Home » AT&T »Consumer News »Data Caps »Editorial & Site News »Net Neutrality »Public Policy & Gov't » Currently Reading:

AT&T Censors Discussion of Internet Overcharging on its Website

AT&T’s support forums are being censored to stop a free and open discussion about the company’s elimination of an unlimited Internet experience.

We received word this morning from Stop the Cap! reader Roger, who tried to post a message including a link back to one of our stories exposing the myth of AT&T’s “congestion problems” to share with the large community of readers angry with AT&T about its Internet Overcharging scheme on its support forum.

“AT&T will not allow people to post links to your website,” Roger writes.  “Both myself and a friend of mine tried on two separate occasions to write messages that quoted from your facts and figures and linked back to them for readers looking for additional information, and AT&T removed them within minutes.”

Stop the Cap! can confirm AT&T is actively engaged in censorship on its support forum when I tried posting a message myself to test the theory, under my real name, including three links to three individual stories, and signed with a link back to our website’s home page.  Sure enough, within the hour, AT&T stripped out the links and implied we “revealed personal information” (about myself in the form of my name, which still appears as my ‘handle’) and were “spamming” the forum — a stretch when the only links were back to the content referenced in the piece.  A few other linked sites, including Broadband Reports, are not suffering the same fate when users link back to their content, at least for now.

(click to enlarge)

AT&T followed up claiming it does not allow messages that support the work of third-party groups, even if that “support” comes only from links back to content referenced in the forum.

“At least your message remained partially intact,” Roger adds.  “Ours were deleted completely.”

“With AT&T’s heavy handed ‘editors’ at work, no wonder there are concerns about Net Neutrality.  AT&T censors first, asks questions later.”

0 0 votes
Article Rating
3 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
TK
TK
12 years ago

Maybe we need to fill their support board and the ears of the representatives in their phone support center with questions such as these to make them sick of the whole new raft of questions that will result with capping, none of which help make an internet connection work better. These kinds of questions might create enough of a load on technical support to make people having real problems with their connection experience longer hold times and hopefully make AT&T realize the caps are stupid. 1) I spend a lot of time on facebook, twitter, and general web surfing. Will… Read more »

TK
TK
12 years ago

AT&T cannot even meter accurately

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Taking-A-Closer-Look-At-ATTs-Inaccurate-Usage-Meters-113442

Can we get a list of state regulators of weights and measures on this site?

It would seem that they should already be able to regulate this, as a poster remarked over there:

“Looks like it is time for state and local governments to intervene, as they have the authority to verify any meter or scale used in a commercial transaction for accuracy. Even the federal government could get involved as this can be an interstate commerce issue.”

TK
TK
12 years ago

And here is another great comment from the same DSL Reports article. “Ultimately, if they really want to do it right, they need to re-issue all customers a modem with a freaking LCD display on the modem that shows exact real-time usage stats which can be both verified with your own router, and online” We gotta make these ISPs really work to provide real time utility style meters if they want to be in this metering business. Then maybe they will drop it if they don’t want to be treated like utility companies. AT&Ts four day delay inaccurate meters just… Read more »

Search This Site:

Contributions:

Recent Comments:

Your Account:

Stop the Cap!