• About
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
Tech Newsday
  • Security
  • Future of Work
  • Mobility
  • Emerging Tech
  • Today’s News
No Result
View All Result
Tech Newsday
  • Security
  • Future of Work
  • Mobility
  • Emerging Tech
  • Today’s News
No Result
View All Result
Tech Newsday
No Result
View All Result
Home Government & Public Sector

Broadband Industry Accused in ‘Fake’ Net Neutrality Comments

TND News Desk by TND News Desk
May 12, 2021
in Government & Public Sector
0 0
0

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has revealed that the broadband industry spent $4.2 million to generate and submit more than 8.5 million fake comments to the FCC, creating what appears to be widespread grassroots opposition to existing net neutrality rules.

Democrat and Attorney General Letitia James said her office has reached agreements with three companies involved in the program – Fluent Inc., Opt-Intelligence Inc., and React2Media Inc. – that impose a hefty $4.4 million fine and require each company to implement comprehensive reforms in future campaigns.

The investigation found that nearly 18 million of the more than 22 million public comments received by the FCC, both for and against neutrality, were faked.

Fluent, a New York-based company that provided more than 5 million digital net neutrality signatures to the broadband industry, agreed to pay $3.7 million.

Opt-Intelligence and React2Media did not respond to requests for comment.

According to the investigation, the three companies were also involved in more than 100 other unrelated campaigns to influence regulators and public officials by generating fake comments to influence the regulatory process.

The FCC under former President Barack Obama passed landmark net neutrality rules in 2015 that prohibited Internet service providers from blocking traffic or offering paid fast lanes. The regulations, opposed by the broadband industry, were overturned by the FCC under the Trump presidency in 2017.

Days before Trump’s inauguration, a document circulating among a small group of senior broadband executives contained a plan to overturn the FCC’s existing net neutrality regulations.

James’ office also announced that the FCC received an additional 9.3 million fake net neutrality comments using fake identities.

Supporters of net neutrality rules championed provisions to ensure a free and open Internet, but the broadband and telecommunications industries argued that the rules would restrict investment.

For more information, read the original story in Reuters.

Please login to join discussion

Subscribe

About Tech News Day

In just 10 minutes you will have all your leadership tech news needs covered. Our Editors browse the top tech news sites for you, get rid of the fluff and post summaries of the best. Our content is created by trained professionals and enhanced for IT leaders using leading edge artificial intelligence.

About

Tech Newsday

Tech News Day picks the new, most relevant tech stories.

Our selection is done by industry professionals – executives like you who pick the top stories for that day. Our writers summarize these to give you a quick summary and the key takeaways.

SUBSCRIBE

Categories

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Auto Tech
  • Blockchain
  • Careers & Education
  • Channel Strategy
  • Cloud
  • Communications & Telecom
  • Companies
  • Data & Ananytics
  • Development
  • Digital Transformation
  • Distribution
  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • eCommerce
  • Emerging Tech
  • End User Hardware
  • Engineering
  • Financial
  • Future of Work
  • Governance
  • Government & Public Sector
  • Human Resources
  • Infrastructure
  • IoT
  • Leadership
  • Legal
  • Legislation & Regulation
  • Managed Services & Outsourcing
  • Marketing
  • Mobility
  • Open Source
  • Operations
  • People
  • Podcasts
  • Privacy
  • Security
  • Service
  • SMB
  • Social Networks
  • Software
  • Supply Chain
  • Today's News
  • Top Stories This Week
  • Women in Tech
  • Home
  • Today’s News
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact

2022 Tech News Day

No Result
View All Result
  • Security
  • Future of Work
  • Mobility
  • Emerging Tech
  • Today’s News

2022 Tech News Day

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Why are you leaving?

About Tech News Day

Tech News Day is a daily publication featuring key daily news stories about technology and how it affects businesses. We know that you are busy and that there’s a lot of information coming at you. While there are lots of programs that will curate based on what you have already read or followed, Tech News Day picks the new stories that we feel are most relevant.

Our selection is done by industry professionals – executives like you who pick the top stories for that day. Our writers summarize these to give you a quick summary and the key takeaways. If you want to do a deeper dive and get even more information, we provide a link to at least one of the longer stories from one of our sources (we are often following stories from more than one source).

We also have a daily podcast, published each morning so that you can get the news stories of the day from wherever you get your podcasts.

We hope you find this to be useful to you in keeping up to date in these challenging times. We love your input and opinions. You can use our feedback widget to rate individual stories or you can write us at NewsDesk@technewsday.com.

Click Here

-
00:00
00:00

Queue

Update Required Flash plugin
-
00:00
00:00