{"id":32730,"date":"2009-10-26T06:18:31","date_gmt":"2009-10-26T10:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20091024\/1547326664.shtml"},"modified":"2009-10-26T06:18:31","modified_gmt":"2009-10-26T10:18:31","slug":"guy-who-signed-xyz-corp-astroturf-letter-worked-as-telco-pr-person-for-nearly-3-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/32730","title":{"rendered":"Guy Who Signed ‘XYZ Corp.’ Astroturf Letter… Worked As Telco PR Person For Nearly 3 Decades?"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, remember last week when we wrote about how anti-net neutrality lobbyists from AT&T had crafted astroturf letters for various “special interest groups” to sign — but someone forgot to remove the boilerplate<\/a> “XYZ Organization” in the first paragraph? We also noted that there was little evidence that the group — the Arkansas Retired Seniors — actually existed. However, Matt Cutts did a bit of digging<\/a> and found that the name of the guy who signed the letter — Bob Sells — appears to have worked in PR for Southwestern Bell for 28 years<\/a> (there appears to be only one Bob Sells or Robert Sells in Little Rock). Southwestern Bell, of course, became better known as SBC. SBC, of course, became AT&T<\/a> after it bought the old AT&T and took on its name. So, if you’re an AT&T lobbyist and you want to convince the FCC that “seniors” are against net neutrality — and you don’t want it to appear to come from AT&T employees<\/a> — who better to go to than an ex-employee? Still, next time you get a former employee to shill for you, remember to replace the bogus XYZ Organization you left for him in the text of the letter you sent him.<\/p>\n

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So, remember last week when we wrote about how anti-net neutrality lobbyists from AT&T had crafted astroturf letters for various “special interest groups” to sign — but someone forgot to remove the boilerplate “XYZ Organization” in the first paragraph? We also noted that there was little evidence that the group — the Arkansas Retired Seniors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}