Abuse of power is important to curtail. If public officials are falsifying public comments, that matters. And to many American citizens, the truth still matters.

As for your actual premise, ‘the comments didn’t matter’, the rest of your comment invalidates your premise. Because if the comments did not matter, then the FCC would feel no need to fake the result.

What you mean to say is, ‘the comments would not effect the outcome of the FCC’s decision.’ And we can have a proper opinionated debate as to whether that is true. But the comments clearly ‘matter’.

I got the impression the NYT is waging this battle more to figure out who was behind fraudulent comments rather than to determine which comments were fraudulent and which were legitimate.

First rule of any good investigative reporting: follow the money. Whoever paid for the comments must have had some motivation for committing fraud and identity theft en masse.

The fact that the FCC is fighting to keep the comment-purchasers IP address(es) secret is telling in and of itself though I suppose.

You wouldn’t be implying that ex-Verizon-Corporate-Lawyer Ajit Pai might have a conflict of interest when serving the public, would you?

Perish the thought!

The comments do matter. Like another person here said: they aren't youtube comments. The FCC comment system is a part of the regulation writing process, and the FCC is required by law to thoroughly consider public comments when making rules. If the FCC ignored almost all genuine comments and knowingly followed the advice of fraudulent comments, it could be grounds for a court to waive Chevron Deference and order the commission to reconsider with a new comment period.

We can't just abandon vectors for the populace to hold governmental agencies to account. If anything we need to push to make it so that the people have more sway in cases where the people making decisions were not elected.