[brokenkebab]

Companies opposing to NN paid for astroturfing campaign. While proponents based their marketing on fear-mongering ("The internet is dying" - NYT, "Death of the internet" - CNBC). Would be interesting to measure which was more efficient in terms of mobilizing voters, but worth keeping in mind that it's tangential to the discussion about NN's virtues, and deficiencies

[Fellshard]

Are you kidding? The account of astroturfing on behalf of NN was far more widespread.

[smt88]

Why would NN need astroturfing when it's wildly popular?

[SpicyLemonZest]

It wasn't a matter of need - it was just trivially easy to do. New York says they traced 7.7 million faked pro-NN comments to a single college kid who doesn't seem to have done anything more complex than run a script.

[xhkkffbf]

Yeah... and I wouldn't be surprised if the proponents didn't pay for some astroturfing too.

Like seriously, who has time to write an opinion to the FCC? Not even most people on HN who might even have real, honest opinions about net neutrality. And probably 99.5% of society doesn't have a clue what net neutrality might even be. Is it possible that there's one honest opinion in the batch? I suppose so, but it's probably like Ajit Pai's mom.