Astroturfing to prevent competition, next olympic™ sport?
I didn’t intended it, but it seems today is the day of rightfully bashing companies. After already having the displeasure to write about how game firms can manipulate people to make them pay more, and how big award-competitions aimed at students sneak in copyright stealing, now we have the topic of a cable company simulating a public opinion.
Cable companies enjoy a relative big freedom when it comes to charging their customers. After all, there is often only one which has a monopoly on the service.
But in some places that has lead to people taking the matter in their own hands. There are different models, but most of them somehow include the city or a city-owned firm. As the Harvard University found out (to no ones surprise I hope):
23 out of 27 community-owned FTTH providers we studied charged the lowest prices in their community
Of course that is a devastating result for commercial cable provider. Imagine the threat of such a competition!
This unbearable threat needs to be dealt with. And when it can’t be dealt with in the usual way – lobbying, bribes and threats – the cable company has to take the problem at the roots. With its own grassroots movement.
The campaign, titled Stop City-Funded Internet, started last month with a website and accompanying social media handles, and has been a persistent critic of efforts by West Plains, Missouri, to expand its homegrown broadband network to include more businesses and even residential customers.
Suddenly there are those worried “citizens”, that fear that a community-owned broadband may… well, whatever bad it can do. Maybe give the inhabitants of the city such a good internet connection that they forget to work and only sit in front of the computer.
The fun part is that the cable company, when caught red-handed, indignantly complained that the people didn’t like that the company “presented its views” in such a way.
Dear companies.
Stop that shit.
It is exactly this behavior (in connection with bad service for high prices, of course) that causes tax-payed competition, regulation and critical oversight. If you don’t like to be treated like a thug, don’t behave like one.
Via BoingBoing
