World News

https://www.theverge.com/tech/894762/trump-mobile-conservative-mvno-radiant-patriot-puretalk-charity-liberty

there’s a rich history of smaller networks trying to make their money from patriots, Christians, and Republican voters.

Patriot mobile

Texas-based Patriot Mobile bills itself as “America’s ONLY Christian conservative wireless provider,” which I’m afraid to say is blatantly untrue.

Patriot Mobile sells Charlie Kirk hoodies and phone cases with the thin blue line or Israeli flag graphics, and runs an affiliate marketing scheme specifically for churches.

The company says it “contributes millions of dollars every year to those on the front lines,” by which it means organizations including Turning Point USA, CPAC, and the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, while funding conservative candidates in elections across Texas.

Radiant

Radiant hasn’t actually launched yet, but it promises a grand debut on Easter Sunday. It claims to be the “first Christian wireless service in the world,” our second outright lie of the day.

Nothing about Radiant’s marketing is explicitly political — instead it calls itself “a groundbreaking fusion of faith, technology, and entertainment.” It’s partnered with Israeli security company Allot to provide “network-level content filtering” that blocks out pornography, gambling, and “harmful digital influences.”

As for the entertainment part, it offers AI-generated retellings of biblical stories, some for adults, some for kids, some inexplicably narrated by AI Snow White. These appear to be part of a gamified app that promises — as if it’s a good thing — “more screen time.” AI Snow White Bible bedtime stories, what could be more Christian?

Charity Mobile

Charity… that sounds good, right? Unless… there was such a thing as a bad charity? That can’t be right. And Charity Mobile lets you decide which charity it donates to, so you’re in control anyway. Oh wait, let me look again. It donates 5 percent of your payment to “the Pro-Life, Pro-Family charity of your choice.” Ah.

In fairness, this isn’t exactly hidden in the small print. Charity Mobile proudly declares itself to be “the Pro-Life phone company,” and it wants to make sure you know it: Land on the homepage and you’ll be met by a screen-filling fetus and told to “choose life.” You can probably guess what the company’s Instagram looks like.

This will fail hilariously.

Tell me again that the USA is a free country and not a theocratic dictatorship

If anyone cares to know, this is the actual meaning of taking the lord’s name in vain. It is taking the sacred and turning it into a gimmick

Fisher says he’s […] also done outreach to thousands of churches around the country, offering a way to have Radiant donate a portion of congregants’ $30-per-month subscription fee to their church.

Gotta fund the jets somehow.

Wait until they figure out that Christians consume more porn than anyone else. They just tell other people not to consume porn.

Chris Klimis, a minister in Orlando who was recruited to be the company’s chief operating officer, says part of the reason he got involved was to offer Christians a real way to “do something” about what he sees as a pornography crisis in the faith. He was appalled by a recent survey showing that 67% of pastors have a “personal history” with porn use.

Radiant Mobile’s founder, Paul Fisher

Managing website block lists is a professional pivot for Fisher, who spent his career not in telecoms but in fashion; he was an agent for supermodels like Naomi Campbell and members of the Hilton and Getty families, and he later hosted a reality show in which he found people in rehab facilities and homeless shelters and tried to turn them into models. He ultimately left the industry and now says he regrets the role he played in it: “Am I proud that I spent 35 years creating star models or star influencers? Not at all.”

COO: Only those with a pure and unblemished past shall pass the bar to...well, that doesn't apply to our founder, of course...

this won't work. it's basically technologically impossible for a cell network provider to specifically block content based on keywords such as "trans" and "gender". that would require decrypting TLS communication and i don't think NSA is gonna give them the keys to that.

anyways, this proposal is a significant thing, not because of the real (physical) consequences it will have, but because of the psychological consequences. this signifies a push of people to regulate the internet more. which, i think is probably a bit similar to how russia and china each have their own internet which is almost detached from the rest of the world.

is this what the US is turning into?

Fuck I wish my people weren't so hated

Maybe also block all hate speech and inflammatory language. It's a loving God after all. If that blocks most information from the right that's too bad.

It's quite common to have parental controls for this type of thing in the UK. It's not like you're forced to use it. If you don't like it, don't buy it?

I don't know how you're going to block transgender content anyway, surely it exists on Discord, Xitter and Reddit. It's not possible to intercept HTTPS encryption

100% the outlier opinion here.

I think they found a market for the average person who is concerned about content online. I spent a lot of time trying to setup content filters to go cold turkey on a port addiction. I setup a pi.hole with some porn list and subscribe to a private DNS service for my phone. All of this is as an alternative to Covenant Eyes that took up to much resources and is very creepy to use.

For the average person, who doesn't know what DNS is, a network level filter on the internet is exactly what they want for their family. I think it's a good guardrail for a teenager. But it doesn't remove a parent's responsibility. I'm also ignoring the non-porn content filtering that is absolutely going to get caught be their filters, intentionally or not.