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Big Telecom Is Using Robocalls To Fight a Net Neutrality Bill in California (vice.com)
A group with financial ties to AT&T is sending automated messages claiming the law would raise cell phone bills. From a report: Big Telecom is once again trying to disrupt a net neutrality bill in California, this time by robocalling seniors to spread misinformation about the bill. "Your Assembly member will be voting on a proposal by San Francisco politicians that could increase your cellphone bill by $30 a month and slow down your data," says a voice on an automated call paid for by legal reform group the Civil Justice Association of California (CJAC). "We can't afford higher cell phone bills. We can't afford slower data. We can't afford Senate Bill 822 (more popularly known as SB822)."
The call urges constituents to contact their state representative and ask them to vote no on the bill, which passed a senate committee last week and will be heard in the Assembly this week. It even provides an option to automatically connect to the recipients' Assembly member. At the top of the call, it cites the non-profit Congress of California Seniors, leading many -- including state senator Scott Wiener, the net neutrality bill's author -- to believe the calls are targeting senior citizens specifically. "The industry has engaged in a massive misinformation campaign around this bill for months," Wiener told me over the phone.
But the claim that cell phone bills will go up is not based on anything in the actual bill, which would simply restore the federal rules that telecom companies operated under from 2015 until the 2017 repeal, which only went into effect a few months ago.
The call urges constituents to contact their state representative and ask them to vote no on the bill, which passed a senate committee last week and will be heard in the Assembly this week. It even provides an option to automatically connect to the recipients' Assembly member. At the top of the call, it cites the non-profit Congress of California Seniors, leading many -- including state senator Scott Wiener, the net neutrality bill's author -- to believe the calls are targeting senior citizens specifically. "The industry has engaged in a massive misinformation campaign around this bill for months," Wiener told me over the phone.
But the claim that cell phone bills will go up is not based on anything in the actual bill, which would simply restore the federal rules that telecom companies operated under from 2015 until the 2017 repeal, which only went into effect a few months ago.
" But something has to be done to counterbalance old folks with dementia being manipulated into voting for things they don't actually want because they can't understand. "
No worries man, we got you covered. We have armies of unjaded, fresh, young voters who vote ( if you can pull them away from their phones long enough ) not based on any educated ideology, but rather who is popular or who promises them the world when election time rolls around.
They're still full of hope. They believe their vote actually means something in the grand scheme of things and their candidate is the political equal to the second coming of $deity.
It takes a few election cycles for them to realize otherwise but hey, by that time we'll have a fresh batch of new voters to prey upon. . .
The lesson here is: Age is irrelevant when you're outnumbered by the inexperienced or gullible.
Welcome to Democracy or, at least it's what we are supposed to believe.
It's as though "the false belief that bandwidth is unlimited" comes from some source. It's eerily like advertisements made and distributed by certain companies explicitly using the term "unlimited" and then not meaning it leads customers to make purchases in bad faith. It's almost as though Net Neutrality was used to lure people into contracts and then rescinded in order to take the money and run.
Captcha: simplify
Forget Russian boogiemen, this is the REAL disinformation campaign threatening our democracy, with hundreds of times the manpower and money put behind it. Forget cloak and dagger, spies, and autocrats on the other side of the world trying to undermine their rivals. Pure unbridled greed combined with free-speech protections covering wide-scale public manipulation campaigns are the REAL threat.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Actually, it's that net neutrality tends to increase regulation and Government intrusion driving up costs to offer new services, and thus retarding growth in the space.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!