A coalition of 13 completely different suppose tanks and advocacy teams penned an open letter to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Monday warning lawmakers about two main antitrust payments that lawmakers are set to vote on later this week. Instead of wrangling Big Tech, the letter says, these payments would “dramatically degrade” if not outright break the gizmos and devices we love utilizing each day.

“We believe that voters want Congress to fix things that are broken—not break or ban things that they feel are working well,” the letter reads. “We strongly encourage you to reject these proposals.”

What that letter (naturally) leaves out, nonetheless, is how each org that signed this letter is, indirectly, being funded by the identical corporations that may be topic to the provisions of the payments in query.

The two payments had been a part of the five-bill bundle unveiled by a bipartisan group of lawmakers earlier this month, that each one collectively hope to hamper the steely grip main tech corporations maintain over the market. The first invoice that’s addressed within the letter, the “American Innovation and Choice Online Act,” was launched by antitrust subcommittee chair Rep. David Cicilline, and the second is the “Ending Platform Monopolies Act,” which is spearheaded by Rep. Pramila Jayapal.

Among different issues, Cicilline’s invoice would make it unlawful for a corporation to promote a service as a situation for entry to its (dominant) platform, like the way in which Google requires advertisers to pay for Google-branded advert merchandise once they’re inevitably pressured into utilizing Google’s advert platforms. This invoice would additionally preserve a platform from preferencing any of their very own smaller companies in a means that the platform’s prospects can’t compete with, the identical means Amazon repeatedly lied about doing for years.

Jayapal’s invoice, in the meantime, is equally meant to dissuade the most important platforms—these with a minimum of 50 million month-to-month lively customers within the US and a market cap of a minimum of $600 billion—from proudly owning a enterprise that competes towards the smaller operators that use that platform. Amazon and its cavalcade of private label brands could be significantly affected, as would Apple and its app store, amongst others.

These payments, in different phrases, look like good. They’re smart to give attention to just a few of massive tech’s main ills, fairly than taking the broad swipes that Republican and Democratic lawmakers have argued about prior to now. They’re smart to focus on a choose few tech corporations with outsized influence, fairly than actually each tech org underneath the solar. The coalition behind the aforementioned letter, nonetheless, disagrees.

“We share your goal of promoting competition online and protecting consumers, but legislation proposed by Reps. David Cicilline and Pramila Jayapal would dramatically degrade services which hundreds of millions of Americans use every day,” it reads.

“Both Rep. Cicilline’s ‘American Innovation and Choice Online Act’ and Rep. Jayapal’s ‘Ending Platform Monopolies Act’ would prevent Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft from offering integrated tech conveniences to consumers.” As it seems, these are (only a few!) of the tech corporations pouring hundreds and hundreds of {dollars} into the letter’s 13 signatories.

We’ve briefly laid out every of their connections to Silicon Valley beneath:

1. Chamber of Progress, a tech coverage commerce group began by ex-Google coverage lead Adam Kovacevich that manufacturers itself as “center-left,” and lists company companions like Amazon, Facebook, Uber, and Google on its homepage. When requested in an interview with Protocol whether or not he might disclose how a lot cash these companion orgs had been contributing on the common, Kovacevich flatly responded “no,” saying that “most associations don’t do that.”
2. The Computer and Communications Industry Association, a DC-based lobbying group that’s spent a modest few thousand lobbying the likes of Cicilline and different members of the antitrust subcommittee. Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Uber are among the many dues-paying members listed on its website,
3. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian suppose tank that’s grow to be fairly tight-lipped about its company sponsors in recent times, however has previously reported donations between $25,000 and $50,000 from Facebook and Google, respectively. Amazon, when requested by the New York Times a few $15,000 donation it made to the Institute prior to now, stated the sum was given to “help advance policy objectives aligned with our interests.” Yeesh.
4. The Connected Commerce Council, a non-profit lobbying group that’s been identified to run op-eds singing the praises of tech firm’s instruments for small companies, and whose management board is stuffed to the gills with present and former lobbyists for Google and Amazon.
5. The Consumer Technology Association, a lobbying group repping more than 2,000 tech corporations, and charging them between $80 to $40,000 per 12 months for that privilege. Its many, many members embody Google, Facebook, Amazon, Airbnb, Lyft…
6. The Developers Alliance, a Virginia-based lobbying group that consists of Facebook and Google amongst its dues-paying members.
7. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a DC think-tank with a storied historical past of whining about adverse tech protection. Amazon, Facebook, and Google are amongst its listed supporters.
8. InternetChoice, a tech-centric commerce group backed by the identical checklist of acquainted faces (Amazon, Facebook, Google) and some new ones (Etsy, TikTok).
9. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance, which is partially bankrolled by two main telco trade commerce teams (the Internet and Television Association and the Wireless Association) that may have simply as much to lose as among the aforementioned tech corporations.
10. TechFreedom, a (very loud) tech coverage suppose tank that’s amongst Google’s big list of commerce teams and advocacy orgs getting “the most substantial contributions” from the corporate’s public coverage workforce.
11. The R Street Institute, a DC-based suppose tank that’s additionally on Google’s Big List O’ Donors.
12. TechInternet, a “national, bipartisan network of technology CEOs” that, naturally, consists of CEOs from a few of your favorite companies that had been already listed on this actual article.
13. Americans for Prosperity, which doesn’t have any outright ties to the massive tech corporations it breathlessly throws itself behind, however was actually based by the Koch brothers. Considering how Google and Facebook, particularly, have fairly deep ties to the Koch household’s sprawling web of political advocacy orgs, it’s not stunning discovering one other one on this checklist.