HAVE YOU SEEN THIS TWEET?

It’s being used to manipulate you and voters across America…

In Portugal, with no net neutrality, internet providers are starting to split the net into packages. pic.twitter.com/TlLYGezmv6 — Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 27, 2017

It’s been shared roughly 60,000 times at the time of this report so there’s a good chance that you have. Unfortunately, it’s putting fake news on a whole new level of distortion. It has nothing to do with Portugal’s lack of Net Neutrality.

Setting Things Straight: Ro Khanna Is A Lying Scumbag

We can’t say for certain why Ro Khanna decided to falsely frame this image as Portuguese internet, but we can prove he’s lying to you all.

The image comes from a telecommunications company called MEO and while it does indeed offer internet to households in Portugal, this is not an advertisement for any internet plans. Instead, this is an advertisement for cell phone coverage and it’s actually an interesting model.

The way it works is simple. Users sign up for a standard ‘use anywhere’ data plan and pay monthly for that just like American cell phone plans offer now. In addition to that ‘use anywhere’ data, MEO offers customers a chance to purchase additional cell data at massive discount if they agree to only use the additional data on certain apps. In other words, a person that gets a 5 GB data plan can use that 5 GB anywhere they want, but if they decide to purchase one of the add-ons in Khanna’s image, they can use that data to supplement their plans.

This has nothing–absolutely nothing at all–to do with household internet access. Ro Khanna is a lying scumbag.

Portugal Is Already Pushing Back

Publico, a Portuguese publisher, sent an email to MEO asking for comment on the way their company was being used to manipulate the American public. As you can assume, MEO was not too happy.

MEO made clear that the image used by Ro Khanna was not a correct representation of how internet works in Portugal, but rather “additional traffic” provided to user that choose to add to their cell phone plans.

Further, Publico noted that countries like Germany have the same sort of add-on option available:

This type of package also exists in other European countries: in Germany, Stream On allows customers to watch videos and listen to music from specific partners without reducing the data included in the tariffs. The case sparked controversy, but was approved by the German telecoms regulator.

This hasn’t stopped lazy losers from literally every major liberal publication from spreading this fake garbage to Americans:

Business Insider was the first publication to pick up and spread the propaganda produced by Ro Khanna. A Portuguese citizen emailed them to correct their mistake but the author “didn’t seem to care” that he got things entirely wrong. In other words, he’s a politically motivated hack.

actually contacted the writter on the article (business insider). he replied but did not seem to care abt my explanation :/ still waiting for an answer this is crazy. seeing this 1st hand… and i am more in tune with liberals (here I'm actually an independent)… — Carnation Rev (@CarnationRev) November 22, 2017

Oh, and one more thing, Net Neutrality exists in Portugal–as it does across all of the European Union.