According to their site, they represent "the hundreds of millions of Americans who are literally connected through broadband", which is a flat out lie. They're a lobbyist group that works for AT&T, CenturyLink, Charter, Comcast, and Cox, among others.
Now it's easy to say it's not such a big deal because it's private businesses and their right to "free speech", except for one enormous glaring issue that makes all that moot. The actual human beings are the same, the private businesses and the government are theoretically separate, but literally the same people.
This isn't even up for argument, it's the "elephant in the room". Ajit Pai, head of the FCC, used to be a lawyer for Verizon, a member of Broadband for America. The group paying to fraudulently manipulate the FCC and subvert the democratic process is directly connected to the head of the FCC. Verizon is fucking regulated by one of it's former lawyers!
Now that the lines have been blurred between government and private business, we're also crossing the lines between advertising and propaganda, which is psyops.
The FCC is complicit in the whole damned thing, so the result is the same and the industry got it's way. We can argue semantics though...
To me, you're acting like a jaw-dropping level of corruption is somehow excusable, perhaps because it's "normal"?
Yeah, because the FCC and "Broadband for America" are only separate in theory. When you have the industry controlling the FCC to this point, the only difference between psyops and marketing is who's footing the bill.
You're technically right base upon a very literal definition of psyops, but missing the whole point.
The devil is in the details here- consider the current state of regulatory capture of the FCC, where Ajit Pai is arguably representing the interests of his previous employer, Verizon. It's not a giant leap to argue that the placement of Pai and the comments on the net neutrality board were 1) orchestrated by Verizon and 2) strategically use the government as a proxy to hide the exercise of their will.
I wouldn't say this is a case of `the government is doing psyops`, but rather `some entity is using the government to gaslight the people`. I don't blame the structure for this problem, but the people who corrupted it.
That's not what the story is saying. The FCC didn't create any fake comments. From one we know so far, one "grassroots" marketing company has been identified as creating fake comments. Their client hasn't been identified, but likely is an ISP, or an ISP lobbying group. This is bad behavior, but far from the Government psyops on its own citizens.
edit: yes, multiple industry lobbying groups have been identified. The FCC wasn't behind this, this isn't an example of a government psyop against its own citizens.