The morning after John Oliver invited his “Last Week Tonight” audience to visit gofccyourself.com, he’s being credited with crashing the FCC comments site.
At issue are net neutrality proposals that Oliver doesn’t like.
But the Federal Communications Commission on Monday said Oliver wasn’t to blame. (His made-up site was a direct link to FCC, in any case.)
“The FCC said in a statement, however, that its investigations shows the site’s problems were due to an attack, and was not due to an influx of people trying to file their own comments” urged by Oliver, The Washington Post reported.
David Bray, FCC chief information officer, said: “These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC.”
On Sunday, Oliver slammed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s draft proposal to undo “Obama-era rules that forced Internet providers to behave more like traditional telephone companies — and made it illegal for them to block or slow down websites,” the Post said.
Fans of the British comedian wanted the original theory to be true.
John Oliver already crashed the FCC website ???? #LastWeekTonight pic.twitter.com/xLep2CPgVW
— Jessica C. Gonzalez (@JessicaGville) May 8, 2017
Amazing! John Oliver has caused the FCC website to crash, again! #gofccyourself ???? @LastWeekTonight
— mel_g (@fellanie) May 8, 2017
John Oliver crashes FCC site after he tells viewers to leave comments on net neutrality https://t.co/WygexeXoPe pic.twitter.com/MmaCKGdfVn
— The Hill (@thehill) May 8, 2017
John Oliver broke the FCC site a second time. Fantastic #NetNeutrality
— Tony Diana (@legomegacy) May 8, 2017
I’d like to believe that John Oliver wanted to crash the FCC website in revenge of Stephen’s investigation #LSSC
— Rachel (@sweetlyphan) May 8, 2017
@zdroberts @brianstelter @iamjohnoliver @FCC John Oliver’s power is NOT to be questioned.
— Sinclair Lewis (@sinclairlewis18) May 8, 2017