Oops. AT&T is publishing advertisements that in no way reflect the company’s true feelings and actions about Net Neutrality. The ads are published at the exact same moment the company’s lawyers and lobbyists are pushing the Federal Communications Commission to allow “paid prioritization" – the antithesis of the free-flowing Internet.

Somebody in their marketing department must be confused.

I don’t normally do this, but I’m going to throw AT&T some pro bono help and edit their ad for them so it better matches reality.

AT&T’s ad copy, with italicized edits:

We support an open Internet.*

*By “open” we mean open to suggestions for how to make it fit our business model. And by “suggestions,” we mean campaign contributions in exchange for favors that protect our business model.

Open to users who can afford our high prices. Open to investment that doesn’t threaten our monopolies in communities. Open to innovation, except where we stifle it.

The Internet is working (for now) – spurring investment, creating jobs, and opening doors to new opportunities.

To continue this success we are committed to a set of standards that will protect usersour monopoly profits, reward innovators who strike exclusive deals with AT&T, and help achieve the FCC’s goal of connecting everyone in America the wealthiest areas of America by 2020.

Freedom
The open exchange of ideas, content, and information across the Internet.A hollow word we’re using to tug at your heart strings. To be clear, we didn’t say “freedom of speech,” of course, because that’s not what paid prioritization on the Net would protect.

Innovation
A robust and secure network that enables new services, applications, and devices AT&T to innovate without the pressure of a competitor breathing down our neck. It’s hard to work like that. And about the whole “secure network” thing – yeah, we might have wiretapped your phones, but we have very minimal plans, for now, to look at your information online.

Competition
Consumers have the power to choose the best possible services and innovations. That’s funny. We added this for comedic effect.

Transparency
Clear and concise information about speed, cost and traffic management practices the ways in which we’re gutting the most democratic communications platform ever so that we can turn an even bigger profit.

With over a quarter million employees and another 600,000 people who supply and support our company billions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of lobbyists licking boots on Capitol Hill, we are committed to keeping the Internet open and growing in the direction we choose.

Working together with other ISPs, we can ensure that the Internet will continue to be will cease to be a platform for economic growth, job creation, and American ingenuity. Rather, Americans will get a corporatized Internet that prioritizes some content over others, allows us to block and control Web traffic and isn’t necessarily ideal for climbing out of this whole recession thingy. Potato/pototo.

Alright, that looks better. I just didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about AT&T. I’m sure they didn’t mean to misguide us – pressuring the FCC to drop Net Neutrality protections while they tell the public in ads that they support a neutral Net. Probably just a couple of typos.

OR, if you’re more of a visual person, here’s an amended ad we whipped up that AT&T might want to use. Just basically reminding the public of the time AT&T censored political speech at a Pearl Jam concert. They might want to rethink that whole “freedom” concept.