| I would say that this comment is "real" - in the sense that it was actually wordsmithed for the position it supports, but that it is likely that the purported person's name and address are fake/misattributed to the comment. This wordsmithed position likely came from some partisan political action web site gathering automated signatories; you go to it, fill out your info, and it posts to the FCC input form/api or whatever. Similar ones exist as well for the opposite view ("for net-neutrality rules"). At that point, it's a matter of generating the information and pasting and sending (the actual text is usually pre-filled on the form, sometimes with allowances to allow a real user to edit the form). For instance, I looked up my name on the AG's site - it found several hits. Most of them were "against net neutrality" - essentially with the text you posted - but the addresses didn't match my address. But a couple were posted "for the current net neutrality rules" urging the FCC not to change anything; even so, I didn't post them, and the addresses didn't match. Curiously, one of those two comments had a small sentence tacked onto the end, reading "Don't fuck this up!" - which is something I would never put into a public comment to a govt agency or request. So even though I agreed with the position, it still appalled me to see that vulgarity applied to the comment. All comments though were fake - I never sent any of them in to the FCC. |
Or your name isn't that uncommon. Have you ever tried being the first google result for your name, as an SEO experiment? It is hard!
I say this as someone who shares a name with a minor league baseball player, numerous facebook/linkedin/etc profiles and a baby whose life/death was covered by the BBC.
I don't go around accusing all of these people of being fake.