{"id":53424,"date":"2023-05-11T12:53:21","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T16:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/?p=53424"},"modified":"2023-09-11T12:35:07","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T16:35:07","slug":"nlpc-verizon-should-dump-paypals-cancel-culture-ceo-from-its-board","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/featured-news\/nlpc-verizon-should-dump-paypals-cancel-culture-ceo-from-its-board\/","title":{"rendered":"NLPC: Verizon Should Dump PayPal’s Cancel Culture CEO from Its Board"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday, National Legal and Policy Center presented a proposal<\/a> at\u00a0Verizon Communications Inc.<\/a>\u2018s annual shareholder meeting in Salt Lake City, that would require the company to produce a semi-annual report which would itemize requests it has received from the federal government to censor<\/a> its customers.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s board of directors opposed our proposal, as explained on pages 65-66 in its proxy statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last month NLPC filed a proxy memo<\/a> with the Securities and Exchange Commission<\/a> in response to the board’s opposition.<\/p>\n

Speaking as sponsor of the resolution was\u00a0Paul Chesser<\/a>, director of NLPC\u2019s\u00a0Corporate Integrity Project<\/a>. A transcript of his three-minute\u00a0remarks\u00a0follows:<\/p>\n

Good morning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Verizon opposes our proposal for a report on government takedown requests because the Company says it already publishes so-called \u201cTransparency Reports<\/a>,\u201d and therefore the report we request isn\u2019t necessary.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But what Verizon calls a \u201cTransparency Report,\u201d is nothing of the sort.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The report we seek asks for specific requests for censorship that Verizon has received from all branches of the United States government.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All Verizon\u2019s alleged \u201cTransparency Reports\u201d give you are numbers<\/a>, and zero transparency.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As we have seen from the revelations in the \u201cTwitter Files<\/a>,\u201d agencies controlled by the White House censored their critics via social and corporate media entities, at an unprecedented scale.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For example, major tech companies including Verizon met monthly<\/a> with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security ahead of the 2020 election, to discuss how to handle so-called \u201celection misinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Platforms, including those controlled by Verizon, reportedly removed alleged \u201cmisinformation\u201d at the request of the government.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet there are no such disclosures of any censorship incidents in Verizon\u2019s phony \u201cTransparency Report.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But the type of report we request would include them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Verizon also engaged in election interference when it abruptly shut down a test run of one of Donald Trump\u2019s most important voter-contact programs<\/a> one weekend in July 2020, potentially costing the former president millions of dollars in donations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And in 2021, members of Congress who regulate the telecom industry wrote to Verizon urging them to drop One America News Network and other conservative-leaning news channels<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Verizon ended its 17-year relationship with OANN, while the discredited<\/a>, flailing<\/a> CNN remains on the Company\u2019s channel listings.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If Verizon truly wanted to stop \u201cmisinformation,\u201d they would dump CNN.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Verizon, meanwhile, claims that, \u201cOur respect for the right to freedom of expression of opinion is fundamental to our business.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Because of these examples I cited and others, we doubt that Verizon genuinely believes in freedom of speech.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But if Verizon wants the public<\/em> to believe that, one step they could take is to ask for the resignation of Dan Schulman<\/a> from the Board of Directors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While he\u2019s been CEO of PayPal<\/a>, that company has implemented some of the most extreme cancel culture and censorship policies<\/a> in Corporate America, including trying to impose a $2,500 fine<\/a> of account holders who allegedly promote \u201cmisinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PayPal also terminated, without warning, the account<\/a> of one of the last remaining pro-Democracy groups in Hong Kong, before it fell to the communist Chinese<\/a> government.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I could cite many more examples<\/a> of PayPal\u2019s cancel culture actions<\/a> during Mr. Schulman\u2019s tenure<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He has no business being on the board of a major media or telecom corporation \u2013 or any company for that matter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thank you, and please vote FOR Item 5 on the proxy statement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read NLPC\u2019s shareholder proposal for the Verizon annual meeting here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read NLPC’s proxy memo filed with the SEC in support of its proposal here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Thursday, National Legal and Policy Center presented a proposal at\u00a0Verizon Communications Inc.\u2018s annual shareholder meeting in Salt Lake City, that would require the company to produce a semi-annual report which would itemize requests it has received from the federal government to censor its customers. The company\u2019s board of directors opposed our proposal, as explained […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53350,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[465,133,463,464,226,499,250],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53424"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53448,"href":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53424\/revisions\/53448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}