Civic Engagement

Hundreds of protests were staged across the country on Dec 7 in the latest uproar over a repeal of rules ensuring an open internet. The drumbeat of action can in good part be traced back to a yellow Victorian house in Worcester (MA). The home is the nerve center for Fight for the Future, a scrappy 10-person nonprofit that has helped lead the opposition to the change — even if its effort to protect so-called net neutrality has the longest of odds.

Scorching criticism of internet service providers over their stance on net neutrality for much of 2017 hasn’t hurt their standing with US consumers — though some weren’t that popular to begin with. For Comcast, there was practically nowhere to go but up. Thirty-two percent of respondents had a very or somewhat favorable view of Comcast the day Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced his repeal plans; 26 percent had an unfavorable opinion. By Nov.

Back in May 2014, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai (he was a lowly commissioner back then) complained that the FCC was moving too fast on net neutrality changes.  “Indeed, on several recent issues, many say that the Commission has spent too much time speaking at the American people and not enough time listening to them,” then-Commissioner Pai said in response to then-Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposed open internet regulations, which at the time drew criticism from both Republicans and Democrats on the commission.

Network neutrality supporters plan a nationwide series of protests starting Dec 7 outside Verizon stores, where they will express their opposition to the pending repeal of net neutrality rules.

You can find local protests by going to https://events.battleforthenet.com/ and searching by ZIP code.

By the time the Federal Communications Commission’s ferociously controversial net neutrality draft Order was released on November 22, 2017, more than 22 million comments were submitted to the FCC through its new application programming interface (API). This avalanche of public input is impossible to navigate and interpret using human labor alone. Machine learning tools are uniquely suited to navigating and interpreting such a large amount of information.

[Commentary] Whereas Soviet intelligence operatives occasionally tried to plant false stories in Western media outlets, today the Kremlin subcontracts the task to proxies, who spread customized disinformation using fake accounts on social media. These proxies need not even reside in Russia since they can be contacted and compensated via the so-called Dark Web (a parallel, closed-off internet) wherever they live.

If you heard that the Federal Communications Commission received a staggering 21.7 million comments during its open comment period on its forthcoming net neutrality ruling, you might assume this phenomenon represented democracy in action. But in reality, those 21.7 million comments represent a new challenge to democracy — specifically to the way we register what actually counts as an opinion. The FCC made clear that it would be dismissing most of the 21.7 million comments submitted to its website as part of the open comment period on its planned repeal of net neutrality laws.

Voters know Republicans in Congress are the only ones who can stop Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai.  If enough Republicans tell Chairman Pai to stop, he will likely back down. After all, Congressional pressure has stopped the FCC before. Members of Congress face a choice: They can side with their constituents, who overwhelmingly want them to defend the greatest communication and innovation platform ever invented, or support one of the most blatant anti-consumer corporate giveaways in modern history.

Fight for the Future (FFTF) called out Pew Research over mistakes and what it said were out of context characterizations and mischaracterizations in Pew's analysis of the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality docket. 

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman wants New York state residents to report fake net neutrality-related comments sent under their names. Schneiderman’s office has put up a page where New Yorkers can search the FCC’s comment database, then report any fake submissions. The page asks users to post links to fake comments and answer a few accompanying questions, including whether the content matched their actual view of net neutrality.