Skip to main content

Verizon is hand-crafting a tech news site that won’t write about NSA or Net neutrality

verizon self censoring sugarstring
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Verizon Wireless is getting into the media business with its own tech and digital culture site to compete with the likes of The Verge, Engadget, and our own Digital Trends. There’s just one problem: It won’t publish anything related to U.S. Surveillance or Net neutrality.

According to a recruitment email sent to Patrick O’Neill of The Daily Dot — and a number of tech journalists — by Sugarstring.com Editor-in-Chief Cole Stryker, there are some strict editorial boundaries at the site. While plenty of topics are fair game, anything that discuss surveillance on U.S. citizens or Net neutrality is forbidden. This is a hard sell, considering how often these topics crawl into just about anything related to the Internet or technology these days. Conveniently, O’Neill also noted from his emails that talking about surveillance in other countries, such as China, is perfectly fine.

Sugarstring launched in June and describes itself as, “thoughtful tech.” Observant readers will notice Verizon Wireless advertising on most pages, a Verizon Wireless logo at the bottom, and this message at the bottom of every article: “These articles were written by authors contracted by Verizon Wireless.” Even the domain is registered in Verizon Wireless’s name. This is in contrast to many other media organizations owned by Internet providers, such as AOL’s Engadget and Comcast’s NBC, which are operated and budgeted independent of the parent organization.

Related: Verizon fined $7.4 million for customer privacy violations

According to Stryker’s recruitment email, Sugarstring takes inspiration from projects like Vice’s Motherboard. Motherboard was sponsored for several years by Dell when it first launched. However, unlike Sugarstring, Motherboard was still independent of Dell and had no editorial influence on its content.

In any case, it’s not up to Sugerstring to decide its ethics in journalism, but instead its readers. We’ll have to wait and see what tech readers around the world think of a corporate-sponsored site that limits the editorial range of its writers. This news also comes the same week that Verizon was caught trying to track its customers permanently.

Joshua Sherman
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Joshua Sherman is a contributor for Digital Trends who writes about all things mobile from Apple to Zynga. Josh pulls his…
AT&T just made it a lot easier to upgrade your phone
AT&T Storefront with logo.

Do you want to upgrade your phone more than once a year? What about three times a year? Are you on AT&T? If you answered yes to those questions, then AT&T’s new “Next Up Anytime” early upgrade program is made for you. With this add-on, you’ll be able to upgrade your phone three times a year for just $10 extra every month. It will be available starting July 16.

Currently, AT&T has its “Next Up” add-on, which has been available for the past several years. This program costs $6 extra per month and lets you upgrade by trading in your existing phone after at least half of it is paid off. But the new Next Up Anytime option gives you some more flexibility.

Read more
Motorola is selling unlocked smartphones for just $150 today
Someone holding the Moto G Stylus 5G (2024).

Have you been looking for phone deals but don’t want to spend a ton of money on flagship devices from Apple and Samsung? Have you ever considered investing in an unlocked Motorola? For a limited time, the company is offering a $100 markdown on the Motorola Moto G 5G. It can be yours for just $150, and your days and nights of phone-shopping will finally be over!

Why you should buy the Motorola Moto G 5G
Powered by the Snapdragon 480+ 5G CPU and 4GB of RAM, the Moto G delivers exceptional performance across the board. From UI navigation to apps, games, and camera functions, you can expect fast load times, next to no buffering, and smooth animations. You’ll also get up to 128GB of internal storage that you’ll be able to use for photos, videos, music, and any other mobile content you can store locally. 

Read more
The Nokia 3210 is the worst phone I’ve used in 2024
A person holding the Nokia 3210, showing the screen.

Where do I even start with the Nokia 3210? Not the original, which was one of the coolest phones to own back in a time when Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace wasn’t even a thing, but the latest 2024 reissue that has come along to save us all from digital overload, the horror of social media, and the endless distraction that is the modern smartphone.

Except behind this facade of marketing-friendly do-goodery hides a weapon of torture, a device so foul that I’d rather sit through multiple showings of Jar Jar Binks and the gang hopelessly trying to bring back the magic of A New Hope than use it.
The Nokia 3210 really is that bad

Read more