LOS ANGELES — Nearly 22 million comments were filed with the U.S. government on Net Neutrality, a massive display of direct democracy that's been dogged by charges of faked submissions and the possibility that results were decided months ago.

Wednesday was the final day consumers could voice their opinion to the Federal Communications Commission on the changes to Net Neutrality rules, which the current chairman has said he wanted to nix.

The rules were put into effect during the Obama administration in 2015 to prevent Internet providers from adjusting the speeds of big-time users, say by charging more for Netflix and Hulu or slowing them down. But under the Trump presidency, the current FCC chairman has sought to abolish the rules, which he says stymie investment by telecom providers.

Egged on by advocates like HBO's John Oliver, Internet users have been urged to speak to the FCC by submitting a comment, adding consumer voices to the more regular lobbying efforts of big Net Neutrality advocates Amazon and Netflix.

Large Internet Service Providers such as AT&T and Comcast have advocated for the rules' repeal. The process has been muddied by both sides' complaints that fake comments were submitted.

Researcher Emprata studied the comments on behalf of the telecom industry, and said 60% were against repeal. But it also gave a detailed analysis of what seems to have been generated by faked, multiple, or form submissions. For instance, it 7 million of the comments came from temporary (fake) e-mail addresses.

Among the sliver of comments that were unique, non-form letters, more (1.77 million) were against the repeal than for the repeal (24,000), the study found.

More:Verizon slows video traffic, causing concerns for net neutrality advocates

Evan Greer, the campaign director for Fight for the Future, which has been campaigning to keep the current rules, said the Emprata study's findings of unique submissions proved her point. "People from across the political spectrum overwhelmingly agree that they don’t want their ISPs to have control over what they can see and do on the Internet,” she said.

AT&T, which wants the repeal, pointed to a different subset of the data — taking out those with fake email addresses, but including form letters — that said more people wanted to overturn the rules.

While some form letters come from real individuals, encouraged by both sides to submit comments in an easy manner, others are generated by bots, an analysis by ZDNet of the FCC's comments trove found.

The FCC, whose five commissioners consist of three Republicans and two Democrats, is likely to vote on party lines — and repeal the rules. The FCC's general counsel has said the outpouring of submissions is something it will take into account.

But Chairman Ajit Pai, who voted against the rules as a commissioner and was named chairman by Trump earlier this year, has said he wasn't concerned about the huge outpouring, noting "the raw number is not as important as the substantive comments that are in the record."

Beyond the FCC, the Congress has a hearing set for next week on the issue and if the FCC does indeed vote to kill the rules, the issue is also expected to go to court, where the agency could be sued by public interest groups.

Follow USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham on Twitter, @jeffersongraham