloader will get priority over others. That sounds a bit like a “fast lane” and paid “prioritization,” albeit on a different scale. Large companies are not paying for faster access in this case, but ‘wealthy’ BitTorrent users are.

TorrentFreak asked both TRON and BitTorrent about their thoughts on this Net Neutrality argument and if it presents a problem. The TRON team said that it couldn’t comment on the matter, while BitTorrent didn’t respond at all.

The difference here is that users can choose to use another BitTorrent client if they're not happy with what BitTorrent is doing. That's not the case for broadband, where the lion's share of Americans only have access to one ISP at speeds of 25 Mbps or greater. Net neutrality violations are just a symptom of this limited competition, which lets giant telecom operators like AT&T or Comcast abuse their roles as natural monopolies. Net neutrality rules were simply a telecom-specific stopgap measure until somebody, anybody, is willing to actually challenge these companies politically and embrace real, pro-competitive policies.

Somehow, people take this telecom-specific paradigm and weirdly try to casually apply it to other sectors, as TorrentFreak does here. You'll often see the same mistake made when folks like Mark Cuban call for "search neutrality" or "app neutrality." Again, you can generally choose to not use a social media website or app store if you're not happy with the business decisions they're making. You can't do that in telecom. That's why net neutrality is a concept specific only to broadband and the lack of competition there that's plagued consumers for the better part of two decades. In broadband, users often have no other choice.

That's not to say there aren't valid criticisms for what TRON is doing here. But again, you can't call this a net neutrality violation because the term applies specifically to core telecom networks, not software platforms where users have the option of numerous other clients. The monopoly-dominated dance of dysfunction in telecom is a very unique animal, resulting in the creation of a very unique term in "net neutrality." It can't just be thrown about casually every time you see someone engaging in dubious behavior. That's not how any of this works.

Filed Under: bittorrent, cryptocurrency, net neutrality, tron
Companies: bittorrent

Ajit Pai Gloats As House Fails To Restore Net Neutrality

from the pendulum-always-swings-back-around dept

While a long shot, we've previously discussed how the outgoing House and Senate could have voted to reverse the FCC's repeal of net neutrality using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). And while the Senate voted 52 to 47 to approve the move last May, efforts to get the 218 votes needed in the House had been stuck in neutral as House Representatives remained blindly loyal to their real constituents: AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast.

As a result the clock ran out, and that route for restoration of the rules has died a whimpering demise. As is his tendency, FCC boss Ajit Pai couldn't just savor the "win." He felt compelled to issue a public statement (pdf) in which he not only gloats over the failure, but packs a large number of false statements into a relatively short paragraph:

"I’m pleased that a strong bipartisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives declined to reinstate heavy-handed Internet regulation. They did the right thing—especially considering the positive results for American consumers since the adoption of the Restoring Internet Freedom Order. Over the past year, the Internet has remained free and open. Broadband speeds are up, with download speeds in the United States increasing more than 35% in 2018, according to a recent report from Ookla. Internet access is also expanding, and the digital divide is closing. For example, a recent report by the Fiber Broadband Association found that fiber was made available to more new homes in 2018 than in any previous year. In short, the FCC’s light-touch approach is working. In 2019, we’ll continue to pursue our forward-looking agenda to bring digital opportunity to all Americans."

Oh, goody.

One, the FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules weren't "heavy handed." By international standards (Japan, Canada, The Netherlands) they were relatively weak, and were, in reality, pretty much the very least the US government could do to try and rein in natural telecom monopolies in the absence of real competition. Two, while Pai applauds a "strong bipartisan majority" in the House, that majority actively ignored the bipartisan majority of their constituents who support net neutrality and wanted the rules left intact in the first place.

Pai also felt oddly compelled to take credit for fairly marginal speed increases he had little to do with. Broadband speeds being up 35% has more to do with natural evolution (largely relatively cheap DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades on cable networks) than anything else. And at least a healthy portion of that speed increase is thanks to community fiber networks Pai actively opposes. Claiming any of this had anything to do with net neutrality is patently false.

Of course there's plenty of realities Pai would rather not talk about. Like that time Verizon throttled the mobile connections of California firefighters (while they were fighting a wildfire) and Pai did nothing. Or when CenturyLink blocked user internet access until users clicked on an ad, and the FCC said absolutely nothing. Or last week when AT&T quietly began violating net neutrality by only applying broadband usage limits if you use a competitor's streaming service. Not a word from the FCC about any of it, despite ample claims that the perils of non-neutrality are utterly hallucinated.

Nor does Pai much want to talk about the fact that as US telcos refuse to upgrade aging DSL lines, it's letting cable giants like Spectrum and Comcast nab a greater monopoly over fixed-line broadband, resulting in some of the highest prices for broadband in the developed world. Or how anybody with an IQ over 70 can see natural monopolies and media conglomerates like AT&T and Comcast hope to use their massive size and leverage to tilt the playing field and harm smaller streaming competitors in the online video wars to come.

Granted, restoring net neutrality via the CRA was always a long shot. Even if net neutrality advocates had managed to nab the needed House votes, the proposal would have needed to avoid a Trump veto. Still, consumer group efforts to get lawmakers to clearly demonstrate their position on this issue (you can find a breakdown here) served two valuable purposes: it helped illustrate which politicians clearly have no regard for their constituents (who, again, overwhelmingly oppose what Pai's been up to), while also applying pressure for the inevitable legislative battles to come.

That said, it's pretty telling that Pai couldn't just quietly enjoy the policy "win" here. Like the man who appointed him, he felt compelled to troll his opponents, gloat over a victory he had little to do with, and issue a statement packed with numerous falsehoods and distortions in the belief that that now passes for leadership. Unfortunately for Pai, the real battle is only just beginning thanks to next month's looming net neutrality court fight, where his agency's historically-bizarre behaviors (from making up a DDOS attack to turning a blind eye to identity theft and fraud) won't be left quite so open to "creative" interpretation.

Filed Under: ajit pai, broadband, competition, cra, fcc, net neutrality, speeds