Clay Montgomery owns a small blacksmith shop in Texas that makes metal works and grilling tools. He sells a spicy barbeque sauce and a meat rub.
Montgomery's blacksmith shop has been listed as a member of a Washington, D.C.-based trade group that lobbies on behalf of small businesses. The council says on its website that it is a non-profit membership organization with a single goal: to promote small businesses.
According to its website, the group that campaigns against aggressive regulation of big tech companies also wants to ensure that policymakers understand the essential intersection of technology and small business.
Montgomery has never heard of the Connected Commerce Council and he is not a member. He told CNBC he wouldn't join a tech lobbying group.
More than 20 other small business owners are confused by the fact that their names are listed as members of the Connected Commerce Council.
The council, which claims to represent small business owners, is actually funded by tech giants like Amazon. The two tech companies are listed on the website. Chris Grimm, spokesman for 3C, told CNBC that they are the council's sole financial support.
The Campaign for Accountability said that 3C was a lobbying organization due to the financial support of the tech giants. That's a bit of Washington jargon for a group that claims to represent grassroots entities, but in reality serves as an advocate for big industry. It is a tactic used in Washington to push for specific legislative or regulatory goals using the sympathetic face of mom and pop organizations. 3C was described as a front group for the nation's largest technology companies by the Campaign for Accountability.
Big Tech knows that voters and their representatives aren't sympathetic to the complaints of trillion-dollar corporations, so they've decided to paint small businesses as the real victims of antitrust legislation.
Several of the group's active small business members told CNBC they value 3C's offerings and agree with its advocacy issue in Washington.
Small business owners are more sympathetic to members of Congress than wealthy technology executives. The Connected Commerce Council listed her company as a member, but she told CNBC she had never heard of the group.
The owner of Bud's barbershop in Texas refused to give his name, but he was listed as a member even though he had never heard of the group.
Christine Little, owner of 1058 Auto and Towing in South Carolina, said she didn't know anything about the council.
Small firms told CNBC they aren't sure why they were listed on the 3C website. The council had a page on its website that suggested support for its efforts. Square, which recently changed its name to Block, had its logo on that page.
The Connected Commerce Council listed Block as a partner on its website, but the company told CNBC it was not. Square's logo was removed from the Connected Commerce Council website on Monday after CNBC contacted Block, which said it asked 3C to remove its name.
Square's logo was removed by 3C because it was no longer an active partner of the Connected Commerce Council.
In a statement to CNBC, Connected Commerce Council Executive Director Rob Retzlaff said that all of the group's members sign up at events, online or through a personal connection.
I hope you don't mischaracterize our efforts or the views of small businesses by suggesting we are an organization that puts words in people's mouths, or that we use outdated membership information.
The group quietly removed a list of thousands of grassroots members from its website in February. Grimm said the council pulled the list because it fell behind in updating its members list. He said the group has more than 16,000 members, but did not give a current list of them.
Grimm said that the Connected Commerce Council does not charge fees to its members. It's not clear if the group has any sources of revenue other than donations. The group received more than $1.6 million in revenue in the year. It spent more than $100,000 on a communications firm in Washington.
The companies are affiliated with the Connected Commerce Council. They did not deny donating, but they did not say how much.
According to The Washington Post, Facebook was listed as a partner of 3C as recently as 2020, but has since discontinued its involvement, according to a person familiar with the decision who requested anonymity to speak more candidly. A spokesman for Facebook's parent company, Meta, wouldn't say how much money the company has given to 3C.
The debate around antitrust regulation in Washington has been shaped by the Connected Commerce Council. For several years, it has worked with an outside lobbying firm called the Majority Group to advocate on small business and technology issues on Capitol Hill. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the group spent $400,000 on lobbying in 2011. The Connected Commerce Council offered public comment to the Federal Trade Commission on antitrust issues, arguing that large technology platforms such as Amazon and others provide benefits to small businesses.
When asked about the company's involvement in 3C, Jose Castaneda sent a statement. Many small businesses are worried that Congress's controversial bills could harm the digital tools that they have relied on to adapt, recover and reach new customers throughout the pandemic. We encourage concerned businesses and the organizations that represent them to ask Congress to consider the consequences of these bills for small businesses across the country.
The Connected Commerce Council, which has just 304 followers on Facebook, has been an active advertiser on the platform. The company spent more than $600,000 on advertising in that time, including more than $9,000 in the last week, according to the company's advertising library.
The ads sponsored by the Connected Commerce Council support the same positions as the large tech companies that bankroll the group. Several bills on Capitol Hill that would impose antitrust rules on the tech firms have been opposed by the tech giants. One bill would prevent companies like Amazon and Google from pushing their own products in online marketplaces at the expense of their competitors.
Don't let Congress give away America's technological edge. One ad sponsored by the Connected Commerce Council has been viewed more than 130,000 times on Facebook. There is a message in the same ad that says that bad legislation in Congress will weaken America's economy and threaten small businesses.
The Connected Commerce Council is funded by Amazon, which is referred to in the March ad as being at risk. We need your experience to help fight harmful legislation in Congress.
An online survey run on Facebook by the council tells Amazon users that some elected officials think Amazon is too big and that it is dangerous because it helps our members and millions of small businesses sell more products and make more money.
The council is well-oiled. Lobbyists had met with 50 members of Congress, filed seven official comments at regulatory agencies, and sent two representatives to testify before Congress, according to the Campaign for Accountability. The report said that the council published a raft of materials painting a rosy picture of the tech giants, with quotes from small business owners heaping praise on them.
Kuppersmith said that the Connected Commerce Council needs to convince legislators that it is advocating on behalf of the more than 10,000 small businesses it claims to represent.
Many small business owners are legitimate members according to the group. The Tiny Tassel in Charleston, South Carolina, was founded by a former 3C board member.
She says that the group is a great resource for small businesses to get access to digital tools. Striplin said new antitrust laws could negatively impact the affordability of the digital tools she depends on, such as social media and software.
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg speaks during an event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland January 23, 2019.Striplin's small shop caught the eye of the COO of Meta. The Tiny Tassel earrings were one of the personal picks for Facebook's #BuyBlackFriday gift guide, which encouraged users to support Black-owned businesses. Striplin said that the selection of her products was not connected to her membership in 3C.
The current board member is a social media and digital marketing company called SBO Buzz. He said that the group gave a valuable platform for small business leaders during the Covid pandemic, including offering a regular happy hour for 15 to 30 small business owners to check in on each other.
Gandhi said that they would get together and have a cocktail and talk about their problems as small business owners.
Gandhi doesn't mind that the small business advocacy group is mostly funded by big tech companies because small businesses already depend on them for free tools to run their operations.
Alfred Mai, a council member and founder of ASM Games with his wife, supports the group's push against antitrust initiatives in Washington. He says Amazon has been crucial to the success of his company.
Mai said that Big Tech bills can critically affect his business.
He worried about the consequences of congressional action and the possibility that Amazon might be forced to shut down its third-party marketplace site.
Mai said that he was not sitting here being manipulated by an Amazon lobbyist.
CNBC contributed to this report.
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