Indian DJ receives death threats after being mistaken for FCC commissioner who repealed net neutrality

The wave of online discontent with the Federal Communications Commission decision to reverse Internet neutrality rules has yielded one unlikely victim: A 42-year-old Indian DJ.

As the American agency marched closer this year to making a decision that would allow telecommunications companies to discriminate when it comes to bandwidth, Internet mobs took up their virtual pitchforks and began circling around the Instagram account of FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. The only trouble, though, was that they got the wrong account.

Ajit Pai, the DJ who lives in Goa, India, says that he first noticed the strangely abusive comments about two months ago, but wasn’t immediately sure why he had been targeted. It took a minute, but he eventually put two and two together when some of the online attacks began including the hashtag #netneutrality.

“I’ve been getting death [threats] and abusive calls the whole night, since we are 10 and a half hours ahead of your time” in India, Mr Pai recently told the Verge in an email. “My mailbox on www.ajitpai.com is flooded and I need to make my admin empty it out every two days. I can’t even count the amount of mentions and comments I get every day.”

The backlash was in response to growing concern that the FCC would repeal Obama-era net neutrality regulations, which it did last week. The FCC chairman led the push to dismantle the regulations, saying that the restrictions impede technological and competitive telecommunications markets.

But deregulation proved to be incredibly unpopular. Recent polling indicated that about 83 per cent of voters favour neutrality regulations, including 75 per cent of Republicans, 89 per cent of Democrats, and 86 per cent of independents.