FCC Gets Federal Direction on Handling Bogus, Mass Comments

The Administrative Conference of the US (ACUS) has recommended federal agencies take a number of steps to address the issues of mass computer generated and falsely attributed comments. In this case, it is recommending that agencies like the Federal Communications Commission, who must give members of the public the opportunity to weigh in on proposed rules for the agency's consideration, find better ways to manage what can be a flood of comments in the digital age. Among the recommendations are calls for agencies to "welcome" the filing of mass, "identical or substantively identical" comments as a single comment over multiple signatures, and to "consider alternative approaches to managing the display of comments online, such as by posting only a single representative example of identical comments in the online rulemaking docket or by breaking out and posting only non-identical content in the docket" to make it easier to navigate the system. When it comes to falsely attributed comments, ACUS suggests that agencies should give those to whom the comments have been falsely attributed a chance to have those comments anonymized or removed from the online docket.