When the Public Comment Gets Hijacked

So here's a thing I didn't know I needed to worry about.

People fake public comments.

Like, systematically.

On purpose.

I mean, I guess in hindsight that makes sense—if you can automate something in technology, somebody will automate it—but I genuinely hadn't thought about it happening at the regulatory level.

Turns out it does.

Turns out it's happening in Ohio right now.

And it's apparently hard to stop.

The Thing I Found

There's an article from the Ohio Capital Journal from earlier this week about a solar project in Morrow County called the Crossroads Solar Grazing Center—a 94-megawatt facility that got denied a permit.

The denial part isn't what caught my eye.

It's the reason behind it.

The regulators cited substantial local opposition to the project.

Fair enough.

But here's where it gets weird: dozens of the public comments opposing the project turned out to be fabricated.

Fake.

Made up.

And the permit got denied anyway.

So the fake comments didn't actually change the outcome—the project got rejected even with the noise—but the fact that they existed in the first place raises a question that's been rattling around in my head ever since I read it.

What's the point of a public comment period if you can't trust that the comments are real?

How Do You Even Know

I don't actually know how you detect a fake comment.

Is it software catching patterns?

Are there people reading through every single submission looking for repetition?

Do they have to match against something?

I don't know enough about regulatory processes to guess at the mechanics.

But the article mentions that Ohio agencies are now apparently dealing with this as a broader problem—not just one project, but multiple energy projects getting waves of comments that don't appear to come from actual people with actual stakes in the outcome.

Some folks are pushing for stronger enforcement and screening measures.

Which makes sense.

If you're going to have a public comment process at all, you probably want the public comments to actually be, you know, from the public.

Here's Where I Get Stuck

I build automation tools.

That's literally my job.

I write code to make things faster, to reduce manual work, to let computers do the repetitive stuff so humans don't have to.

It's useful when you're trying to organize messy public records.

It's profoundly useful when you're trying to spam a regulatory docket with hundreds of fake comments to artificially amplify opposition or support for something.

Same tool.

Different application.

So if I'm sitting here preaching about transparency and trying to make public information easier to access, what's my responsibility when that same accessibility and automation could theoretically be used to poison the process?

I don't think the answer is "stop building tools."

That seems cowardly.

But I also don't think the answer is "build whatever you want and hope nobody uses it badly."

That seems naive.

Maybe the answer is just to keep noticing it.

To keep pointing at it when it happens.

To keep the records visible so people can see when something smells off—when suddenly there are fifty comments that read like they came from the same template, or when the timing doesn't make sense, or when the names don't match anything real.

You can't fake your way through actual transparency.

You can only hide better.

That's What the Site Is For

Stark Civic Monitor exists so that people in this county can see what's being filed, what's being proposed, what's being decided—side by side, with enough context to notice when something looks off.

If someone tries to pump fake comments into a local proceeding, that's going to show up in the record.

It'll be there.

And people will be able to see it, compare it against what else is happening locally and elsewhere, and make their own call about what they're looking at.

I can't stop people from trying to manipulate processes.

I can help make the manipulation harder to hide.

That'll have to be enough.