from the the-death-of-informed-consensus dept
Ideally, the U.S. public is supposed to be able to comment on government policy proceedings, and the government is supposed to listen to that input.
Of course, it doesn’t really work that way: For years we’ve noted how U.S. regulatory comment proceedings are full of bots and fake comments from industries trying to game regulators, and make shitty policy (giant mergers, mindless deregulation, the elimination of consumer protection) seem like it has broad public support (remember when dead people opposed net neutrality?).
Unsurprisingly the U.S. hasn’t done anything to seriously rein in this problem. And when officials do act, it tends to be largely toothless, resulting in the problem getting steadily worse.
And that was before AI made it significantly easier for bad actors to quickly automate this sort of gamesmanship. Washington State has been exploring the RADICAL SOCIALIST ANTIFA EXTREMIST idea of having the state’s rich actually pay their taxes. That’s not been received particularly well by the extraction class, which has been making empty promises about leaving the state.
Recently the state opened up the public comment system to input, and not too surprisingly it was immediately flooded with upwards of 37,000 fake comments opposing the idea of taxing the rich:
“Beyond those individual cases, organizers said they identified 37,824 additional opposition sign-ins generated through thousands of duplicate name submissions across House and Senate hearings combined. In more than 15,000 instances, they said, identical names were entered repeatedly — sometimes 50 to 100 times. Many of the submissions were filed late at night or in rapid succession.”
The state’s wealthy (and the lawmakers paid to love them) are still trying to claim that the flood of provably false opposition to the bill only supports their claims that nobody wants the state’s wealthiest to actually pay a little more for regional societal improvements:
“Opponents of the tax, including state Republican leaders and hedge fund manager Brian Heywood, have leaned on the wave of opposition sign-ins as proof the proposal lacks public support.
“More than 60,000 people signed in against SB 6346 when it received a rushed hearing in the Senate,” Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, said in a Feb. 16 statement. “That is so impressive that Democrats have tried to say bots are responsible, even though the Legislature blocks bots.”
(The legislature did not effectively block bots).
These are, it might go without saying, generally the same kinds of folks waging an all out war on U.S. journalism. More broadly this is a war on informed consensus, and it doesn’t take too much time looking around to see which side of this particular war is winning. Regardless of what policy you support, we’re supposed to, at the very least, be capable of a useful, honest conversation about policy.
But as we noted way back when the telecom industry was caught stuffing the FCC comment system with fake comments by fake and dead people opposing net neutrality (they even used my name, if you recall), you just know your position is a winner when you have to create entirely fake people to support it.
Filed Under: fake comments, law, public input, tax the rich, washington state
