Volkswagen Headline Font Pairs' title='Volkswagen Headline Font Pairs' />Telecoms Pay for Totally Shocking Analysis of Net Neutrality Comments. Today is the last day to submit comments on the proposal to kill open internet rules to the Federal Communications Commission FCC. Good luck with that, though. The public comment period has been complete disaster from the start, and a new study funded by big telecom suggests that the record setting 2. The report in question comes from Emprata LLC, a DC based data research company, and was paid for by Broadband for America, a big telecom lobbying group. That second detail is important, since the report ultimately claims that a larger proportion of the comments from verifiable addresses were in favor of repealing the open internet rules. On the flip side, Emprata found the vast majority of comments both for and against repealing the FCCs open internet rules consisted of form letters, with many coming from seemingly fake email addresses. These findings suggest that the protest against repeal is driven by bots and that more actual humans want the open internet rules repealed. Which certainly sounds like a conclusion that big telecom lobbyists would love. Weve also seen evidence of the opposite being true. It would be convenient for net neutrality advocates if the story was as simple as that. But as even the study itself admits, its very difficult to draw any definitive conclusions from the comments found in the docket. And its the FCCs fault. One of Americas most famous internetgrown white supremacists, Baked Alaska, has threatened to sue news outlet AJ Plus over a photo of him holding a gun. He says. Today is the last day to submit comments on the proposal to kill open internet rules to the Federal Communications Commission FCC. Good luck with that, though. The. Volkswagens German site and various media outlets confirmed the hatchbacks death this week, saying that prospective buyers in the markets where the Scirocco is. The agonizing wait is finally over. Today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced his plan to dismantleRead more Read. The crux of the problem is the fact that the FCCs Electronic Comment Filing System ECFS has no way of authenticating individual users or comments. Thats why you had so many duplicate comments, comments from disposable email addresses, and comments that were just form letters from activist groups. Because any human or bot can simply fill out a form on the FCCs website and submit a comment, its almost impossible to tell which of these comments are genuine, to use Empratas word. Master P Down South Hustlers Torrent. And so, as with any large data set, there are a lot of different ways to look at the 2. Jason Torchinsky. Senior Editor, Jalopnik Running 1973 VW Beetle, 2006 Scion xB Notsorunning 1973 Reliant Scimitar, 1977 Dodge Tioga RV. Your-Fonts-Quantity-01.jpg' alt='Volkswagen Headline Font Pairs' title='Volkswagen Headline Font Pairs' />FCC. Taken at face value, over 1. August 2. 2, when the Emprata study pulled the data, and a little over 8. If you scrape away the duplicates, those numbers whittle down to 1. That means that some 9. Still, 1. 7 million to 2. Emprata did find a way to reverse that conclusion, claiming that more commenters favored repeal, by looking exclusively at comments with completely filled out email and home address forms. That feels like the researchers just adjusted their parameters to prove a conclusion, however. And other research has already shown that an anti net neutrality bot has filed tens of thousands of comments in favor of repealing the rules by using unsuspecting Americans email and home addresses. John Oliver even did a whole segment about it. So who knows what to believe. The evidence that anti net neutrality bots were posting fake comments back in May was bookended by claims that the FCC was hit with a cyberattack that led to more than 1. The FCCs chief information officer even claimed in secret internal documents that the commissions servers fell victim to multiple distributed denial of service attacks. Two months later, the FCC reversed its position and insisted that such documents didnt exist. But clearly something was askew. What we do know is that many Americans do want open internet rules. If you look back to the initial battle to pass these open internet rules a few years ago, its easy to see that theres fervent public support for net neutrality. Some 4 million people filed comments regarding those rules and actually broke the FCCs website, though that record has obviously since been broken by the current fight against repealing the rules. A Sunlight Foundation study in 2. While one could argue that a nonprofit focused on open government could provide a biased analysis, its really tough to argue that the tables have turned so drastically in the past three years that the majority of Americans now oppose net neutralityespecially when a study funded by big telecom is suggesting you do so. Theres also behavior from the FCC as well as big telecom companies that makes the public support for net neutrality seem irrelevant. In May, Trump appointed FCC chairman Ajit Pai said publicly that no numerical threshold was going to going to sway his plans to take a weed whacker to the open internet rules passed under Obamas FCC. Pai has also attacked pro net neutrality groups like Free Press and complained about a larger movement against free speech that stands to affect outlets like the Drudge Report. How that has anything to do with preventing internet service providers from throttling or blocking content is unclear. It is, however, clear that the current FCC chair cares less about the publics opinion on net neutrality and more about the disparate political interests of special interest groups. The Trump White House approves of Pais plan, and telecom companies like Verizon are already starting to throttle content, knowing that regulatory action from the FCC is unlikely. Sucks. A federal court dealt a deadly blow to net neutrality on Tuesday by striking down the FCCsRead more Read. So, if you care about net neutrality, you still have a few hours to submit comments to the FCC. The commissions chairman probably wont read it or generally care about what the public has to say. You can also vote in the next election. While the FCC is supposed to be a nonpartisan commission focused on doing whats best for the United States, weve seen the agency morph into a gnarly beast of a political machine in recent years. That means when youre voting for your next president, youre also voting for the next FCC commissioner who will tug the strings of regulations that dictate how the internet will work for the foreseeable future. Its not a perfect system. Its a clusterfuck, in fact. But at least we still have some semblance of a democracy in America. Just a little bit. White Supremacist Threatens to Sue News Outlet Over Photoshopped Gun That He Tweeted a Month EarlierOne of Americas most famous internet grown white supremacists, Baked Alaska, has threatened to sue news outlet AJ Plus over a photo of him holding a gun. He says the image was photoshopped by the news organization. The only problem Baked Alaska tweeted the photo less than a month ago. Baked Alaska, whose real name is Tim Gionet, has been a key figure in organizing the new coalition of neo Nazis, Klansmen, and other white supremacists online. And he helped bring that online movement into the physical world on August 1. Charlottesville tiki torchlight rally and was scheduled to speak at the neo Nazi rally the following day. News outlet AJ Plus recently published a video about Gionet and his admiration for Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, and used an image of Gionet holding a gun. But Gionet made the startling accusation that the news outlet had fabricated the photo. Gionet tweeted, Wow ajplus photoshopped a picture of me holding a gun calls me white supremacist, putting me in danger BIG LAWSUIT comingMany of his supporters have called the image fake news and have sought to discredit the new organization over the photo. But the thing is, Gionet actually uploaded the photo on August 8, 2. Presumably Gionet created the image, though he has not responded to Gizmodos request for comment, calling Gizmodo a shit news outlet. Its unclear on what grounds Gionet would sue, but one possibility that has been raised by his supporters is defamation. But that would present the question of whether a photo you publish online of yourself could be considered defamatory in some bizarre way. Others have raised the possibility that Gionet could sue for being called a white supremacist. But then we start to get into questions of who gets to define the words we commonly ascribe to ideologies of hatred and bigotry. If you surround yourself with people doing Nazi salutes and chanting blood and soil, a famous Nazi slogan, can you claim that youre somehow not a neo Nazi Are you alt right just because you say you are Gionet, like so many members of the so called alt right, doesnt like being called a white supremacist or a neo Nazi. This, despite the fact that he spreads the same hate filled rhetoric as other neo Nazis by repeating the 1. Words, saying that the Holocaust is fake news, and attending rallies where he shouts hail victory, the English translation of sieg heil. So again, its unclear what Gionet would be able to sue AJ Plus over. There was a remarkable shift in the white supremacist community during the few days immediately following Heather Heyers death in Charlottesville. Many of those radicalized online were suddenly calling for non violence, even though they had previously said Hitler did nothing wrong. When Jason Kessler, the organizer of the Charlottesville rally, tweeted that Heyers death was payback time during a night of mixing alcohol with prescription drugs, other hardcore neo Nazis disavowed him. And Christopher Cantwell, now known as the crying Nazi even made a video about how he was afraid for his life. The macho white supremacist image faded quickly. But then President Trumps equivocating came into play the following Tuesday and the white supremacists were once again emboldened. Trump held an infamously combative press conference where he said that there were very fine people on both sides. And his Phoenix rally the following week was like a big green light for those who espouse hatred and bigotry throughout the country. Theyre trying to take away our culture. Theyre trying to take away our history, Trump said at his rally in Phoenix on August 2. And our weak leaders, they do it overnight. These things have been there for 1. You go back to a university and its gone. Weak, weak people. White supremacists on Twitter were particularly energized when Trump said the word Antifa, when describing the thugs who opposed him. Neo Nazis on Twitter have devoted an enormous amount of time and effort since Charlottesville to get those on the left to denounce the leaderless Antifa movement. And some of it has worked just as cynically as they had hoped, with spineless Democrats like Nancy Pelosi denouncing the anti fascists. White supremacists know they have an ally in the White House and now its an ally who pardons racist sheriffs like Joe Arpaio. Those who were ready to turn tail, previously deleting their social media accounts and softening their tone, found a second wind and a safe space in Donald Trumps words. Its unclear why Gionet would continue to claim that AJ Plus photoshopped that image of him when he tweeted it himself. But it seems unlikely that he wouldve been so emboldened without Donald Trump in the White House. Society will always have sad white men who blame racial minorities or women or Jews for their own frustrations in life. But its a terrifying change to see that represented so forcefully in the White House. Update 1. 0 3. 0 am The story has been updated to clarify that Gionet tweeted the image.