The Federal Communications Commission said that the reason its site went down on Monday was not because of John Oliver defending net neutrality once again on Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight” show, but because of a cyberattack.

In 2014 the British comedian’s diatribe defending net neutrality had led to the FCC’s website crashing under the load of critical comments. This time, however coincidental, the FCC said the site didn’t go down because of an overload of critical comments. “These actors were not attempting to file comments themselves; rather they made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC,” said David Bray, the agency’s chief information officer.

Not surprisingly advocacy groups and the public have raised the suspicion that the FCC deliberately had its site brought down to avoid a hailstorm of vociferous comments. After watching Oliver’s cogent argument in defense of net-neutrality, it’s easy to see why the FCC might close its own website down.

“Net neutrality is not just about speed,” said Oliver. As he explained, the term refers to the principle that Internet service providers should not be able to do anything that “limits or manipulates the choices you make online.” He also mirrored what most critics have been saying in that new rules will kill the little man, giving a leg up to the big hitters that can pay more for bandwidth.

In a characteristically acerbic show, Oliver pointed out Verizon Communications Inc.’s somewhat disingenuous appeal to the masses that it favors an open Internet, when in fact prior to Title II net neutrality rules, it fought hard have less oversight from regulations.

“He’s a former lawyer for Verizon,” added Oliver, talking about the FCC’s new head and the man behind net-neutrality undoing, Ajit Pai. Oliver charged that Pai is nothing but a shill for ISPs that continually abused their powers over the years before regulations were set to prevent them from doing so. He gives the example of ISPs shutting out Google Wallet from their phones, possibly because it competed with their own mobile payment app.

Oliver concluded with an illustration of President Donald Trump’s misunderstanding of the term net neutrality, urging the public to get involved once again by writing comments on the FCC website. This, of course, wasn’t possible right after the show, although the comments section is now open again. The site asks for a “proceeding number,” which is 17-108*, then requires the visitor to hit “Search,” then click on the tab that says “Express.”

The process is fairly complex for a comments section, so the show created a short-cut page called gofccyourself.com.

Image: YouTube