Tech Companies Adopt Astroturf to Get Their (Wicked) Way
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23167-tech-companies-adopt-astroturf-to-get-their-wicked-way
A May 2013 protest over Mark Zuckerberg's support of FWD.us and Keystone XL outside of Facebook's world headquarters, in Menlo Park, California. (Photo: 350.org)
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FWD.us: Militarizing Borders and Slashing Wages
FWD.us was founded in April 2013 by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, along with additional donor supporters in the tech industry, including early employees of Dropbox, LinkedIn and Microsoft, plus others from large media and venture capital outfits.
FWD.us doesn't go out of its way to hide the fact that its controlling members are tech industry billionaires, but you could easily be fooled by its current focus of "building a grassroots movement" of ordinary citizens like you and me to pass immigration reform.
That sounds benign enough, until you learn more about the type of reform FWD.us is pushing for. The group favors a certain type of immigrant: highly-skilled, foreign tech workers who would be cheaper to hire than their American counterparts. Net effect: lower wages for everyone.
Before directing its focus on immigration reform, the group had made the mistake of campaigning for the Keystone XL pipeline, which turned out to be somewhat unpopular among many of FWD.us' richest members. With Facebook's Zuckerberg as the group's most visible leader, progressive organizations like MoveOn.org and the Sierra Club pulled their ads on the social network in protest when FWD.us ran Keystone XL-supportive ads in 2013, and activists from 350.org protested outside Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters. FWD.us soon lost some of its more progressive tech backers, like Elon Musk of the electric car producer Tesla Motors.