John Oliver's net neutrality piece crashes FCC comment system

On Sunday night's episode of HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, the host segment on net neutrality helped to temporarily crash the Federal Communications Commission comment system.

In a segment on the latest episode, Oliver urged Internet trolls to instead of focusing their wrath on YouTube videos and other sites, they should instead flood the FCC's comment system regarding the net neutrality proposal that is currently up for public comment.

According to CNET, Oliver cackled and told the Internet to focus your indiscriminate rage in a useful direction." At the moment, there are over 47,000 comments on the FCC page, which blows away every other proceeding listed, with the next closest having less than 2,000 comments.

The FCC took to its Twitter account to let people know on Monday that the system was experience problems "due to heavy traffic."


Then barely an hour later the same day, the FCC again tweeted that there were technical issues being worked out and "Thanks for your patience as we work to resolve the issues."

As previously reported, the FCC, led by former lobbyist Tom Wheeler, passed a proposal that would allow for the creation of fast lanes, which has many worried (except telecoms) that it could lead to a stifling of innovation as larger content creation companies could easily pay for faster access to consumers and cut out start ups.

image courtesy of William Bernard/ACE/INFphoto.com

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