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.

Comments

Where I am the local power company

[rsilvergun]

wanted to put an end to 'Net metering'. That's a fancy way of saying they pay you for the electricity your solar generates. Well, that's a pretty popular thing in my neck of the woods. So it didn't seem possible for them to do it. They needed a law, you see.

So they ran ads. The ads had a bunch of old folks sitting around a table talking about something scary. They didn't say what, just that it was scary as hell. The ad ended with an impassioned reminder to vote yes (or no, I can't remember) on proposition such and such. At no point in time did they discuss what the proposition was. It passed in a landslide.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still in favor of democracy. 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. I'm in favor of mandatory voting. Force everyone to the polls with a few exceptions (e.g. if you're declared mentally unfit, and no, being convicted of a crime or even in jail shouldn't keep you from voting, that's the oldest voter suppression trick in the book).

Re:Where I am the local power company

[mentil]

If people under age 18 are disallowed to vote, ostensibly because they're not experienced/wise/responsible enough to understand and appreciate the implications, then why are people with dementia allowed to vote, even if they can't remember what year it is or what country they're in?

Canceling Net Neutrality saves lives

[Anonymous Coward]

We recently saw how throttling helped fire departments communicate while by-standers were streaming their videos to Youtube and Facebook during fire emergencies. The entire idea of net neutrality resides on the false belief that bandwidth is unlimited, up for grabs by anyone. With Net Neutrality, the streamers would have eaten up all the bandwidth...

Bullshit

[rsilvergun]

they're not realizing otherwise. They're getting scared of losing what little they have and turning conservative. Meanwhile the mega-corporations run their candidates on conservative rhetoric (all the while pushing radical policies like starting wars with nations that didn't attack us, forcing arbitration on us all and giving themselves massive subsidies while fighting against anything that would increase wages).

But even that's not really a problem. Polls show Americans support single payer healthcare. They support the "New New Deal" and ending the 8 wars we're fighting (again, against nations that have never once attacked us). But _voters_ OTOH... they're not so sure.

The point of mandatory voting isn't get get young folks to vote. It's to end voter suppression. I waited 3 hours in line to vote for Bernie in my primary. That was not an accident. In my state there were police stationed in riot gear outside polls in poor (and especially black) neighborhoods. And now we've got this Voter Id crap whree they just make it so you can't get an Id if you're not somebody who's "supposed" to vote.

Make voting mandatory and that goes away.

Time to send them to prison

[jenningsthecat]

ALL of the c-levels of any company that pulls this shit, ought to be sent to maximum-security prison for a minimum of one year. And 80% of of the company's profits, for the next five years, should be confiscated and used to feed and shelter the homeless. Shareholder dividends, and the price at which they can sell their stocks in the company, should be cut in half for five years. These measures would immediately put an end to this kind of behaviour.

If I was ever in the presence of any of the despicable psychopathic bastards who approved this criminal propaganda campaign, I would be hard pressed not to take keys in hand and sucker punch him at least once. If I came across one of them on fire, I'd be tempted to piss on him - but not so much that it might extinguish the flames.

Yeah, none of the above is ever going to happen. But fantasizing about it takes some of the edge off the anger I'm feeling right now ...

It's not just robocalls

[PopeRatzo]

The efforts to fight Net Neutrality have really heated up here in California. There must be some huge money lining up to fight this thing, because there are non-stop anti-NN commercials showing up all over televised sports, on Hulu, and on every cable station and web video. These aren't cheap little local spots, but very slickly-made ads with dire music about how these rules will mean your bills will go way, way up, and your internet will slow down (!) and even how Net Neutrality is "bad for small business" and will probably give you flesh-eating disease. The ads are all paid for by organizations with anodyne-sounding names like, "California Families for Freedom and Morality", and it all smells to high heaven.

There happens to also be a very similar campaign being waged by PG&E here, who has been funding a shit-ton of commercials supposedly from an organization called, "The BRITE Coalition" (the acronym stands for Building Resilient Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s Economy). Every commercial tells you how wildfires are bad, m'kay? and if you don't want more wildfires, the solution is to a) give PG&E a hefty rate hike, and b) remove any liability PG&E has when their faulty equipment starts a wildfire. Again, the money being spent on this campaign is just huge. You can't watch anything without seeing one of their commercials about how these giveaways to PG&E will mean that you support those brave first responders, who gosh, are just trying to keep your kitty-cat safe from being burned the fuck alive. It's really something.

Further, I get the impression that the same ad agency is doing to spot buying for both of the above campaigns because they almost always run one after the other, and in some cases, fill every commercial slot in a 1-hour episode of Castle Rock.

So, in summary, fuck these guys. If your name is so toxic that you can't even use it on your own goddamn advocacy commercials, maybe you have more important issues to deal with as a company, you know?

Re:It's low because it's very, very hard to do

[JBMcB]

source: I know a few convicted felons. You typically need references plus a good chunk of money for court fees (something hard to do when you've got a conviction on your record).

It looks like that's true in nine states. The rest you either automatically get your voting rights restored after your sentence is complete, or parole, or probation.

https://www.nonprofitvote.org/...

Let's take another tack. Do you think ALL felons should be able to vote? What if someone murders someone else. Put cynically, they have permanently disenfranchised someone else. Should they still get to vote?

Re:citizens united, bitch!

[Opportunist]

I believe that once I can shoot one and it stays dead.