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Verizon Launches Tech News Site That Bans Stories On US Spying
blottsie writes: 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.
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.
...that's because this site is being spied on...and delivered through an internet pipe the size of a straw...
Talk about a straw man.
"Mainstream" tech sites are bad enough already.
Even Western Digital is doing it. What gives?
http://sugarstring.com/about/
And I care about one more crappy corporate-controlled portal site why? Other than the "will they set up a GeoCities page next"-esque shock-value that any company in 2014 still believes their customers give the least damn about their ISP's home page, of course.
If Verizon doesn't want news about the ways the intelligence community and Verizon conspire to rape us all, hey, their portal. And if I want actual news, hey, not their portal. It all balances out.
Adrian Cronauer: RIGHT! In... in Saigon today, according to official sources, nothing actually happened. One thing that didn't officially happen was a bomb didn't officially explode at 1430 hours, unofficially destroying Jimmy Wah's cafe.
Sgt. Major Dickerson: [to censor] Get him out of there!
Adrian Cronauer: Three men were unofficially wounded, and two men whose identities are not known at this time...
Sgt. Major Dickerson: [to censor as both are trying to get into the locked studio] Break the goddamn door down!
Adrian Cronauer: ...the fire department responded, which we believe to be unofficial at this present moment...
Sgt. Major Dickerson: [bursting into engineering room and barks to engineer] Turn it off! Now!
Adrian Cronauer: I just want to think that you should...
[the VU needles rest on their pins as the console goes dark... Cronauer removes his headphones and pushes mic boom aside]
That is like making a crime website but not reporting on murders and robberies.
"SugarString publishes thoughtful tech-focused stories that track humanity’s climb towards the new next."
Well, they want to be part of that climb towards the new next.
Nobody said the new next was not going to be a shitty place.
Now I wonder what's the official age at which one can start laughing at younger people for the shitty world they're going to inherit.
I can't wait to make a site that admits it's a propaganda site my main site for news.
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.
You gotta admire the chutzpah. Even as they are saying to the FCC that they can be trusted with the authority to be the gatekeepers of the Internet, they put on a public display of their intent to inhibit public policy debate on the very issue of Net Neutrality itself.
The extraordinary lack of self-consciousness is difficult to fathom. It rises to the level of, "Let them eat cake."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The most-valuable, second-richest telecommunications company in the world is bankrolling a technology propaganda site called SugarString.com
FTFY
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
So they are not actually a tech-news site at all, but a mega-corp propaganda / infomercial / advertising site. "Buy this new gadget we just made to mine your personal data, pay no attention to that EULA behind the boilerplate..."
It's OK, everything is still shiny ... look, we have pretty buttons, and widgets, and apps ... why no, we've never heard of spying or net neutrality ... your government is here to serve you ... the corporations are your friends, we're here to help... we've always been at war with East Anglia ... War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery.
Fucking Pathetic.
They're basically starting the campaign of disinformation and leaving out the bits of reality which are inconvenient to them.
I sincerely hope people either boycott them, or make damned sure to either pollute their comment boards with the stuff they're hiding, or otherwise publicly shame them.
A "Tech News" site which isn't allowed to discuss some of the most important news about tech going on today is a horrible thing, and do not deserve any support from anybody.
Screw you Verizon. I hope every other tech news site spends time pointing out the crap you're doing and this blows up in your face.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Verizon is gaining rapidly on the NSA in the race to see who becomes the biggest evil on the internet.
There are lots of Government technical workers, who probably would like to read more tech news but have security clearance related fears. There is much FUD, possibly legitimate FUD don't know, don't have a clearance myself but have been interviewed many times when friends have sought clearances.
Some of them really are afraid clicking the wrong Slashdot story while taking a break at work could cost them. Frankly I think the bigger issue is the government though police are so frightened they even make an issue of such a thing but, it is what is.
So now I guess Verizon with profit from so new ad revenue.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I found NSA intrusion long before it became headline news.
Noticing probing on the firewall I did traceroute look ups through multiple paths to define a pattern of problem servers.
When a common server was discovered I fired up the Robtex Swiss Army Knife Internet Tool.
Cross referencing the trees and information and records of servers I saw a former employer server was the problem "leaky insecure"
Interestingly it was being hosted on NSA servers. In other words the internet is hosted by dot mil and nsa servers.
A side note is just writing this post induced a buffer pointer over run, coincidence? : )
Or do we scold them for projecting their sponsor's bias like everybody else?
Not that I don't believe it, but the only link in the story that directly refers to the explicit ban is a picture of an email that one guy sent to another. It says that he likes working at sugarstring, but spying and net neutrality are verboten topics.
Anyone have a contract or other bit of more concrete evidence? Or is this story solely based upon the image of an email?
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
after reading this article I don't think China is the only one good at censorship, hehe
They should be raped with a rabid weasel and burned to the ground just for that.
If you want to know who is in charge, Find the person you're not allowed to talk about. Being a recipient of the controversial retroactive immunity for spying, as well as a contentious and vociferous opponent of net neutrality, Its fairly clear who cracks the whip. So if the arguably two largest concerns facing the internet and tech community are off-limits for SugarString, how is it they intend to beat the competition 'at their own game' if the competition offers in depth, comprehensive coverage and analysis?
Good people go to bed earlier.
You mean my ISP has one? I never thought to look figuring it'd be about as useful as the old AOL web site.
But back to the topic at hand: Way to go guys... shoot your credibility to kingdom come right out of the gate by placing limits on what will be covered. You might as well add a subtitle: "Cheery Verizon-approved News".
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
So they're not starting new site, they are starting propaganda site.
Because the party cares about you.
...why would ANYone use Verizon? Their service is shit, their attitude is shit.
From what I can tell the policy was expressed in an email TFA references: "Downside is there are two verboten topics (spying and net neutrality)"
Every media outlet has an editorial policy that you need to know, whether it's New York Times of Fox News. I'm kind of okay with a Verizon backed site not covering those topics, since nobody would believe anything they reported anyway. Plus there is plenty coverage on those subjects elsewhere.
I can't believe no one is talking about how to hack the site to allow those sort of news articles.
I miss the bad old days.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I have this vague hope that this is so that we can have tech news instead of political journalism, but it's Verizon.
Can anyone else on Comcast get to it?
If you've shown to be against public interest why start a news site at all? Should the point of a news site not be to inform the readers? But we already know Verizon will act against everyone else's interests, so why consider anything they say on any subject?
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
I wish I had mod points.
These are issues that Verizon cannot be neutral on, so it makes perfect ethical sense for them to recuse themselves from discussing such topics. Don't lambast them for it.
The real questions here are:
1) Who are the backers and why did they stipulate this requirement?
2) Why is Verizon starting a news & pop culture site in a time when such sites are prevalent and unprofitable?
about 80? Then they know they don't have to live in it for too long. I'm still too young to laugh, I'm going to be on this forsaken ball for a while.
Good god. If they fear of getting fired because of reading news they should just quit on the spot. I have a kid and a wife to feed, but i'm not going to stop being a curious human being. That must feel like being a slave. I'm sorry for your friends, and hate them at the same time for not standing up for themselves. If everyone just did it they couldn't fire them all, eh?
After the millionth time this happens, they will walk away shaking their heads, or go bankrupt paying schills to hide / delete inconvenient posts.
Hell, use bots to spam the "inconvenient" truths to them.
These days, the first rule of hacktivism is you do not talk about hacktivism.
You should totally be a law abiding citizen and not attempt in anyway to punish or otherwise mess with this site. Advocating any form of illegal operation would be a completely bad idea ... *wink* *wink*.
As good citizens we should accept that the corporations know what's best for us, and it would be improper to become vigilantes.
No sir, not even a little. Unless you really have to.
In which case, wear a condom, ensure you're wearing clean underwear, and make sure that any packets trace back to China or Russia so they get the blame.
Oh, fuck it ... burn it to the ground, boys.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
SugarString.com is USELESS and should be ostracised as a propganda site, NOT a news site.
In fact, it should be legally barred from calling itself a "news" site.
So, kind of like William Randolph Hearst, but without the charisma and Hollywood starlets at parties?
So, kind of like papers that actually had "Democrat" in the name of the paper because, you know, they were going to slant everything that way and made no bones about it.
So, "Yawwwwn", because it's a company rag (except that it's online so there's no actual rag) and everybody knows it.
Now, if only we were getting a decent education and actually being taught how to think instead of how to use Office. We'd understand all of this, and be able to analyze the news ourselves based in part on the source.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Verizon wants to be a censor and strikes to limit conversations it considers damaging to their position. What they seek is to suppress free speech. Since that violates public interest it is time to revoke their business license. Now instead of going to work they can stay home and try to govern the rubber ducks in their bath water.
That's what net neutrality is all about, and why it is so important.
" tech reporters at SugarString are expressly forbidden from writing about American spying or net neutrality"
So we're opening up a Fast Food place but you can't order a Burger with Fries....
Yeah, That'll work......not
Oh, fuck it ... burn it to the ground, boys.
No need. This will die - to the sound of silence. Who will bother reading a new "tech news" site? Only the nerds that hang around on other tech news sites. And then they will spread the word and a following will build. But not this time. The nerds have been warned - censorship ensures that the site won't be worth visiting! They won't cover "the next Snowden" or the next NSA/CIA messup. So we won't even go there. Perhaps they'll cover the next smartphone - but every tech site will do that.
Several countries have 'great firewalls', including Australia. The Australian government just raised a plan to make the ISPs run the firewall for them. This would allow many, many people to know what is being banned. So it may be limited to piracy web-sites while the government continues blocking the real pro-crime web-sites. This is after the iiNet case where the courts decided ISPs don't have protect the intellectual property of others.
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("sugarstring.com") {
body:before {
content: "Forbidden from covering American spying or net neutrality by Verizon's corporate sponsorship";
color: #FF0000;
display: block;
text-align: center;
font-size: 3vmax;
padding-top: 10vh !important;
padding-bottom: 10vh !important;
}
}
Display:block doesn't actually work. It's a vestige from my first pass (long ago) that I forgot to remove when it proved impotent.
The script just adds an angry red banner at the top of every page served.
http://www.allthingsnow.com
It gives me the giggles that this is on here, being discuseed.
[Comment redacted by Verizon, thank you for using the Verizon wireless network]
I might be wrong, but I'm fairly sure I watched a porno set on that roof yesterday, sort of a mini gang bang. I just wonder whether the hip young things were the ones involved?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Oh No! Time to Get a CREDO phone.
Stay strong and enough with this mischief talk, comrad.