I appreciate what Alexis is trying to do here but I hope he isn't assuming that the FCC just doesn't understand the problem. That's how this reads to me. Maybe the idea is to be diplomatic. I don't think the FCC cares. The FCC understands what is going on and it wants to do whatever is best for the FCC.
The best thing for tech companies to do is to start destroying some political careers. That's the only thing the machine understands and the only thing it's really going to respond to.
Same here, I checked it every day for many years. It was one of those fundamental parts of the linux experience in the late 90s.
It surprised me how much emotional impact this announcement had for me. I hate to see freshmeat go, even if it wasn't much anymore compared to what it was. Oh well, you can't go home again.
Obviously, what happened to metafilter isn't right.
But it should also be obvious why Google doesn't say what needs to be done to remove a penalty. The sites that should receive a penalty will just use that information to further game the system.