Fake News, Comments? GOP Groups Say Millions Of Pro-Net Neutrality FCC Posts From Russia, Pornhub

Conservative U.S. groups that support the Federal Communication Commissions' potential move to gut net neutrality rules are claiming that millions of pro-net neutrality comments posted to the agency’s public forum are fake or from European countries.

The National Legal and Policy Center as well as the Tucker Carlson-founded Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) independently allege that more than 1.3 million comments made in support of net neutrality between July 3rd and the July 12 “Day of Action” protests came from foreign countries. In a claim that echoes investigations from the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the NLPC says more than 325,000 "fake comments" were submitted from one Russian IP address and an additional 325,076 "fake comments" came from Pornhub.com and Hurra.de addresses in Germany and other parts of Europe.

The “fake comments” accusations on the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System come two months after the agency voted 2-1 to advance their anti-regulatory plan, which was followed by HBO’s Jon Oliver airing a segment on net neutrality that opened up a flood of comments on its ECFS public forum. The agency was immediately accused – including by two Democratic U.S. Senators -- of preventing pro-net neutrality commenters from posting due to a “dubious” distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on May 7-8 that blocked comments opposing the FCC’s plan.

Read: What Is The Net Neutrality 'Day Of Protest' On July 12?

"It's an odd coincidence," a former FCC staffer told The Hill at the time. "I'm skeptical that this is a DDoS attack. The ECFS was always inadequate."

Just days later in early May, ZDNet and other websites reported a "bot" had published more than 58,000 nearly identical comments claiming net neutrality rules "smother innovation" -- a point reiterated by anti-net neutrality leaders.

NLPC, the conservative watchdog groups, says that one of net neutrality’s biggest supporters, Pornhub, was the extension used on emails linked to more than 1 million comments on the FCC’s public forum.

The DCNF says it conducted a survey of 10,000 pro-net neutrality comments and only 44 percent were able to confirm they actually submitted a comment in support of the Obama administration FCC rules. The DCNF says 39 percent of respondents outright denied having submitted a comment, or could recall submitting one.

About 17 percent refused to answer the question or immediately hung up.

In total, more than 8.3 million public comments have been filed on the FCC’s proposal that President Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will have to answer to during a Wednesday hearing on the issue before the U.S. Senate.

Pai, a former Verizon attorney, said in a December 2016 speech that he wants to “fire up the weed whacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation and job creation.” Critics of the FCC’s gutting of net neutrality rules – including internet giants Google, Facebook, Amazon and Netflix – say the move is designed simply to put money in the pockets of cable and internet carriers such as Verizon and Comcast.

FCC Vs. Net Neutrality: The Internet's Newest 'Fake News' Fight

But Republican-leaning groups argue that the latest FCC public forum is only the latest instance of a President Trump punchline: “fake news.”

"The gaming of the comment submission process continues and in fact appears to have reached epidemic proportions," Peter Flaherty, president of the nonprofit conservative watchdog group, NLPC, said in a statement. "At this point, the deception appears to be so massive that the comment process has been rendered unmanageable and meaningless."

“Pro-net neutrality supporters like Fight for the Future reported generating more than 2 million comments into the FCC’s docket during the Day of Action,” continued Flaherty, a former Mitt Romney campaign aide. “However, our analysis shows that more than half of the comments generated in the past two weeks appear to be fake, utilizing fake email addresses fake domains such as Pornhub.com, addresses that are clearly foreign, and hundreds of thousands which even use Cyrillic characters.”

The wide-ranging Net Neutrality Day of Protest on July 12 was organized by nonprofit digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, brought together more than 80,000 companies and organizations that count net neutrality as an unassailable guiding principle of the internet.

The concept at the heart of net neutrality supporters is that all data should be treated as equal under the umbrella of three pillars: Internet service providers cannot block access to any content, throttle or slow a connection, or offer paid prioritization to companies or services who are willing to pay for preferential treatment. The rule had been pursued by internet companies for years before it was finally codified into law in 2015 when President Obama-appointed FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler passed the Open Internet Order.

Fears of a DDoS attack ahead of the July 12 “Day of Action” protests even prompted Sens. Ron Wyden, Ore., and Brian Schatz, HI, to pen a July 10 letter to the FCC.

The senators pointed out that the “attack” conveniently occurred after a "television host's call to action,” referring to John Oliver's net neutrality show in May that pushed tens of thousands to his "GoFCCYourself.com," which redirected to the FCC's comment site.

"It is critical to the rulemaking and regulatory process that the public be able to take part without unnecessary technical or administrative burden," they stated in a July 10 letter to Chairman Pai.

Ajit Pai claimed that the DDOS attack had nothing to do with the comments.