FCC flooded with net neutrality comments after John Oliver plea

The Federal Communications Commission is getting bombarded with comments on net neutrality in the wake of comedian John Oliver’s segment on the topic.

Oliver ripped FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s (R) new plan to roll back the agency’s net neutrality measures during Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight.” Since then, the FCC has received almost 150,000 comments on the rules, which is five times as many as it had received in the 30 days before the segment.

{mosads}On his show, Oliver lambasted Pai’s plan to curb net neutrality rules passed by his predecessor, Democrat Tom Wheeler. The Commission approved the rules in 2015, which aimed to create a level playing field on the internet by keeping internet service providers from prioritizing certain types of web content over others.

Pai and telecommunications companies like Charter Communications and Comcast argue the rules are excessive government overreach and stifle innovation.

Oliver called on viewers to visit gofccyourself.com, a website he and his staff created that sends users directly to the FCC page where they can file a comment on the proposed net neutrality rule change.

After Oliver’s segment on net neutrality, the FCC’s website crashed, which reporters initially attributed to a flood of public comments coming into the site. The FCC issued a statement saying that it was the victim of a distributed denial of service attack, which had flooded its servers and brought down its website.