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Remember the Verizon ads that have phone users wandering around town, with the whole network of Verizon users following them around? I always thought those were a little creepy - do I really want The Network listening in on my phone calls?

Turns out those people aren’t just following you around, they’re also checking your text messages to determine what they think is appropriate and what’s not. And today, as the New York Times noted, they decided that a perfectly innocuous advocacy message wasn’t appropriate. From the piece,

Saying it had the right to block "controversial or unsavory" text messages, Verizon Wireless has rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.

Was this Verizon dipping their toe into the water of a politically censored network to see what kind of message it would send? Was it an overzealous spam filter that got its signals crossed? Was it an antiquated policy that should be dropped? Or was it just a dumb call? Follow me below the break for more, and what it could mean for your NPO.

First off, it’s important to note that the reason that Verizon got a say in whether the message was sent was that the message was sent via NARAL’s shortcode, a five-digit number designed for SMS. These shortcodes can be either randomly assigned or picked on your own (like a vanity plate, but it costs $1,000 or so a month), and can be your own dedicated number or leased through a third-party (in which case you’re sharing - which can be awkward).

When you sign up for a shortcode, either on your own or through a third-party, you have to apply to each carrier to ask them to transmit your messages. There’s no real regulation here, unlike voice transmission, and telecoms aren’t really known to be open and transparent entities that are only looking out for the public good.

There’s an  argument to be made that there should be some gatekeeping when it comes to SMS - an SMS spammer or just a mass sender with a bug that didn’t respond to your STOP command could wreak havoc on phone bills. Of course, that brings us back to the simply ridiculous nature of the SMS system that charges both the sender and the recipient, and doesn’t let you reject a message that you  don’t want to pay for, but I digress - the point of this is that mass senders like NARAL follow different rules than you do when txting your friends, and there’s no one to allow or reject your message to go through, though it’s probably safe to assume Dick Cheney is reading it too from his NSA bunker.

With regard to NARAL’s message, it’s important to note that this copy was signed off on by all the other major carriers, And while the argument that Verizon should have approved it if everyone else did seems like something any mom would reject, it does point to the fact that no one believed this message was spam or otherwise harmed users.

So that only leaves political reasons, which Verizon’s not disputing, as the Times article notes:

In turning down the program, Verizon, one of the nation’s two largest wireless carriers, told Naral that it ‘does not accept issue-oriented (abortion, war, etc.) programs - only basic, general politician-related campaigns (Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, etc.).’

So here’s where we get to your non-profit. Bear in mind that while the other carriers didn’t reject this message, they do have a pretty heavy hand that leads to messages being watered down heavily to get through. That explosive, hard-hitting direct mail copy? Don’t count on it (which is particularly problematic when you need it most - remember that you only get 160 characters to make your point). And the telecoms  can censor your messages, of course - they own the networks, and the government hasn’t been able to rein them in, yet.

So what can be done about this? Well, the Times story and NARAL’s own outreach caused a furor that led Verizon to release the message after all. But that doesn’t mean that they’ll let the next one go - this may have just been a way to test the public’s reaction to censorship of a political message.

There’s certainly  a school of thought that says that a boycott of SMS by NPOs would hit them in the pocketbook - after all, while they’re making a little bit off of licensing you the shortcode and the right to use it, the telecoms are making millions when the messages are received. But unfortunately, non-profits are such a small drop in the bucket that their absence would hardly be noticed - there are plenty of goofy wallpapers, annoying ringtones, and cheap games to keep the shortcode SMS market going strong.

If this is the result of an antiquated policy that just hasn’t been caught up with the times, NPOs should move forward with the assumption that they can text at will, and I’d like to see some of the organizations focused on issues like this test the line to see exactly where it is.

The Save the Internet coalition points out this, and similar examples of the dangers of a non-neutral internet - that telecoms who say, "We won’t mess with traffic… really!" have proven that they can’t be trusted. They’re using this incident in a petition to ask Congress to step in on modern telecommunications as they did with the common carrier rule.

SMS should remain a tool in any non-profit’s new media toolbox. But combining this with the difficulty of fundraising via SMS and you should make sure that you have a solid plan in place that leverages the medium’s strengths, while using other media to fill in the gaps. And hopefully, today’s public outcry will make The Network think twice before censoring a non-profit’s message.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Current Affairs, SMS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.