Fight for the Future, Pew Spar Over FCC Net Neutrality Docket Analysis

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. 

"Yesterday, the Pew Research Group released a study that triggered a number of new reports about issues within the FCC’s net neutrality comment docket," said Fight for the Future's Evan Greer. "The Pew study, unfortunately, contained a number of serious inaccuracies, and lacked needed context in a way that conflated legitimate grassroots advocacy and organic online outrage with malicious attempts to manipulate the FCC docket with fraud." Pew conceded two errors and corrected them, but took issue with the suggestion it had failed to put its results in context. "We believe that Fight for the Future’s other points mischaracterize our report and our nonpartisan, non-advocacy mission," said Pew, which responded to the FFTF criticism in a blog post. It agreed the report had misstated the total number of comments during the last net neutrality debate, and was incorrect when it said John Oliver "promoted the most common pro-net-neutrality comment to have been submitted to the FCC in its 2017 campaign." But Pew also said those did not change the report's basic findings.