I mean, there was pro-net-neutrality spam, millions of comments worth. It's part of what Pai cited to justify the claim that this wasn't a one-sided problem.
Except... the pro-NN spam mostly came in two batches, which could each have been done by a single person. One batch used FakeEmailGenerator, along with what seem to be identities made by pulling randomly from lists of first names, last names, and streets. The second batch exclusively used "@pornhub.com" as the email domain. Both were discounted from every serious attempt at counting responses on each side.
It's the worst of both worlds, really. There was enough pro-NN spam numerically to claim the anti-NN astroturfing wasn't any worse, but it represented a tiny number of bad actors. Meanwhile, the anti-NN spam was vastly more malicious in both the influence of the perpetrators and the extremity of the behavior used to hide it. Randomly generating a fake name isn't a misdeed on par with identity theft, but it was certainly treated that way.
Except... the pro-NN spam mostly came in two batches, which could each have been done by a single person. One batch used FakeEmailGenerator, along with what seem to be identities made by pulling randomly from lists of first names, last names, and streets. The second batch exclusively used "@pornhub.com" as the email domain. Both were discounted from every serious attempt at counting responses on each side.
It's the worst of both worlds, really. There was enough pro-NN spam numerically to claim the anti-NN astroturfing wasn't any worse, but it represented a tiny number of bad actors. Meanwhile, the anti-NN spam was vastly more malicious in both the influence of the perpetrators and the extremity of the behavior used to hide it. Randomly generating a fake name isn't a misdeed on par with identity theft, but it was certainly treated that way.