The Phoenix-based owner of a shoe-and-leather store wrote in a local newspaper he was "amazed and a little dumbfounded" by regulators' campaign to "change how digital platforms operate."

"The current system is working for small businesses, and as the old saying goes: if it ain't broke, don't fix it," he wrote.

But Espinoza's words, published in September by the Arizona Capitol Times, weren't entirely his own. They were written on his behalf by an advocacy group that's backed by Google and other tech behemoths, reflecting Silicon Valley's stealthy new attempts to shape and weaponize public perception in response to heightened antitrust scrutiny.