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)
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.
Yeah, me neither. I mean I've seen models with busty substances covered in pretty sheer bikini tops… which might be pornographic for some. But that's the extent of it.
that's true ever since I use an ad blocker I haven't seen it. But I remember seeing it before. Either way most people don't use ad blockers as far as I know.
Wonder if anyone will sue when they end up on a pornographic Twitter or racy Instagram account, which presumably can't be blocked (hope they don't require installing a root cert...).
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)
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.
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.
One of the central tenets of democracy is that NOBODY knows anyone else's voting records. Even politicians are not allowed to reveal who they're voting for (meaning they can't show the paper. They can talk about it afterwards, but for all you know e.g. Trump voted for Harris).
I've always known people involved with the Christian community to be opposed against all extreme political parties, left and right (and long ago against anarchists, mostly against greens, ...). If they are rightist, they won't be nearly far enough right to support Andrew Tate and the like.
You don't know and can't know if being Christian and voting rightist overlaps or not. Only the general area is known. Nothing more.
I know how your neighborhood did; I know how evangelicals (and Asians and Jews and people in certain age and income brackets and dozens of other data points) voted.
The more evangelical an area, the more it voted for Trump. We know this.
>The more evangelical an area, the more it voted for Trump.
Talking to my evangelical friends here in Europe, they also voted for the most hardcore extremist populist candidates who turned out to be corrupt liars, just like Trump, who didn't give a flying fuck about the "Christian values" they preached, they just exploited them for the votes while doing the most non-Christian things ever in private.
I think the reason they fall for candidates and apps like these, is evangelicals and devout Christians as a whole, are too trusty and naive, which makes the easy marks for the most unscrupulous predatory politicians and businessmen out there.
... Well, I mean, taken at its most literal, _arguably_ the earth is flat. It's a bloody nonsense argument, but one might theoretically make it, and thus it is arguable. If you mean 'arguable' in its more conventional meaning, then, no it isn't arguable, don't be silly.
> This is why there's been a burgeoning "LGB drop the T" movement in the past few years.
So... As an experienced homosexual, I have met exactly one gay person in real life who holds this position. But he also opposed gay marriage, and civil unions, so, ah, y'know, not the most rational actor. (Also, IIRC he didn't believe in bisexuals, so would presumably be looking to lose the 'B', as well...) In practice, pretty much anyone parroting "LGB, drop the T" thing is a straight transphobe, and likely also a homophobe.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is previous history with most administrations on this subject, e.g. the 'Biden' administration abused CISA to force social media companies to taking action against speech protected by the First Amendment. Obama abused the espionage act to prosecute whistleblowers and waged a campaign against journalists who used leaked material, setting a pattern which continues to this day through both 'democrat' as well as republican administrations. This is not a 'current administration' issue but a 'government' issue no matter the colours they present.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you don't think MAGA parents wouldn't force this on their children, you need to look up the history of MAGA and MAGA-types
Helicopter parenting is at an all time high. The same parents are loading Life360 onto their kids' phones and expecting them to keep it installed after turning 18.
You didn't answer my question and went around it with a politically correct socially acceptable platitude. Like how when people asked "if they think black lives matter" and they answered "I think all lives matter".
Because I'm not for or against religion, so I think it's equally important to be able to ridicule all aspects of the discussion.
To directly answer your question - yes, a very strong yes. But that also applies to all religions, and all of anti-religion. Anything else is disingenuous and hypocritical
Christian values have nothing to do with low crime rates, high standards of living, and scientific achievements. Just look at the Philippines. A country way more Christian than any European country or the United States. There is high levels of crime in some areas, very poor standards of living in most of the country, and almost no scientific achievements compared to the west.
The main difference is cultural. In the Philippines we have a culture where people give their resources to past generations rather than saving and investing for the future. Then when parents die you're left with nothing and now your kids have to provide for you or you starve to death. Its a never ending cycle unless you're lucky enough to have parents that refuse you provide for them.
This cultural practice, which is not unique to the Philippines, leads to poverty which leads to low standards of living, crime, and lagging scientific achievement and innovation.
> In the Philippines we have a culture where people give their resources to past generations rather than saving and investing for the future.
That's exactly how the European welfare state works except it's the government managing it for everyone, instead of each individual family for their own like in Philippines.
>This cultural practice, which is not unique to the Philippines, leads to poverty which leads to low standards of living, crime, and lagging scientific achievement and innovation.
And the end result will be the same in EU like in Philippines except much delayed since the EU's stronger economy and mass migration allows it to keep borrowing like crazy and kick the can down the road but the house of cards will collapse regardless.
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.
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?
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.
Jesus didn't have a whole lot to say about homosexuality or transsexuality. I really have to question your both-sides narrative here.
Why would a properly Christian cell phone network block homosexual content? Even if we take it as given that Christianity forbids homosexuality, that's a prohibition on behavior, not observation. There's nothing in there which says you're not allowed to read about gay people, any more than you're not allowed to read about Hindus.
He had plenty to say about sleeping with anyone outside of marriage between man and woman, notably in Matthew chapter 19. While direct mention is relegated to Paul, Christ operated by whitelisting, so complaining that something isn't blacklisted is categorically wrong. Transsexuality wasn't a thing in that world but is plainly a rejection of His creation.
It presumably blocks it for the same reason it should block traffic concerning first-person shooter games, or content adjacent to self-harm and violence; the latter two were mentioned in the article as additional targets. It is not good to put certain things in one's brain. I along with others don't believe in reading certain things, watching certain things, and listening to certain music for the same reasons. I view it as best as intellectual junk food and at worst as corrosive; we should seek things that glorify Him and content pertaining to violence, homosexuality, and self-harm plainly don't.
The beginning of Matthew 19 seems to be about divorce, not where you put your wiener in general.
Matthew 19 is interesting to bring up, though. The end is all about how rich people don’t get into heaven. Would you say that this service should block depictions of wealth? It can be very tempting, after all.
In Matthew 19, Christ explicitly affirms the definition of marriage given in Genesis. As I said, this is an affirmative definition, i.e. it says what it is. Implicit is what it isn't, that is, anything else. He is answering by affirming marriage as a thing grounded in creation, in the nature of man and woman cleaving to one another in a lifelong covenant.
I think things like "flexing" influencers who idolize material wealth are pretty toxic and blocking them would be good, yes.
I wasn't particularly aware of President Trump until he went for political power. I barely knew of him. I recall having seen him exactly once, in some documentary on the History Channel. He's mentally categorized to me as "politician" more than "rich guy", which is the wrong type of corruption for this case. I had much more exposure growing up to the "flexer" types as the archetypal idolizer of wealth.
You should engage with what I'm saying, rather than nitpicking, or say nothing.
As a prominent figure who has corrupted tens of millions of Christians, I'd hope he'd be more in mind in this sort of discussion.
This isn't just a random aside. My point is that you're focusing on the wrong things. For what I'd see as proper Christians, homosexuality and influencers just aren't very important. Homosexuality has zero temptation for the vast majority, and influencers are just jesters for the modern age. If the goal is to stop Christians from straying, there are much more important things to look at.
I think fewer Christians than you believe take their cues on right living from that man. Maybe I'm biased as a zoomer but I see the influence of "flexers" and tate and fuentes-style ingrates as vastly more harmful, because they function as perverse role models for young men in particular. You may think they are just jesters; that is not so. I wish that were true but it's like saying that "instagram beauty" doesn't affect young women's self-image. It shouldn't, but it does.
I don't see homosexuality as a particularly important issue, as I'm not a member of a denomination that believes it constitutes a Godly relationship. I am, for example, less concerned with it than I am with widespread gluttony and resultant obesity. However that doesn't mean that it's not of any concern, and Christian ethics don't easily accommodate a utilitarian-style ranking of units-harm-done. It was, however, the topic of this particular company and the article about it.
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.
That's not quite what I meant. I'm not asking why this network exists rather than the other one. My point is that when we read the phrase "Christian phone network," we all immediately know that it's going to be something that blocks homosexual content rather than something that donates to feed the hungry, just from those three words. The rhetorical question is, why is that what the word "Christian" means now?
1. It wouldn't be posted here or anywhere else, it wouldn't even be reported on.
2. It would just be called a charity phone network.
3. Generally you don't need to self-segregate unless the outer world is opposed to certain values you have. When something is a Christian alternative, it's an alternative against some societal trend (porn being common). If it isn't incompatible with society, it doesn't need to segregate, so wouldn't; it would just be a phone network that donates to charity and it would attract all kinds. So an X phone network is automatically about the parts of X that are not commonly shared values among society, not about any arbitrary value X holds.
It's the same answer. Polarization pressure causes us to hear the word "Christian" and think only of the controversial parts of Christianity. Notice how you yourself are focusing on their block of LGBT content, even though the source article makes it clear their primary focus is blocking pornography.
You could define the product according its proponents' values, rather than focusing on where they disagree with yours. Then it'd be less polarizing. But I suspect you'd argue that it's less informative to do that, perhaps even outright misleading.
So actually, every one of the four things they list (Jesus-centric, void of pornography, void of LGBT, void of trans) disagrees with my values. I’m not focusing on where they disagree, I’m just taking a shortcut in my writing.
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.
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.
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?
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 :(
"‘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."
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)
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