The FCC received over one million comments on Net Neutrality. You might remember their website crashing and deadlines being extended. NPR reports the results of an analysis of a subset of the comments by data-analysis firm Quid. Their state by state analysis shows that I’m one of the few people in South Carolina that cares about Net Neutrality.
They have produced an even more interesting visual that maps out the diversity of reasons given to support Net Neutrality and how those reasons were linked in the comments.
Apparently, the few anti-Net Neutrality comments were from form letters and didn’t register on the map.
Although sites like the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) web tool provided a template for letters, those were used to generate only about half of the comments (apparently, 80% is more typical for other regulatory issues).
Templates are not unusual. As we’ve reported previously, when the public is asked to comment on policy, citizens often engage by sending in a templated or form letter that advocates for a certain position help them create. The Quid analysis shows about half the comments received by the FCC were “derived from templates.” That’s actually low compared to analyses of other rule-making — upwards of 80 percent of comments on financial regulation were templates. – Elise Hu at NPR
My comment to the FCC, for example, was derived from EFF’s template.
Will this work? Hard to know giving the obstacles faced; but the FCC will clearly be on the record for killing Net Neutrality against the will of the people.
The Finch and Pea 