Astroturfing in action: Google ghostwrites letters to the editor
Bruce Hahne
The Washington Post ran an article earlier this month about how the big tech firms make use of a wide variety of paid influencers and captive third-party organizations that serve essentially as sock puppets, parroting the company's position while pretending to be independent. Some extracts below.
- Bruce
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/10/amazon-facebook-google-political-allies-antitrust/
Amazon, Facebook and Google turn to deep network of political allies to battle back antitrust probes
The tech giants have funded a bevy of political groups, including those producing positive polling, and engaged in other fingerprint-free tactics designed to deter regulators
David Espinoza appeared unhappy when Arizona joined scores of states investigating Google last year. The Phoenix-based owner of a shoe-and-leather store wrote in a local newspaper he was “amazed and a little dumbfounded” by regulators’ campaign to “change how digital platforms operate”...
But Espinoza’s words, published in September by the Arizona Capitol Times, weren’t entirely his own. They were written on his behalf by an advocacy group that’s backed by Google and other tech behemoths, reflecting Silicon Valley’s stealthy new attempts to shape and weaponize public perception in response to heightened antitrust scrutiny...
The Connected Commerce Council, for example, is a Washington-based nonprofit that bills itself as a voice for small businesses. But it counts Amazon, Facebook and Google as “partners,” and in recent months the group known as 3C has put its muscle to work arguing that Silicon Valley giants do not threaten competition, stifle smaller rivals and harm consumers in the process.
Espinoza, a bootmaker by profession, said he was approached by 3C last year after he participated in a Google seminar meant to help small businesses better use digital tools. The advocacy group then wrote the opinion piece largely on his behalf, which appeared online just days after state attorneys general announced their antitrust probe of the company. The opinion piece did not indicate that 3C largely penned it...
“It is an example of industry spending money and exerting influence, but doing it in a way that is meant to give the impression that it is not coming from industry,” said Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group...
Facebook, for example, already has invested in a forthcoming advocacy group known as American Edge. The organization shares a similar structure to organizations such as the National Rifle Association, which blitzes airwaves with ads and doesn’t have to disclose its donors...