Warm Seats & Fake Grass

A narrative can’t be controlled, but it can be influenced.

Exerting influence is a considerable challenge, especially if you’re attempting to do it unnoticed. And, 15 years ago, one of the largest telecommunications companies in the country did just that.

In 2007, internet users across the United States began noticing something strange. Whenever they tried to use certain online applications, their internet speeds slowed to a crawl. Through some trial and error, several people discovered that peer-to-peer networking applications (most notable of which was BitTorrent) were being throttled by their ISP, Comcast.

Soon after, on behalf of those affected users, advocacy groups Free Press and Public Knowledge filed a formal complaint with the FCC, claiming that any form of bandwidth throttling ignored the fundamental principles of Net Neutrality. The complaint stated that these actions also violated the FCC Internet Policy Statement of 2008. Some even believed that ISPs like Comcast were intentionally throttling the bandwidth of certain services that competed with other brands owned by the ISP.

In this case, Comcast quickly denied the allegations, claiming that "traffic management" practices were necessary to keep other internet traffic stable.

So, in February of that year, the FCC scheduled a formal hearing in Cambridge, MA to hear statements from Comcast leadership, executives from Verizon Communications, and professors from some of the country’s top law schools.

In the weeks before the hearing, Free Press promoted the event to their supporters, encouraging others to attend. Turnout was expected to be moderate — Most likely a mix of journalists, regulators, telecommunications executives, and a few other stakeholders.

But, that’s not what happened on February 25, 2008.

Three hours before the hearing was scheduled to begin, journalists noticed that ~50 of the 300 available seats were already occupied by members of the general public. An hour before the start, the venue was completely full. And, by the time the hearings began, several Net Neutrality advocates had already been turned away at the door.

A few of those attendees noticed that the crowd was acting unusual throughout the day. A number of people switched seats for no apparent reason. Other times, entire sections of the audience would break out into applause in response to the mundane words of some nondescript Comcast VP. Only moment later, they would lapse into feigned disinterest at the statements of another speaker.

The rejected Free Press members couldn’t figure out what was going on.

What happened?

The Tactic

The next day, a reporter from Portfolio.com (now The Business Journals) spoke to Comcast Corporation spokesperson Jennifer Khoury about the hearing and the unexpected turnout.

Khoury put it plainly: Most of the hearing’s attendees were planted there by Comcast.

Not only did they plant attendees, but Comcast also paid “seat warmers,” too.

Here’s how they did it: Comcast recruited dozens of paid actors to take a seat in the venue about three hours before the hearing was scheduled to begin. Then, local Comcast employees would trickle in and take the seats of those stand-ins.

According to spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice, Comcast simply "informed our local employees about the hearing and invited them to attend. Some employees did attend, along with many members of the general public.”

In the same conversation, Fitzmaurice refused to elaborate on how many “seat warmers” were hired, how the company found them, or how much they were paid.

Why would Comcast plant a bunch of “seat warmers” and employees at a FCC hearing?

The telecommunications company simply couldn’t run the risk of a large opposition on the day of the hearing. So, in response to Free Press’s earlier efforts to bring dissenting voices to the venue, Comcast found a way to physically crowd out them out.

In fact, Free Press spoke to one of these “actors” while waiting in line to enter the hearing. The man was recorded saying, “Honestly, I’m just getting paid to hold somebody’s seat… I don’t even know what’s going on.”

With only a few thousand dollars and several dozen local employees, Comcast was able to completely change the narrative around the hearing. The tone shifted from:

“Telecommunications giant is being evaluated by a federal commission for anticompetitive practices”

to…

“Private market utility company gets dragged to court by an overreaching government agency”

Don’t believe me?

The Outcome

In August of 2008, the FCC cited ancillary jurisdiction under the Communications Act of 1934 to conclude that Comcast’s method of “bandwidth management” violated federal policy.

Simply put, the FCC found that Comcast broke the rules.

But…

Shortly after, the company sought a judicial review from the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. And, just two years after that hearing in Cambridge, the federal Court of Appeals overruled the FCC’s decision. In their eyes, the Federal Communications Commission did not have the authority to order Comcast to stop throttling peer-to-peer traffic in the name of network management.

At the time of the hearing, Comcast’s attempt to derail Net Neutrality advocates was a mere inconvenience to Free Press and a nuisance to the FCC. But, they didn’t technically break the law by hiring “seat warmers” and packing the audience.

However, their efforts, in aggregate, helped change the entire narrative around Net Neutrality. In retrospect, this specific case became a pivotal moment in the debate about equal access to internet communications. Before this, Net Neutrality was a principle—an ideal—but not a law. The hearing and eventual reversal of the FCC’s decision actually created legal precedent for the first time. After that, future court cases could use this ruling to reinforce their argument against Net Neutrality.

And that’s exactly what happened. Years later, in 2017, the FCC officially repealed Net Neutrality by a 3/2 vote.

The Strategy

Practices like these fall under a broad form of narrative “influence” referred to as astroturfing. A grassroots movement is one in which average people advocate for a specific political or economic ideology. An astroturf movement, on the other hand, occurs when a powerful organization/group tries to mask their interests by making a movement appear to be grassroots.

This tactic often involves paid actors and fake demonstrations leveraged to apply social and political pressure to its target. In the case of Comcast, the astroturf campaign was more subtle. It was intended to crowd out dissenting voices while applying indirect pressure to their real opponent, the Federal Communications Commission.

What Did We Learn?

These movements happen more often than you might assume — In business, astroturfing is simply a tactic within the much broader category of guerrilla marketing.

For example, during NFT.NYC 2022, crypto guy Bobby Hundreds staged a protest populated by sign-wielding chanters exclaiming that “God Hates NFTs”. It was an astroturf movement—a guerrilla marketing campaign—used to attract attention for a new series of NFTs from The Hundreds group. The protest satirized the antics of Twitter’s favorite hate group, the Westboro Baptist Church, and was able to generate impressive publicity across Twitter, event attendees, and even a few online publications.

Of course, a few onlookers gathered that the protest was a guerrilla marketing campaign. Despite that, the stunt still achieved its goal of generating attention for NFTs and The Hundreds. That’s the interesting thing about astroturfing — Even if people suspect an ulterior motive, the spectacle itself can even more impactful than the agenda behind it.

In Comcast’s case, the FCC representatives presiding over the hearing didn’t appear to be aware of the misdirection that was occurring. The officials may have had their suspicions but, at the time, the room appeared to be populated by a crowd of concerned citizens in support of Comcast’s right to “manage traffic” for the benefit of all internet users.

And herein lies a key takeaway: Narrative cannot be controlled, it can only be influenced. By manipulating what people are aware of, you are able to influence the perception of events.

It didn’t matter how many people actually supported traffic throttling.

It didn’t matter that many of the internet users being throttled were probably illegally torrenting terabytes of media files.

It didn’t matter that a number of Comcast’s critics were prevented from physically entering the hearing.

What mattered was the perception that there was a substantial number of people in support of Comcast’s actions and the perception that there were very few voices in opposition.

A narrative can’t be controlled, but it can be influenced.

Stay ungovernable,

— Nick