In a letter sent on Monday, twenty-eight senators have asked FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to put off voting for net neutrality and first investigate hundreds of thousands of public comments made regarding the net neutrality change.
The senators have asked the FCC to first investigate the public comments on the controversial policy change. There’s controversy that the comments appear to have been made by bots as regular people. “Without additional information about the alleged anomalies surrounding the public record, the FCC cannot conduct a thorough and fair evaluation of the public’s views on this topic,” the senators, lead by New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan, wrote.
The FCC, led by Chairman Ajit Pai, are set to vote on Dec. 14 on the fate of net neutrality. It’s expected that the net neutrality rules will be destroyed with a 3-2 vote, and the net neutrality tear down would roll back regulations on internet service providers. Supporters of net neutrality say that the rollback will make it legal for ISPs to give preferential treatment to some web services over others, and make it harder for users to access everything on the internet.
Even Net York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has called upon the FCC to investigate the allegedly fraudulent comments in an open letter. He said that this office estimates public comments came from fakes posting as “hundreds of thousands” of Americans. Schneiderman said that this violates New York law, and is investigating this issue on behalf of New Yorkers.
In response to the letter, an FCC spokesperson said in an email that “The vote will proceed as scheduled on December 14.” This means that there will be no delay in the vote.
