This
wasn't the smartest move on Verizon's part, just weeks before the Federal Communications Commission will make a decision on how to regulate internet service providers to enforce net neutrality.
The most-valuable, second-richest telecommunications company in the world is bankrolling a technology news site called SugarString.com. The publication, which is now hiring its first full-time editors and reporters, is meant to rival major tech websites like Wired and the Verge while bringing in a potentially giant mainstream audience to beat those competitors at their own game.
There’s just one catch: In exchange for the major corporate backing, tech reporters at SugarString are expressly forbidden from writing about American spying or net neutrality around the world, two of the biggest issues in tech and politics today. […]
News of Verizon’s publishing venture and its strict rules first came to light to multiple reporters through recruiting emails sent last week by author and reporter Cole Stryker, who is now the editor-in-chief of SugarString. (Stryker has also previously contributed to the Daily Dot.) I was one of the reporters who received that email. The premise and rules behind the site were explained to me in a series of messages throughout the day. I declined the job offer.
This reporter, Patrick Howell O'Neill, has had his experience confirmed by other reporters that were recruited by SugarString—no net neutrality or surveillance talk allowed.
Verizon has been smack-dab in the middle of much of the information about NSA surveillance overreach leaked by Edward Snowden. Namely, the first big revelation from Snowden, that showed that Verizon turned over all of its customers' data to the NSA. The company has also been on the wrong side of net neutrality in both rhetoric and tactics. They got caught throttling bandwidth for Amazon and Netflix. They couch their opposition to net neutrality in the most obnoxious of lies, literally arguing that killing net neutrality is necessary to keep the internet accessible to the disabled.
Now they're censoring their own reporters in what is supposed to be a tech news site. If their reporters can't talk about the two most important tech issues in the news right now, how can it actually be called news? The site isn't necessarily a Verizon propaganda tool, but this is not an auspicious beginning for it. Once again, Verizon's true colors are showing, proving again that it can't really be trusted to protect the public's interest.
Sign and send a petition to President Obama urging the administration to push Chairman Wheeler to use Title II authority as the basis for net neutrality rules because it’s the strongest legal argument to prevent paid prioritization and prevent Big Telecom from ruining the internet.