New York Attorney General Letitia James, after investigating the debate in 2017 over the repeal of net neutrality regulations, said that of the 22 million comments that were submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 18 million were fakes, of which 8.5 million could be traced to a campaign launched by a broadband industry group, said Crain's New York Business. The group, Broadband for America, is said to have spent $4.2 million to hire third party companies to enact this campaign with the explicit goal of faking widespread grassroots support for the repeal.

The New York Times noted that many of the comments had been signed by people who had never agreed to have their names be used in such a manner. However, James said that there was no evidence the companies behind the group, AT&T, Charter, Comcast and others, knew about the fraud when they hired the companies, though she added that there were obvious red flags which the group ignored.

The companies, Fluent, Opt-Intelligence and React2Media, agreed to better disclose how people's personal information would be used, and to pay $4 million in fines.