Advocacy group Fight for the Future said the protest resulted in more than five million e-mails and 124,000 phone calls to Congress and more than two million comments to the FCC. Participating websites directed visitors to forms that they could use to submit pre-written comments. There are now more than 7.6 million public comments on Pai's "Restoring Internet Freedom" proceeding.
The deadline for filing initial comments is July 17, and reply comments are due August 16. The FCC will make a final decision sometime after that, but Pai said he hasn't decided on timing yet.
Many of the anti-net neutrality comments were submitted by spam bots impersonating people whose names and addresses were taken from data breaches. There's also been evidence of a smaller amount of pro-net neutrality bot activity. The FCC has not been removing fraudulent comments from the record.
"We want to weigh all comments and make sure that we take a full view of the record, and again make the appropriate judgment based on those facts and the law as it applies," Pai said yesterday.
When net neutrality rules were implemented in 2015, Pai claimed that the agency was "using legal authority the FCC doesn't have." But the entire net neutrality order was upheld last year by a federal appeals court, which rejected legal challenges from broadband lobby groups.
Pai's intentions are clear. When he announced his plan to overturn the 2015 net neutrality order, he said, "Make no mistake about it: this is a fight that we intend to wage and it is a fight that we are going to win."
Courts have generally allowed the FCC to classify broadband however it wishes, a fact that might help Pai in his battle. Still, net neutrality advocates say that comments could be important when Pai's FCC has to defend its decision in court.
For more information on FCC comments, read our story, "How to write a meaningful FCC comment supporting net neutrality." Comments are being taken at this link.