Volume vs Breadth Signaling
When an agency reads a consultation, a grant round, or a wave of objections, it is trying to read the weight of opinion behind the submissions. How many arrive, and how varied they are, have long stood in for that weight. Agents that draft fluent, distinct-looking submissions and file them at scale break the link between those two signals and the thing they measure. Sheer volume can now be manufactured, and so can the appearance of variety. Yet many people still organize through shared campaigns and templates, so a near-identical submission can carry a view that is genuinely and widely held. The same agency increasingly reads through agents of its own, clustering and summarizing what arrives, so the weight of opinion is judged partly by automation on both sides.
An agency must act on the content of public submissions without being able to verify where any of them came from. Its duty to consider what was submitted still holds, but it can no longer assume that a submission was written by the person who filed it, that distinct-looking submissions came from distinct people, or that volume reflects breadth of support.
As automated filing grows, the agency also has to defend the resulting decision: it must be able to show which signals it relied on, how it judged their authenticity, and why the weight it gave them was sound.
Surface the signal an agency can trust in a set of submissions, however many arrive.
Let an agency see distinct arguments, real breadth of support, how strongly each position is held, and verified provenance, whether it receives a hundred submissions or a million.
Design on the assumption that automated submission at scale is the norm, so these signals can be told apart however many arrive.
Keep a path open for people who take part through a shared campaign or a template, so weighing breadth doesn't discount a view that many people genuinely hold.