FCC Comment Page Buckles To Its Knees After John Oliver Asks Everyone To Comment

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140602/17352727438/fcc-comment-page-buckles-to-its-knees-after-john-oliver-asks-everyone-to-comment.shtml

FCC Comment Page Buckles To Its Knees After John Oliver Asks Everyone To Comment
from the coincidence-or-not... dept
by Mike Masnick
Tue, Jun 3rd 2014 3:34am

On Monday morning, we wrote about John Oliver's brilliant report on net neutrality, which ended with a stirring "call to action" for internet commenters to tell the FCC why it should preserve a free and open internet. If you somehow missed it, here's the clip again:



Many of our commenters noted that the FCC comment page that Oliver pointed to, FCC.gov/comments, appeared to be down for most of the day, either suggesting wonderful irony or that Oliver's call to action has been monumentally successful. The FCC has put up some tweets in which it apologizes for technical difficulties, without explaining why they were occurring beyond "heavy traffic."

~snip~

Some of us quickly speculated that the two things were related, while some publications have simply assumed without question that it was Oliver's pleas that brought the system down. To some extent I hope that's the case, though I do fear a bit the kinds of comments people might be leaving.

Either way, the irony of the FCC having trouble under heavy loads concerning net neutrality was not lost on many people, who didn't miss the opportunity to tweet some replies mocking the whole net neutrality proposal.