Last week, John Oliver warned that Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai was taking aim at net neutrality, and encouraged his viewers to write the FCC to register their opinion on the proposal. It worked, apparently. "The FCC site did get a ton of comments — the number is up to around 1.6 million, and those comments have come from all quarters of the political spectrum," Oliver said in a Last Week Tonight update Sunday night.
Not everyone was celebrating the burst of wonky civic engagement. The FCC complained about hacktivism aimed at the public-comment section, and some conservative commentators, like Liz Harrington at the Washington Free Beacon, discounted all the comments because some of the commenters used obviously fake names. "She is right, some of the comments on the site were faked — but interestingly, many of those were on the other side of this issue," Oliver said, including 128,000 identical comments against net neutrality that appear to be from spam bots.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Tesla Cybertrucks recalled over dislodging panelsSpeed Read Almost every Cybertruck in the US has been recalled over a stainless steel panel that could fall off
-
Crafting emporium Joann is going out of businessSpeed Read The 82-year-old fabric and crafts store will be closing all 800 of its stores
-
Trump's China tariffs start after Canada, Mexico pausesSpeed Read The president paused his tariffs on America's closest neighbors after speaking to their leaders, but his import tax on Chinese goods has taken effect
-
Chinese AI chatbot's rise slams US tech stocksSpeed Read The sudden popularity of a new AI chatbot from Chinese startup DeepSeek has sent U.S. tech stocks tumbling
-
US port strike averted with tentative labor dealSpeed Read The strike could have shut down major ports from Texas to Maine
-
Biden expected to block Japanese bid for US SteelSpeed Read The president is blocking the $14 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan's Nippon Steel, citing national security concerns
-
Judges block $25B Kroger-Albertsons mergerSpeed Read The proposed merger between the supermarket giants was stalled when judges overseeing two separate cases blocked the deal
-
Rupert Murdoch loses 'Succession' court battleSpeed Read Murdoch wanted to give full control of his empire to son Lachlan, ensuring Fox News' right-wing editorial slant
