In the last few days, we’ve been blessed by the appearance of one of Big Tech’s most brazen astroturf groups as the industry fights two bills that would require tech monopolies to return some of their profits to local newsrooms.

The Connected Commerce Council has released a letter signed by around 150 California small businesses expressing deep concerns about SB 1327 taxing the data-mining that powers Big Tech’s unbelievably lucrative digital advertising network.

I found this letter quite interesting, for reasons that have nothing to do with the text:

Dear California Legislators,

As a California small business, I rely on digital advertising and marketing to build our brand, find new customers, and remind previous customers that we’re always here for them. Today, digital advertising is the most efficient, cost-effective way to reach people interested in what we offer. It is a necessity for small businesses. For these reasons, I’m strongly opposed to SB 1327, which would impose an enormous tax on digital advertising. If advertising costs increase, small businesses will be forced to advertise less, pay employees less, and invest less in our business. All these choices are bad and will hurt our families, employees, and our opportunity to succeed and help grow California’s economy. I urge you to support small businesses by opposing SB 1327. During inflationary times, our government should help small businesses by reducing our costs, not raising our taxes. Thank you for your time and consideration.

The concern is that if California taxes a tech giant’s ad revenues, the big guy will just pass the added costs on to these small business owners so that Mom and Pop are the ones footing the bill. Sounds bad, right?

Except I spent the weekend looking up each of these 150 businesses on the Google Ads Transparency Center and Meta Ad Library, and most of them have little record of currently or recently advertising on the two biggest advertising platforms targeted by this bill. The lack of advertising was so glaring that I even made a spreadsheet. If these are the folks most worried about pass-through costs, Google and Meta’s own data suggests they have little reason to worry SB 1327 will “hurt our families, employees, and our opportunity to succeed and help grow California’s economy.” Nonetheless, I tip my hat to Carbon Black, subsidiary of Broadcom (market cap: $734 billion), for slipping onto the list of signatories in solidarity with the little guy.

I did find a handful of businesses that advertise with Meta or Google regularly, and I take them at their word that they’re concerned about getting screwed by Big Tech. These folks are already getting taxed — by Google. Several of these businesses appear to have placed buys in the text advertising market where U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled last week that “Google in fact has profitably raised prices substantially above the competitive level” as an unlawful monopoly. Are you an investor enjoying Google’s $2 trillion market cap? Well, here’s where it came from: the plumbers and the bike shops on Main Street paying above market rate. If the argument is that a unlawful monopoly might ruthlessly hike its unlawful prices on these businesses even higher, then I guess I believe them. I’m just glad we have a U.S. Department of Justice closely watching for these kinds of developments.

What’s a little more morbid is the presence of the front group, Connected Commerce Council (3C), that arranged the support of these signatories. From the Tech Transparency Project in 2019:

Billing itself as “the voice of small business,” 3C has fanned out across Washington to make the case that small companies love big tech—and that Congress should lay off the tech giants. … The new group has published a raft of materials painting a rosy picture of the tech giants, complete with quotes from small business owners heaping praise on them.

“Without companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, I would not have been able to find a customer base beyond the borders of my beloved Palmetto state,” Myles Hagan, owner of Geoff's Farmhouse Tables in South Carolina, said in one press release. “Small businesses like mine tend to get hurt when Congress goes after the big guys.” …

But a review of the group’s origins, structure and activities strongly suggests that 3C is little more than a front for the technology platforms themselves. Amazon, Facebook and Google are members of 3C’s “Partner Council,” along with Square, the digital payments company. 3C says these tech platforms provide “general support” for its programs for small business owners, suggesting they’re also the driving financial force behind the group’s lobbying efforts.

3C isn’t run by small business owners. An analysis of 3C’s roster of executives and consultants shows most have significant past experience working with the big technology companies to secure favorable government policies. At least six people that serve as key staff or outside consultants to 3C have worked directly for Google, Amazon, or other trade groups funded by the two companies. Chief among them is 3C’s president, Jake Ward, who helped launch a different group, the Application Developers Alliance, in 2011 that also counted Google as a member.

I’ve written previously about the creepy Big Tax propaganda ads irradiating the airwaves and social media ads in California, which largely consist of foxes organizing hens against henhouses. Don’t buy it. Either AB 886 or SB 1327, if passed in their current form, would mark the most significant American investment in journalism since the creation of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. The state’s major journalism unions, including mine, think that sounds dangerously akin to actually accomplishing something. The tech industry must think so too, if this is the kind of fight it’s waging.