A Bot Is Using the Names of Dead People to Advocate Revoking Net Neutrality on the FCC Website

Ajit Pai, the chairman of the FCC, isn’t a fan of net neutrality. He thinks we should revoke the net neutrality regulations, which state that internet providers must treat all data equally—as opposed to picking and choosing how quickly they allow their clients to view specific websites and other content. He thinks instead of that system, which is working fine, it should be voluntary for companies like AT&T and Verizon. He thinks they should get to choose what websites load quickly for their users.

So it should come as no surprise that the FCC is largely ignoring complaints published by Techdirt, alleging that a bot is flooding the FCC website with comments railing against net neutrality. These comments have been running for some time, and at first the bot used names of people who had never visited the FCC website and had no idea what net neutrality was, so it was obvious the bot was just pulling names in alphabetical order off of a website.

But now, there’s evidence that it’s also using the names of dead people to further its goals. Techdirt has looked up some of the names used by this bot, and found at least one whose most recent online activity is an obituary.

Of course, the FCC isn’t doing anything about this. Why should it? The dead people are supporting Pai’s views, so clearly these dead people deserve to be commenting on the website of a federal commission charged with regulating the communications industry.

The FCC plans to unveil their grand plan for net neutrality before Thanksgiving. Maybe they’ll have gotten rid of the zombies on their website by then.