NY Attorney General Eric Schneidermann recently estimated that hundreds of thousands of Americans’ personal data were erroneously utilized in influence campaigns that support repealing net neutrality. University researchers so far have found a minimum of 1.46 million faked pro-repeal comments, with many additional suspicious instances. Falsified comments may be more toward numbers in the millions.

While no confirmation has been received about the funders of this surreptitious campaign, investigators discovered telltale signals associated with Influent.ai’s secretive XAPE application (supposedly developed with joint funding from In-Q-Tel, China’s Baidu, and private partners). The company in internal documents calls XAPE a “force multiplier for social amplification” that can enable a “single human operator to manage [an] unlimited number of agents.” Use of the technology has so far only been publicly acknowledged in building up virtual game worlds, but allegations have begun to seep out on Reddit and other online forums saying the company was involved in sock-puppet campaigns designed to influence Brexit, Calexit, both presidential campaigns, and potentially had a hand in the recent defeat of Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai could not be reached for comment on this article, but did not disavow the possibly fake comments either.

--
TechNews Austin
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (916) 525-3762

[Copyright 2017 TechNews Globe. All rights reserved. Publisher disclaims liability for any potential inaccuracies contained herein.]