SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Amazon, Google Busted Faking Small Business Opposition To Antitrust Reform:
For decades now, a favorite DC lobbying tactic has been to create bogus groups pretending to support something unpopular your company is doing. Like "environmentalists for big oil" or "Americans who really love telecom monopolies." These groups then help big companies create a sound-wall of illusory support for policies that generally aren't popular, or great for innovation or markets.
Case in point: this week both Politico and CNBC released stories showcasing how Amazon and Google had been funding a "small business alliance" that appears to be partially or entirely contrived. The group, the Connected Commerce Council, professes to represent small U.S. businesses, yet has been busy recently lobbying government to avoid antitrust reform (which would, generally, aid small businesses).
When Politico reached out to companies listed as members of the organization, most of them had mysteriously never heard of it, and were greatly annoyed their company names were being used for such a purpose:
The four-year-old group listed about 5,000 small businesses in its membership directory before it removed that document from its website late last month. When POLITICO contacted 70 of those businesses, 61 said they were not members of the group and many added that they were not familiar with the organization.
Google is not your friend!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2022, @08:49PM (1 child)
Water is wet, the sky is blue, and the astroturf is green.
This is news for kindergartners who are still excited about the prospect of not wearing diapers. Everyone else got the memo when Patrick Moore left Greenpeace because it was taken over by extremists, Candace Lightner left MADD because of burgeoning neo-prohibitionism, and when we discovered that nonprofit administration was a hot career option in the USA.
Of course Amazon and Google are excited about antitrust reform. So are the trade unions who might end up having to face some antitrust regulations of their own. Just suggest that their free ride on that front might come to an end and listen for the feral howls of protest. Fellas, I hope you're all sitting down, because I have big, big news for you: large organisations and packs of fanatics not only hate, hate, hate being open to criticism and accounting, but will straight-up hire wordsmiths and muscle to defend their position.
Funny thing is, the government does the same thing, often on behalf of the squeakier pressure groups. It's one example of regulatory capture.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2022, @09:31PM
My astroturf is blue [boisestate.edu], you insensitive clod.