AT&T calls Fake Steve’s Operation Chokehold ‘irresponsible’ [u]
The world took a turn into the surreal when Fake Steve Jobs (a.k.a. Dan Lyons) made his now infamous call to terms and urged iPhone owners to take part in a flash mob protest where users would use as much data as possible in order to bring Ma Bell’s data network to its knees. Now, AT&T has responded and, if there’s any doubt the company is utterly clueless, this should put that notion to rest.
Cult of Mac has managed to get a get an AT&T spokesman to respond to Fake Steve Jobs’ Operation Chokehold:
We understand that fakesteve.net is primarily a satirical forum, but there is nothing amusing about advocating that customers attempt to deliberately degrade service on a network that provides critical communications services for more than 80 million customers. We know that the vast majority of customers will see this action for what it is: an irresponsible and pointless scheme to draw attention to a blog.
Irrresponsible? The protest aims to shutdown the data network, not calling, which is a critical (think 911) service.
Pointless? Whether or not the protestors achieve their goal of bringing AT&T’s data network to its knees, I’m betting that the mainstream media will be there to cover the event and that level of attention will hardly be pointless.
[u] And, what’s this? Verizon policy blog contributor John Czwartacki has twittered (via News.com) about Operation Chokehold, which adds a whole new dimension to the planned protest.
Flash mobbed
That said, nothing’s real until it has a Facebook page and now you can become a fan of Operation Chokehold on Facebook, which has 815 1,333 fans as of this writing [u]. This number hardly represents a groundswell of support and it pales next to the nearly 90,000 fans AT&T has on Facebook
Still, the number of Operation Chokehold fans has more than doubled in a day and the number is increasing and even rose by several hundred in the time it took to write this piece since last night.
[u] Guess what? There’s now a “pro AT&T” group on Facebook protesting the protest and they’re calling themselves—oh for heaven’s sake—”Operation Cuckoo.” This group has 12 fans.
Power to the people
Thereupon, whether or not you plan to join the Facebook protest, you can still take part in Friday’s festivities at 12 noon (PST) by:
• Turning off Wi-Fi
• Streaming YouTube videos
• Streaming live video with the new UStream Live Broadcaster app (iTunes)
• Streaming high-bandwidth video from Akamai’s iPhone Showcase site
Will you be turning off Wi-Fi and streaming video on Friday? It looks like it just might be a party to remember…
What’s your take?
Related posts:
