You might recall that when HBO comedian John Oliver originally addressed net neutrality on his show in 2014, the FCC website crashed under the load of concerned consumers eager to support the creation of real net neutrality rules. When Oliver revisited the topic last May to discuss FCC boss Ajit Pai‘s myopic plan to kill those same rules, the FCC website crashed under the load a second time. Both instances did a fantastic job highlighting how satire often tops traditional journalism in driving interest toward what can often be rather wonky tech policy issues.

But then something weird happened. The FCC issued a statement (pdf) by FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray, who proclaimed that comprehensive FCC „analysis“ indicated that it was a malicious DDoS attack, not angry net neutrality supporters, that brought the agency‘s website to its knees: