Burger King's net neutrality ad trying to explain to some customers why they must wait for their Whopper sandwiches – while others don’t – has been viewed more than a million times on YouTube since Wednesday.
At an undisclosed Burger King location, a hidden camera showed customers' reaction to waiting for their "slow lane" Whopper that cost $4.99 while those who paid for the "fast lane" Whopper, at $25.99, picked up their sandwiches ahead of them, AdWeek reported.
Customers were shown giving everything from baffled looks to displaying anger when learning they had to wait for their meal while others who paid more for it were served first, AdWeek said.
"You can't give me the sandwich? It's ready but you can't give it to me?" one angered customer said, CNN Money noted. "Oh God, this is the worst thing I've ever heard of!"
In December, the Federal Communications Commission voted to get rid of Obama-era "net neutrality" rules that regulated businesses that connect consumers to the Internet, and now granting broadband companies the power to reshape customers' experience online, The New York Times reported.
Critics of the net rules changes say consumers will have more difficulty accessing content online and that start-ups will have to pay to reach consumers, the Times said.
Despite fears of slower and faster lanes of service popping up on the internet, as illustrated in the Burger King ad, major telecom companies like AT&T and Comcast, as well as two of the industry's major trade groups, have promised consumers that their experiences online would not change, the Times said.
Burger King said the company wanted to explain how it saw the end of net neutrality rules.
"We believe the internet should be like Burger King restaurants, a place that doesn't prioritize and welcomes everyone," Fernando Machado, Burger King's global chief marketing officer, told AdWeek. "That is why we created this experiment, to call attention to the potential effects of net neutrality."
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