The US has again accused Russia of using “bots”
WASHINGTON, 13 Dec — RIA Novosti. Millions of “bots” — automated accounts in mail and social networks — participated in a civil discussion of the upcoming decision of the Federal Commission on communication (FCC), said the attorney General of new York Eric Schneiderman.
Schneiderman cited a study according to which for discussion there were almost 8 million comments using fake email accounts, with 444 thousand reviews came from Russian email addresses. It is unknown whether the ratio of bots to real Russian citizens or were just created using the Russian endings of email addresses.
“While foreign governments, of course, trying to use the Internet and social networks in order to influence our elections, the government at the Federal level and at the state level must work together to make sure that these malevolent figures to undermine the decision-making process in our administrative agencies,” said Schneiderman in his open letter to the leadership of the FCC.
According to him, already 5 thousand new Yorkers were asked to investigate automated reviews. Schneiderman also said that the FCC did not help the investigation by new York prosecutors.
Previously, U.S. intelligence services have accused Russia of meddling in U.S. elections through hacking of computers of the National Committee of the US Democratic party. Moscow denied it.
FCC plans to vote Thursday on the issue of lifting the ban on prioritization of Internet traffic by providers.
The previous Obama administration adopted the so-called concept of “network neutrality” in which the providers have no right to demand a surcharge from sites consuming more traffic, or slow down transmission of information to these sites.
The cancellation of the decision can hit for such Internet companies as online cinema Netflix (consumes up to 37% of all traffic in North America) and YouTube (18%).
The affected companies may try to pass new costs on to the consumers. So, Netflix as of the third quarter of 2017 was 52.7 million subscribers in the US, the monthly fee varies from 7.99 to 13.99 dollars per month.