A charitable marketing program that paid homeless people to carry Wi-Fi signals at South By Southwest has drawn widespread debate at the annual conference in Austin, Texas, and around the country. BBH Labs, a unit of the global marketing agency BBH, gave 13 people from Austin's Front Steps Shelter mobile Wi-Fi devices and T-shirts that announced “I am a 4G Hotspot.” The company paid them $20 up front and a minimum of $50 a day for about six hours' work, said Emma Cookson, chairwoman of BBH New York. She called the experiment a modernized version of the homeless selling street newspapers. All of the money paid for Wi-Fi — an often difficult thing to find at SXSW — went to the selected participants. $2 was the recommended donation for 15 minutes of use. But many have called the program exploitative. The topic became one of the most popular in the country on Twitter. Critics have claimed the experiment turned homeless people into inanimate objects for the benefit of well-heeled techies. In an online op-ed, The Washington Post wondered, “Have we lost our humanity?” One of the participants, Dusty White, said that the experience of talking with SXSW attendees and earning some cash “made me feel proud.” “I felt like it was a positive thing,” said White. “They could have done this with anyone. I would do it again.”
