As internet companies have challenged existing business models, from taxi services to hotels, they have rubbed up against existing regulations. They have increasingly lobbied to change them, just like their corporate brethren, but are doing so by recruiting unaware users to promote their cause, using apparently harmless, “one-click-and-you’re-done” methods.

When India’s telecoms regulator sought public consultation on services that offer limited access to internet sites via phones, one such service, called Free Basics, owned by Facebook, invited millions of its users to send boilerplate emails of support, deluging the unamused regulator. 

Uber, for example, last year defeated a proposed cap on the number of its vehicles in New York City. One of its tactics was to roll out a new mode on its app named “De Blasio” – after the city mayor championing the cap. The mode made all of Uber’s cars disappear from the map and directed users to a petition. And home-stay giant Airbnb is organising its US users into “guilds” to fight proposed regulations on short-term rentals around the country.

Internet services have spent vast sums learning how to direct their users’ activity, something that can be exercised with little transparency and without the user being fully briefed on what he or she is being asked to do. (Based upon an article entitled “Customer or lobbyist?” in the New Scientist).

Beware of being part of anti-consumer, untransparent campaigns to increase the profits of these tech companies  – unless they are very clearly in your best interest. They are tantamount to at least an invasion of privacy; others would say they are are basically dishonest. In any event, they are un-Epicurean.