<
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/10/37000-fake-ai-comments-mysteriously-oppose-washington-states-effort-to-tax-the-rich/>
"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.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
