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.
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.
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)
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)
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.
More broadly, outside the context of this Christian content filter, it makes sense to distinguish them. The "LGB" and the "T" (or "gender") are very different concepts.
And, arguably, the most mainstream ideological position of the "T" is, effectively, a homophobic one. This is why there's been a burgeoning "LGB drop the T" movement in the past few years.
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 :(
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?
"‘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."
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.
actually sometimes you're in a normal website and there is an porn ad at the bottom.
Sorry that happened to you, I guess you should consider uh, switching phone networks?
I've seen this happen, but not after I began using pihole, NoScript, and UBlock Origin. (More than 10 years ago.)
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.
Never seen this unless I’m on some shady sites. So have zero clue what you are talking about. We see you
That's never happened to me in nearly 40 yrs of web browsing
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.
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)
The default carrier on a new TrumpPhone program (renamed from the FCC Lifeline program) I'm sure
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)
Does it work during Shabbat?
Kind of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_mode
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.
Andrew Tate is a raging misogynist, the Mormon church is built from the ground up on misogyny. Seems like a match made in heaven.
Their voting records don’t seem to bear that theory out.
Did large blocks of them vote for Tate?
Large blocks of them voted for his ally.
https://www.propublica.org/article/andrew-tate-investigation...
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 don’t know how you voted.
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.
The people who outsource their thinking often wind up in the same circles.
It sounds less bigoted. It's not less bigoted. It sounds that way though.
More broadly, outside the context of this Christian content filter, it makes sense to distinguish them. The "LGB" and the "T" (or "gender") are very different concepts.
And, arguably, the most mainstream ideological position of the "T" is, effectively, a homophobic one. This is why there's been a burgeoning "LGB drop the T" movement in the past few years.
You conflate them, but it kind of sounds like the article is separating their de novo definition of “gender” from “trans”?
> It’s also rolling out a filter on sexual content aimed at blocking material related to gender and trans issues
Also there’s no need to “separate the T” because the actual quote was that this group wants to block LGBT content:
> “We are going to create an environment that is Jesus-centric, that is void of pornography, void of LGBT, void of trans”
It’s just weird for news outlets to relabel “LGBT” to “Gender”.
... 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.
Because they even conflate pronouns with gender issues. You know, the words that substitute for antecedents in conversation.
I take the assumption to be that Christians are somehow not able to resist porn by their own efforts?
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.
[dead]
I think that statement describes a wide swath of non Christians as well.
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 can lookup global and per state pornhub searches, it’s no secret that religious places are consuming a lot of it
not just a lot of it, most of it
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.
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.
and yet you would trust a teacher around your kid which has higher rates of pedos than priests.
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.
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?
>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.
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.
Fake Christians gifting other fake Christians is a classic.
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.
Presumably not suitable for Catholics, as it would block catechism 239 (https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_one/section... - WARNING: Contains gender.)
Seems pretty high effort compared to a content blocker mobile app or native parental controls.
I'm not sure why anyone would get this.
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.
all it takes is a little faith!
Interesting. I assumed that cellular providers were common carriers. Who knows under this administration though.
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.
> 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.
There is previous history around the Trump administration, common carrier status for Internet providers, and net neutrality.
That ISPs don’t allow content blocking by subscribers has always surprised me. Workplaces handle it but not homes?
> 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...
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!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Many people don't agree with the current and future societal values and norms. Why can't people be left alone in peace?
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.
Because they won't leave others alone in peace. Because they work to enshrine their religious dogma into law and enforce it with violence.
Sure but in the case of this article, seems like it doesn’t affect anyone else but the consumers of this product.
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.
And no one is stopping them. But they don't have the right not to be ridiculed, and I suspect a lot of people ridiculing them are fellow Christians.
It's not as if anyone is going to chain them by their ankles to the back of a truck and drag them to death for being straight over it.
>But they don't have the right not to be ridiculed
Are we allowed to ridicule the things Jews and Muslims do to segregate themselves from western society, or just Christians?
The right to ridicule all religion is important. Just like the right to ridicule anti-religion is also important.
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".
Not only religion. Some countries spread their dogma with violences to other countries too.
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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.
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There's barely anything in the bible about all the societal stuff relgious people freak out about. The bible isn't the problem.
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.
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.
> the liberal will tell you that insufficient love is sinful while ignoring transsexuality
What does this mean?
One doesn't seek the good of the other by pretending that sinful behavior isn't.
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.
Funny that your go-to bad rich person is influencers and not, say, the president.
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.
Because the more moderate Christians have mostly left, leaving (and attracting) very fringe elements to the churches.
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?
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.
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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 :(
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.
That AI Jesus chatbot will surely not sell your data to the website's 1156 partners.
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?
This would be great for Duolingo. Sure they don’t serve porn but their gender content lack of nuance sucks.
I find myself particularly suspicious of efforts block content on the internet these days
The marketing targeting is going to be insane
What an unserious life philosophy, not approaching unfamiliar things with curiosity.
"‘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
USA is a joke now
Compared to who?
This is Opus Dei's work and it's no good for the USA
Couldn’t you just do parental controls on the phones you own for yourself or your kids
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.
“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.
Welcome to Iran 2.0
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