New US phone network for Christians to block porn and gender-related content

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/05/01/1136739/a-new-t-mobile-network-for-christians-aims-to-block-porn-and-gender-related-content/

by thinkingemote • 3 months ago

64 112 3 months ago

technologyreview.com

Redster• 3 months ago

I am glad someone is doing something like this. Very cool to see a free market solution. I do wonder, how will they handle Instagram, Youtube, and X.com, the everything (incl. porn!) app?

joe_mamba5• 3 months ago

I am glad someone is doing something like this.

Looked into the profile of the guy doing this and there isn't anything remotely "Christian" about him, he's just your average sleazy media exec trying to milk a specific demographic of gullible customers. He even admits it himself. So he's the last person in the world I'd trust to deliver something "Christian" for Christians.

Similar how the dating app Christian Mingle isn't owned or run by Christians, which should be your first alarm bell in case you were looking for such a thing.

mathgeek2• 3 months ago

I have to admit, my first somewhat sarcastic thought was what they will do about content involving murder, adultery, theft, not honoring your mother and father, etc.

morkalork• 3 months ago

Fake Christians gifting other fake Christians is a classic.

xvxvx• 3 months ago

That ISPs don’t allow content blocking by subscribers has always surprised me. Workplaces handle it but not homes?

zimpenfish• 3 months ago

That ISPs don’t allow content blocking by subscribers has always surprised me.

Some UK providers do[0]

[0] https://www.broadband.co.uk/broadband/help/parental-controls...

amanaplanacanal2• 3 months ago

Interesting. I assumed that cellular providers were common carriers. Who knows under this administration though.

landl0rd7• 3 months ago

Since it's an MVNO they can probably get away with this, no? They are not allocated any of the fixed, monopoly-prone resources like spectrum that make such rules necessary. The satanists can I suppose go start an MVNO that allows nothing but lbgt and pornography if they wish.

Leonard_of_Q2• 3 months ago

Who knows under this administration though.

That does not add anything of interest so you might as well leave it out unless you use it as an identity flag.

There's plenty of 'special' mobile subscriptions with all sorts of filtering options. Most target parents who want their children to be able to do A but not B or C, some - like this one - target other groups.

amanaplanacanal2• 3 months ago

There is previous history around the Trump administration, common carrier status for Internet providers, and net neutrality.

nerdsniper• 3 months ago

So, Andrew Tate videos would be blocked for talking about male gender roles? I don’t understand why we are replacing “LGBT Content” with “Gender Content” in formal vocabulary.

2ndorderthought• 3 months ago

It sounds less bigoted. It's not less bigoted. It sounds that way though.

sdsd• 3 months ago

Most conservative Christians (at least the ones I know in LDS and evangelical circles) would be very uncomfortable with their kids watching Andrew Tate videos, yes.

ceejayoz3• 3 months ago

Their voting records don’t seem to bear that theory out.

array_key_first2• 3 months ago

Andrew Tate is a raging misogynist, the Mormon church is built from the ground up on misogyny. Seems like a match made in heaven.

lowmagnet• 3 months ago

Because they even conflate pronouns with gender issues. You know, the words that substitute for antecedents in conversation.

themacguffinman• 3 months ago

Seems pretty high effort compared to a content blocker mobile app or native parental controls.

I'm not sure why anyone would get this.

0gs• 3 months ago

all it takes is a little faith!

LocalH5• 3 months ago

This is something a parent can buy for their kid and control it. According to the article, some of the filters cannot be turned off. I bet it also will end up with a free trial subscription to something like Life360.

sikozu• 3 months ago

This is such an extreme thing to do, there must be a better way.

Why can't religion coexist alongside societal progress? From my (limited) understanding of the Bible, as it was translated and translated over the years to our common, modern languages a lot of it has been adjusted, and these adjustments don't align with the original text. Perhaps it needs to be changed further.

I would love for people to have a religion to believe in, which does fulfill them without going against current and future societal values and norms.

deneb150• 3 months ago

There's barely anything in the bible about all the societal stuff relgious people freak out about. The bible isn't the problem.

wat100007• 3 months ago

There are plenty of progressive Christians who remember that Jesus’s most important command was to love your neighbor.

The better question is, why are these fundamentalists so successful at co-opting the word “Christian”? Why does “Christian phone network” mean one that blocks homosexual content rather than one that donates 10% of revenue to feed the poor?

landl0rd7• 3 months ago

Ideally a Christian cell phone network would do both. It would also provide only healthy foods in the office and encourage fitness (gluttony and sloth are sinful), prohibit working on Sundays, and encourage policies to steward our world. It would control off-hours demands for those who are married and have children, and therefore have family obligations to which they must see, and might hold mixers for its singles to encourage family formation. It would expect humility and servant-leadership from its executives and patience from its managers.

I would prefer to do business with such a network but one does not exist. Apparently, people do not believe there's much market demand for any but the first of these.

This is similar to the church itself, which tends increasingly towards alignment with one faction or another. In turn, it becomes blind to the sins of its own and focused wholly on the sins of its schmittian enemy. The conservative church will tell you of the sins of homosexuality but not obesity nor wrath; the liberal will tell you that insufficient love is sinful while ignoring transsexuality. I find neither particularly Christian.

Perhaps the Benedictines could run an MVNO. I am no catholic but they'd probably do a much better job.

estimator7292• 3 months ago

It's not exactly a new thing. People we would describe in the modern day as "religious extremists" or outright authoritarians have been using he name of Christianity in this way for... Well, since Christianity was invented.

Same for Islam and Judaism, though the last one has the roles reversed.

The problem you're trying to identify here is how the public and historic narrative almost completely ignores any positive aspects of these religions and focuses exclusively on the actions of terrible people using religion as cover and justification for terrible acts.

In large part it's relative to location and culture. In the US, if you ask any random person their opinion of Islam, it will be overwhelmingly negative. Vice versa in Islamic societies about Christianity.

There's also a lot to be said of the last era of colonialism wreaking unthinkable damage and actual literal genocides under the name of Christianity, and the damage that Christian "missionaries" still do in the modern day. In recent history, a lot of very, very bad things have been done very loudly in the name of Christianity. Under that banner, Europeans destabilized and destroyed huge swaths of the world. The consequences of which will still be around for generations yet to come. That kind of thing leaks into public and historic sentiment, no matter what. Turns out that the public doesn't really like genocides.

Before I get replies, yes, other people have used other religions to also do terrible conquest and genocide. European Christian colonialism is just the largest and most recent example relevant to Western common knowledge. You should study foreign religions and form your own opinion, it's quite enlightening.

On the other hand, the narrative of the modern era is completely and totally dominated by sensationalism and all the problems that capitalist media bring. Stories about Christian groups donating money don't sell news subscriptions or ad time. Ragebait does, and many religious groups of all flavors are happy to oblige.

pixl972• 3 months ago

Because the more moderate Christians have mostly left, leaving (and attracting) very fringe elements to the churches.

SpicyLemonZest2• 3 months ago

Because the MIT Technology Review would not, upon hearing about a phone network that donates 10% of revenue to feed the poor, contact T-Mobile and request comment on whether such donations from a bandwidth reseller "violate any of its policies". Everyone agrees that you should be allowed to be charitable if you'd like. So there's no polarization pressure in that direction; Christians who want their phone network to be more charitable simply pressure their existing network.

hrimfaxi• 3 months ago

Many people don't agree with the current and future societal values and norms. Why can't people be left alone in peace?

krapp2• 3 months ago

Because they won't leave others alone in peace. Because they work to enshrine their religious dogma into law and enforce it with violence.

array_key_first2• 3 months ago

Christians are not being victimized by other people calling them stupid or whatever. We have religious freedom, people are allowed to believe whatever they want. That doesn't mean that everyone has to keep silent, though.

Ironically, the only people victimizing Christians are grifters like this dude, who promise and sell them something they don't need and that won't work. This phone network grift is no different than those TV pastors who own private jets.

peterspath• 3 months ago

Isn't that the whole point of religions... they offer something timeless, transcendent, or divinely revealed that stands above whatever the current culture happens to celebrate or condemn this decade.

The current, past, and future values and norms that are decided by societies are fleeting, old tomorrow, always changing.

mathgeek2• 3 months ago

Religions generally stick to the standard “the old ways are whatever the last few generations taught, and the modern/liberal religions will be the old ways in a few generations”. Very few parts are not influenced by culture.

mistrial9• 3 months ago

yes, a quote from June Singer, a prominent Jungian analyst and author, has always stuck out for me.. Something about a stone, tumbled in a river over many, many.. many years.. specifically, passing through generations of people. If the content survives the fads and fashions, then it is an indicator of something with a deeper root.

oivey• 3 months ago

No? Christianity, for example, has changed massively over time. You can pick any denomination, and it’s true.

You can also look at new religions, denominations, or sects popping up. The purpose of religion is at its core supposed to be spirituality.

rsynnott2• 3 months ago

No. This is being aimed, one assumes, at US evangelical Christians (as I mention semi-jokingly elsewhere, it blocking catechism 239 might be an issue for Catholics). That is, being very generous, only about 250 years old at most, but realistically the current version's only about a century old.

AndrewKemendo2• 3 months ago

They are structurally at odds so there is no resolution to your request because you’re implicitly asking for a universal value function that is primary above all other epistemological frameworks.

This is explicitly what every epistemological framework is intending to compress, and is precisely the reason why these affinity groups exist.

If a group of people have fundamental unshakable belief that is so different than someone else’s fundamental overarching belief and they require different sets of actions in order to realize them, then there is no possible way to align them.

If I act based on my belief that Zeus creates thunder and lightning and I should do sacrifices in order to prevent my house from being burnt down from lightning, and you have an anemometer and a weathervane and forecasting and predicting models for wildfires and lightning and do preventative maintenance based on experimental results…

Those are two completely incompatible lifestyles and there is no coexistene between them. If there’s a storm coming and there’s only one goat left in the neighborhood and I believe that sacrifice in that goat is absolutely necessary for us to survive then I’m gonna do whatever it takes to sacrifice that goat. That’s the situation you find yourself in in the world.

You may be able to avoid each other long enough to not have conflict, or even collaborate temporarily to manage some kind of shared threat, but there’s never been a historical example of long term cooperation between two groups that embody functionally different world models.

There will eventually be a point where one will dominate the other, Universal vector alignment, what you’re asking for, is impossible.

KnuthIsGod• 3 months ago

"‘You’re a traitor!’ yelled the boy. ‘You’re a thought criminal! You’re a Eurasian spy! I’ll shoot you, I’ll vaporize you, I’ll send you to the salt mines!’

Suddenly they were both leaping around him, shouting ‘Traitor!’ and ‘Thought-criminal!’, the little girl imitating her brother in every movement.

It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gamboling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters."

– George Orwell

axus• 3 months ago

Happy to have the market solve a problem, providing an opt-in solution for people who want it. Somehow porn doesn't show up in my web-browsing either, funny how that works.

anothereng3• 3 months ago

actually sometimes you're in a normal website and there is an porn ad at the bottom.

KumaBear• 3 months ago

Never seen this unless I’m on some shady sites. So have zero clue what you are talking about. We see you

smt88• 3 months ago

That's never happened to me in nearly 40 yrs of web browsing

anonymousiam2• 3 months ago

I've seen this happen, but not after I began using pihole, NoScript, and UBlock Origin. (More than 10 years ago.)

arvid-lind• 3 months ago

Sorry that happened to you, I guess you should consider uh, switching phone networks?

LocalH5• 3 months ago

Given the way things have been lately, sometime before 2027 comes we'll see a push to make things like this the default, requiring explicit opt-out (which then potentially adds your name to a list)

duskdozer2• 3 months ago

The default carrier on a new TrumpPhone program (renamed from the FCC Lifeline program) I'm sure

therealpygon• 3 months ago

It doesn’t randomly show up in my browser either. Mysterious how all these people are “forced” to see this stuff when they go online.

SilverElfin• 3 months ago

Couldn’t you just do parental controls on the phones you own for yourself or your kids

AndrewKemendo2• 3 months ago

Now we’re talking

Affinity groups using technology to reject social norms is absolutely the future

The techno-balkanization will be televised! The follow on compression will be really crazy.

gitowiec• 3 months ago

This is Opus Dei's work and it's no good for the USA

beardyw• 3 months ago

I take the assumption to be that Christians are somehow not able to resist porn by their own efforts?

declan_roberts• 3 months ago

I think that statement describes a wide swath of non Christians as well.

pixl972• 3 months ago

I don't think it's the general ability or inability to stop watching porn that is in question. It's their righteous indignation that you're going to hell if you do that, so they'll gladly set up a theocratic nanny state of nationalist Christians to protect your every thought.

dgellow• 3 months ago

You can lookup global and per state pornhub searches, it’s no secret that religious places are consuming a lot of it

bdangubic• 3 months ago

not just a lot of it, most of it

zulux• 3 months ago

TV watching was detrimental to my life, so rather than be tempted by it, I just threw it in the trash.

In behavioral therapy it's called stimulus control.

threwitfaraway• 3 months ago

You're partially correct. Jesus is very clear about avoiding temptation. Religious people are humans just like the rest of us and want to proactively avoid sinning.

However, religious people are probably more concerned than the general population that their teen boys and girls not watch content that degrades human dignity.

swat535• 3 months ago

Catholic here, yes it's something we struggle with.

I'm in support of anything that helps remove the temptation for us. I assume that majority of Protestants feel the same way, which is why we these initiatives garner support from all.

That being said, I certainly wouldn't advocate for imposing the will of Christians on others by _force_.. that would be the opposite of what Christ teaches us.

peter-m80• 3 months ago

USA is a joke now

xedrac• 3 months ago

Compared to who?

jqpabc123• 3 months ago

“Fisher says he’s recruited a mix of Christian influencers to advertise the plan and has also done outreach to thousands of churches ..."

Religion is the world's oldest con --- and this is yet another example of how it can be used to fleece the faithful.

The only thing that prevents me from getting involved in something like this is my non-Christian morals.

kiriberty• 3 months ago

Welcome to Iran 2.0

add-sub-mul-div• 3 months ago

What an unserious life philosophy, not approaching unfamiliar things with curiosity.

bastard_op• 3 months ago

It sounds like the great firewall of god that is meant to prevent all sins. In theory it's probably just a content filtering service, same as most enterprises do, but with a spin for godly sheep to flock to.

Not a bad idea really if you have kids, as the alternative is basically spyware on your kids phone, and today it's somewhat trivial to build your own MVNO off a mainstream network like this. Would I ever trust it? About as much as I'd ever trust a priest around my kid, which is never.

anothereng3• 3 months ago

and yet you would trust a teacher around your kid which has higher rates of pedos than priests.

Retric• 3 months ago

That may have been a knock on religion rather than a pedo issue.

However, school systems also try and avoid teachers and kids being alone together. A pedo in a room of 30 kids isn’t likely to do anything.

dlev_pika• 3 months ago

The marketing targeting is going to be insane

duskdozer2• 3 months ago

Finally, perse/per/pers time to shine! Hmm, I think the gender-people have also started using "they" and "them", maybe use þey and þem as true, non-gender-related substitutes?

VariousPrograms• 3 months ago

To fill the gap left by all the sites being blocked, the company intends to offer access to a library of religious content, including AI-generated Bible videos.

Truly a serious and spiritual company. Maybe you can chat with AI Jesus instead of going to PornHub.

joe_mamba5• 3 months ago

That AI Jesus chatbot will surely not sell your data to the website's 1156 partners.

zombot• 3 months ago

I'm looking forward to hallucinated bible videos with heretical content.

Backslasher• 3 months ago

This reminds me of a similar offering in Israel (Kosher Cellular Phone) for Orthodox jews.

Hebrew wiki: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A1%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%A8...

It has restricted internet, and allows calls and messages only to / from other "Kosher" lines and specific whitelisted numbers as approved by a rabbinical committee.

They also have some bastardized support for Whatsapp with a limited ability to join groups (not sure how that's implemented)

anonymousiam2• 3 months ago

Does it work during Shabbat?

jackyinger• 3 months ago

Kind of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_mode

newsy-combi• 3 months ago

Where is the "as a company they can do what they want and if you don't like it, don't buy it" crowd when you need them? Stuck defending Google, Micrososft and Apple, I guess.

jiriro• 3 months ago

This would be great for Duolingo. Sure they don’t serve porn but their gender content lack of nuance sucks.

feb012025• 3 months ago

I find myself particularly suspicious of efforts block content on the internet these days

ausbah• 3 months ago

on a totally personal level as a queer person it’s really really really depressing that some groups of ppl resort to stuff like this. yeah freedom of expression, religion, and everything but to be so hateful towards a group to want to just erase them your everyday line of sight is just like :(

rsynnott2• 3 months ago

Presumably not suitable for Catholics, as it would block catechism 239 (https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_one/section... - WARNING: Contains gender.)

rolph• 3 months ago

there used to be a vaudville like gag..

"hey mama, [some sort of transgressional statement]."

" aahh, where did you get such ideas! just for that i want you to memorize 3 chapters of the bible!"

"mama, the bible is where i got that idea!"

fuckinpuppers• 3 months ago

The premise is kind of nice, an opt-in solution for that audience.

However, a lot of those people could benefit from not being in a faux Christian echo chamber, just like their tv on Fox News 24/7 already.

eudamoniac2• 3 months ago

Why does it inspire anger/mockery in so many people in this thread for some other people to choose not to see porn?