AT&T absurdly claims that most “legitimate” net neutrality comments favor repeal
Despite a study showing that 98.5 percent of individually written network neutrality comments support the US's current net neutrality rules, AT&T is claiming that the vast majority of "legitimate" comments favor repealing the rules. The Federal Communication Commission's net neutrality docket is a real mess, with nearly 22 million comments, mostly from form letters and many from spam bots using identities stolen from data breaches. AT&T is part of an industry group called Broadband for America that just funded a study that tries to find trends within the chaos. That study (conducted by consulting firm Emprata) found fewer than 1.6 million filings appear to have "originated from individuals that took the time to type a personalized comment." Of those, 1.52 million were against FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to repeal the current Title II net neutrality rules, while just 23,000 were in favor of repeal.
Let's contrast that finding with what AT&T Executive VP Joan Marsh wrote in a blog post: "While Title II proponents may claim that millions of consumers representing the large majority of commenters support Title II, in fact, most of these comments were not legitimate. And when only legitimate comments are considered, the large majority of commenters oppose Title II regulation of Internet access."