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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.
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).
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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
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.
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We recently saw how throttling helped fire departments communicate...
Thanks for coming Ajit.
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.
Corporations are people deal with it
And money is speech. This is just the US political system in action.
You are not needed for it to function the way it is supposed to. Those with a real stake will make the decisions on the issues that will affect their bottom line, using the tools they purchased.
If the people who run your country decided that money would be the deciding factor in any important decision (and they did) then get out of their way. They have a country to run.
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 ...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
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!
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?
You are welcome on my lawn.
EXCEPT: The FCC's Net Neutrality solution had an exception for public safety... so you're just trolling.
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...
We also recently saw how throttling hindered fire departments' ability to do their jobs. That one was really prominent, and it was posted here on Slashdot. It's kind of hard to believe you weren't aware of it. Were you cherry-picking? If so, then stop it - it's cowardly and intellectually dishonest. Then there's your whole implied-by-lack-of-addressing-it endorsement of a company out-and-out lying to its customers to try to get legislation passed that fattens their bottom line. If you're shilling, then stop it - that doesn't work here.
Nobody here is against giving priority to emergency responders' data traffic during an actual emergency. And if current Net Neutrality regs don't take that into account, it's a pretty easy and straightforward fix. So no, you don't get to kill and bury Net Neutrality 'because emergency responders'.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
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). That's why it's called voter suppression. You never make it completely impossible to vote. If you did that then the jig is up. You just make it really, really hard.
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skynet bitch
robocalls. Especially from companies I hate almost as much as I already could.
Net Neutrality as imposed a president ago was fraught with a bunch of BS, it should have been one page long.
Someday maybe someone with less financial interests could actually do what needs to be done with telecoms, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
it's that net neutrality tends to increase regulation
Net neutrality was/is about forbidding the telcos from regulating our packets.
It is, by definition, anti-regulation.
Nah I just don't like projecting like you are.
I think you need to review what regulation means...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Why is the parent post marked as "interesting"?!? Net neutrality absolutely permits throttling, as long as everything is throttled the same way.
Well, this will certainly endear them to the public at large....
I believe that once I can shoot one and it stays dead.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think that says more about you than about liberals.
If anything deserves to massively backfire on the instigators, it's this. I really hope it does. It'll prove:
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
... 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 ...
It's abundantly obvious that the telecoms themselves are who would be enacting the consequences that they're describing. As such, I wouldn't necessarily classify that as misinformation, so much as a threat -- nay, even blackmail.
They believed that they were paying for unmetered service.
They were being lied to, then extorted from.
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From the person with the sig "taxes are enforced exactations, not voluntary contributions..." come that link.
How can you read that and not see the underlying scheme is to force the bandwidth purchaser to make a choice of product based on extortion?
They artificially make competing products more expensive by essentially "taxing" the "foreign" product.
( an aside, you mention offering new services, you should know full well that these impounds make it harder for new services to start, yes? )
I purchase bandwidth to access products of my choosing. The goal of Network Neutrality is fully in support of that, so, while less regulation is better, there is a minimum that is required, and the carriers are proving that it is required by their statements and their actions.
Further, investment requires money from their customers. They have a natural and honest manner in which to gain that money.
They get to chose the pricing they place on their product. And in most cases, they face little or no competition.
So, why don't they charge their customers amounts commensurate with the level of investment they feel they need, in an aboveboard manner?
Why do they have to be underhanded and try to pull it out of the services I access?
I end up paying the service anyway, and probably more, since the service will be looking to be profitable, and the money usurped will be part of their overhead, and counted toward their base costs and toward my pricing.
Please don't start with anything about the services utilizing my carrier's network, blah blah.
*I* am utilizing my carrier's network to *choose* to access that service.
That is ( part of ) *why* I paid for internet access to begin with.
That service pays their own carrier for access to the internet. That should be an end of it.
You should not get to double dip. It is pretty straight forward.
So, no, net neutrality does not drive up costs, the carriers drive up costs.
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How was the Internet pre-2015, pre net neutrality? Was it so bad that everything got so much better in 2015 when "net neutrality" was put into force? If not - then why give the Government even more power?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Obviously you weren't paying attention around 2011. You know, when Verizon and AT&T first started experimenting with traffic shaping and the deep packet inspection bullshit. It was during this time that people started having trouble accessing paid for services because of the experiments that some of the large ISPs/Telcos started to put in place. It was because of these various issues that the FCC felt it needed to step in and start doing some regulation, prior to that there was no need. The Telcos/ISPs brought this on themselves because they started to implement policies that would change the way they did business on THEIR side of things. The FCCs response was just that, a response to new motions from the ISPs. So no, it wasn't bad, but it was about to get bad, and thankfully the FCC stepped in.
So, if your network is getting overwhelmed, you'd advocate that streaming a 4K HD video to a person's phone is as important as a phone call, or text message? Really?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Thanks for the heads-up telecoms, I'll make a point of calling my representative today -- to tell them to vote YES on this legislation. Fuck you Comcast, fuck you AT&T, fuck you Verizon, and fuck you to everyone else applicable.
With AT&T prez saying "Netflix gotta stop using my tubez*" and carriers all over throttling based on provider of service to extort, yes, it was bad and getting worse.
* unless they pay
emt 377 emt 4
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.
So we enjoyed a net-neutrality provided Nirvana for "a few month" last year?
In other words, we need net neutrality to re-establish the long-standing principles of a free and open internet, just like we had for a few months last year - never mind that these "absolutely mandatory regulations" only existed for a few brief weeks, we simply can't go on without them!
Ken
Big telcom is using robocalls to sway public opinion! That tool should only be employed by politicians and causes I support, not those I don't!
Ken
Fair queuing is perfectly compatible with net neutrality, and makes sure people streaming don't disrupt other customer's communications.
That article you pointed to is a bit of a political hack. They lost me early when they held AOL up as an example. Had they done 5 minuted research, they would know that AOL bit the big one in spite of having a huge lead because too many other providers went with a 19.95 flat fee. They didn't even have the ability to be anything but net neutral. The going rate soon fell to $9.95.
We wouldn't need net neutrality regulations if it was still the case that an ISP wanting to create fast lanes and special packages like cable TV would have to face literally dozens of competitors who were willing to be neutral. But that's not the case today. Due to natural monopoly conditions, many people have exactly ONE broadband provider available. Most others have TWO at best.
If you don't want network neutrality as a regulation, you'll need to come up with some way to drastically expand competition in the face of natural monopoly. Perhaps socialize the last mile and let all comers connect to it to provide internet.
How about only selling what you can actually supply. That's a pretty simple concept, isn't it? If you are a fruit vendor and you have a dozen apples, you sell one dozen apples. If you want to sell more than one dozen apples, you must either grow more apples or buy them from a wholesaler.
If you want to sell subscriptions to apples, you could do a fresh apple a day plan and make sure you have as many apples each day as you have subscribers. You could even sweeten the deal and say if there are apples left over at the end of the day, they're free to subscribers first come first served (since there's no point letting them go bad).
In the old days of networking we called that a committed rate on a burstable connection.
Another neutral way to handle things is fair queuing. Everyone connected to the local cell gets an equal slice of bandwidth.
But let's take that back a bit further. Do they even have a congestion problem? If they do, it's funny how they seem to have plenty available to zero-rate their own subsidiary's service. It's almost as if they have plenty and just want to gouge.
How about only selling what you can actually supply. That's a pretty simple concept, isn't it? If you are a fruit vendor and you have a dozen apples, you sell one dozen apples. If you want to sell more than one dozen apples, you must either grow more apples or buy them from a wholesaler.
So basically you have to have 100% full-time capacity for each person? So if they want to sell a 10 Mbps package to 1 million people, they have to have a constant 10 Tbps network? Should the power grid have the ability to supply max power to every home and business at all time? Should roads be able to handle 100% of all cars at all times? Really?
In the old days of networking we called that a committed rate on a burstable connection.
You can still buy that and have guaranteed bandwidth at all times. Of course, it's a LOT more expensive - but you can get it. Is your contention that dedicated bandwidth be the same price as shared bandwidth?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I know this sounds crazy, but perhaps you should sell 1Mbps burstable to 10!!! I know, crazy, huh? Selling what you have?!?
Now how about that fair queuing or if they even have an actual congestion problem?
"In the face of rising demand for data, why haven’t prices risen or even stayed flat? "
Actually my data has constantly increased. You used to get internet for 30$, now the minimum where I live is 65$ for the lowest package. It includes data caps at that price.
It has in fact doubled. In addition, if they can quantify the amount of data you can use and charge a price for it, it does not make it more expensive because they can't make you pay an extra fee to access netflix or facebook.
The only area this is a problem is when they lie and say it's unlimited but don't mean it, and expect you not to use it. This is a mistake on their part for misrepresenting the services they can offer. Net neutrality didn't create this, it's been going on for a long time. The real effect of net neutrality is they might not be able to use the marketing gag "unlimited data" at worse.
When they say it makes it more expensive, they mean the ISPs constantly want more money each year. If they can't separate basic access for one price, and tac on extras, they'll just increase the overall price. It's not because it costs them more, its because they want more out of your pocket anyway.
No matter which way you go, they'll try to gouge you. If they can't charge you 65$ for internet access, plus 15$ for netflix access, they'll just raise the price to 80$ and say, see, net neutrality made it more expensive!
It's the same garbage, they're lying. Overall it'll cost more, because you'll also have 5$ facebook access. Basically these ISPs see people making money, and got jealous it's not a service they offered and are not getting a piece of that pie.
Other countries without net neutrality literally have a basic charge, plus social networking access, youtube access and more. When it should be part of your regular total data usage, it's not.
It's all marketing and scheming, and we need net neutrality as it's just a stab at control so they get a piece of any business that does well, forcing them to give money to ISPs. They want to double dip even more.