14 ms·

T-Mobile Actively Censoring Certain URLs [video]

237 points by Acrobatic_Road 5y ago

showerrain 5y ago
The same thing happened to .win sites including a popular one, post election. I posted proof here (using another account) but it was immediately flagged because nobody cared. In fact many were happy about it.
- ycIsGarbage 5y ago
- dmead 5y ago
  for anybody reading. he means thedonald.win. this entire thread is about t-moble censoring right wing and alt-right (white supremacist) websites. hats off to them for doing the moral thing.
  - WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    I wouldn't call this "the moral thing". If it was a setting as part of their spam filter that you can turn on or off, then maybe it should be permitted, but it should definitely not be the default.
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    How do you discuss, examine, learn how bad something is, or what exactly makes it so bad, if you can't even refer to it? This is a more idiotic position even than the positions espoused on those sites.
    - dmead 5y ago
      that already happened, en masse. that forum used to be a subreddit that was thoroughly understood and read by the entire internet. perhaps you need another reading of mein kampf, just to be sure?
      - showerrain 5y ago
        Any association to mein kampf shows a profound misunderstanding of that forum.
        dmead 5y ago
        There is no association other than these ideas are both clear rejects. I believe my point stands.
        Brian_K_White 5y ago
        You had no point. Your question implied that no one needs to read mein kompf, thus proving that it's ok to censor it, thus showing that it's ok to censor anything else you don't like. Since all of those things your attempt at a point stands on are false, the point in fact does not stand. It's not only wrong, it's unbelivably ignorant. Perhaps I'm misremembering from so long ago in 1979 or 80, but I feel like they explained the fundamental problems with censorship, including reasoning such as you present, as early as 4th or 5th grade. That's why I say unbelievably ignorant. How is an adult saying something that a 5th-grader k ows better? I guess literally I can believe that they allow kids to reach adulthood without ever being made to understand something so important, but I sure don't want to.
        dmead 5y ago
        I think you're being ignorant to the realities of modern communication. Censorship of libraries and press in the pre-internet era is completely different than preventing new copies of stormfront being shoved down everyone's proverbial throat on a daily basis.
perryizgr8 5y ago
- thakoppno 5y ago
  It’s the public’s invisible light.
ars 5y ago
Censoring in SMS messages. Certain anti-abortion links, and a distributed youtube alternative are censored.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  In particular, the links they tried were: * https://odysee.com/ https://odysee.com/ * https://freethestates.com/ https://freethestates.com/ * https://freethestates.org/ https://freethestates.org/ * https://freethestates.org/who-we-are/ https://freethestates.org/who-we-are/ Any SMS, whether incoming or outgoing, with any of these links is silently dropped.
  - megraf 5y ago
    It's the free part. Twilio will also flag patterns like this. We built a contactless workflow that was being censored, and it was due to a similar substring appearing in the link. It was a pain in the ass to figure out
    - jlund-molfese 5y ago
      From the Reddit thread and my own testing, links like “ https://free-test.com/” https://free-test.com/” go through fine from a T-Mobile phone. These URLs T-Mobile blocks appear to be individually treated differently, for whatever reason.
      - megraf 5y ago
        Interesting, thanks for checking it out!
    - markovbot 5y ago
      Other sites like ddosecrets.com and itsgoingdown.org are also affected. Neither have the string "free" in them
  - JobDestroyer 5y ago
    Other sites that are blocked are ddosecrets.com, canadiancovidcarealliance.org
mc32 5y ago
The result of the banality of slow-creep censorship which lots of people winked at because it was censorship they could live with. Don't worry, they said platforms have a right to censor the content they carry, they are not "dumb pipes" and many other ways people dismissed the threat from censorship. Now we have "dumb pipes" censoring certain services as well as content. Of course politicians love this. They will not oppose censorship. Power loves censorship.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  ISPs are not platforms. If they want to meddle with traffic they should lose all common carrier indemnity.
  - javagram 5y ago
    T-Mobile is supposed to block spam and scam texts like all providers, I thought? The instructions from the FCC for responding to text spam include forwarding the message to shortcode SPAM on the cellular provider, which presumably is to give them a database of spam to block in the future. https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2020/03/02/mobile-phone-texts-spam-and-scams https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2020/03/02/mobile-phone...
    - mc32 5y ago
      This is not that. It censors alternatives to youtube for example --The landing page not any particular content. Also, what ARE they doing (not doing) about scam/SPAM telephone calls? Nothing!
      - RL_Quine 5y ago
        That sounds like bad toupee fallacy. You don't know what the situation would be like if they were doing nothing.
      - wmf 5y ago
        AFAIK T-Mobile was the first carrier to implement STIR/SHAKEN to verify caller ID.
daveevad 5y ago
Someone on this board probably has access to the entire list of these domains?
bkallus 5y ago
They also block all .xyz links. This is why I spent the extra money on a .org
- dheera 5y ago
  I thought .com .net .org are the cheapest ... They're like $9 on NameCheap and I think I've seen $3 elsewhere
  - Thorrez 5y ago
    Namecheap says .xyz is $1 for the first year.
  - bkallus 5y ago
    I thought .org was more expensive than .xyz for the name I was looking for. Could be wrong.
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    A lot of registrars were offering .xyz domains at fire-sale promotional prices (like, $1 for the first year, or outright free with the purchase of another domain). This made them extremely popular with spammers. The same goes for a lot of other new gTLDs.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Rizz50 5y ago
      This is wild because I just saw an article about xyz on techcrunch. I even checked Spamhaus and they have a lower score than .com in spam. Im weary of these outdated filters than block new gtlds because they're new and automatically considered bad.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Really depends on the domain - a short(ish) word or name combo won't be, and many .com, .net, .org domains are already taken. My personal blog is on .me ( Montenegro), the .com is parked and advertised at $4k, the .net is taken but unused and the .org is taken and used.
x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
Can confirm -- I've attempted to replicate this with multiple messages with and without URLs to my wife (on the same account). Messages with the documented URLs are consistently blocked while others are not.
- tambeb 5y ago
  For what it's worth, messages I just sent to and from my Google Voice number to my Fi number (while on T-Mobile underlying) went through fine.
  - tata71 5y ago
    Via SMS to a forwarder? Or GVoice app/webapp?
    - tambeb 5y ago
      Between Messages app (Fi with RCS enabled, vs. the special Fi syncing system [1]) and GV app. [1] https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6188337?hl=en&ref_topic=6216184 https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6188337?hl=en&ref_topic...
  - jlund-molfese 5y ago
    Interesting, messages sent from my T-Mobile to Google Voice number are being filtered out as the video describes. Maybe Fi has a special deal the other MVNOs don’t?
    - tambeb 5y ago
      My results were what I expected, and what I would expect for any MVNO. Are other non-Fi MVNOs being filtered/censored? I think that'd be a pretty big deal, unless it's just Boost Mobile or whoever it is they own that really isn't, practically speaking, an MVNO anymore.
  - silisili 5y ago
    IIRC, SMS on Fi is handled like gvoice. I'd be highly surprised if TMO had much interaction at all with the message.
finite_jest 5y ago
According to the video, links to Odysee (a YouTube alternative) and Free The States (an anti-abortion websites) are blocked. People on Reddit [1] also corroborate this. Corporate censorship exists, it is generally biased politically, and is not OK. [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/GoldandBlack/comments/rs2wqr/apparently_tmobile_is_censoring_the_url/ https://old.reddit.com/r/GoldandBlack/comments/rs2wqr/appare... --- PS. Here are a couple of things that I think are worth clarifying: * This about them blocking links to the websites in an SMS message, not DNS blacklisting or deep packet inspection. * Their blocking system seems pretty dumb in general. Apparently, it is even blocking lichess.org [2], the whole .xyz TLD, and stochastically Jacobin (the National Review of the left). [2]: Thanks to @lynndotpy for confirming this.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  The Reuters story linked in the Reddit thread has the FCC reassuring us this authority is for bulk messages only.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    To be clear, for the benefit of those who are reading these comments before watching the video, this censorship happens even to single messages sent between individuals' personal phones, so it doesn't fall within that authority.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- xeromal 5y ago
  I just tested this with my wife and odysee is being blocked over SMS. If you send it over RCS, it works fine.
  - finite_jest 5y ago
    That makes sense, as Google's extension to RCS does have a form of "end-to-end" encryption.
nichos 5y ago
Another reason to use signal, briar, etc...
poletopole 5y ago
- 58x14 5y ago
  I can't figure out why you linked this user's threads.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    Probably meant to link their most recent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29733051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29733051
    - Acrobatic_Road 5y ago
      Hmn, not sure why anyone would care about my post history.
  - poletopole 5y ago
    It's not because I'm calling BS, just the timing of it, because it's not just domains and not just T-mobile. I got a random text message from an HN user I don't know personally, a few weeks back, but took a screenshot of the account's only comment several days BEFORE I received the text, because it was odd (the account is now deleted). I didn't even take the screenshot with my phone. It does grow more absurd, but I signed up for this so to speak. Well, three years of data down the drain... Edit: I wasn't pointing fingers at the user in particular, but be wise HN, that's all.
    - ribosometronome 5y ago
      Not sure I am reading this correctly, are you saying that you received a text from someone who your only interaction with them had been visiting their HackerNews profile and taking a screenshot?
Reubend 5y ago
Is it possible these were just anti-spam measures that are accidentally getting discovered by normal people as well?
jlund-molfese 5y ago
I’m seeing the same thing on outgoing T-Mobile SMS messages. The really nefarious thing is that T-Mobile doesn’t reject the text outright or notify the user. Instead, it pretends it was processed and the recipient just decided not to respond.
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  That might be the worst aspect of this worse than the censorship itself.
lettergram 5y ago
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- rfrey 5y ago
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- WoahNoun 5y ago
  Quotes from his Jan 6 speech: >And by the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? He had 80 million computer votes. It's a disgrace. There's never been anything like that. You could take third-world countries. Just take a look. Take third-world countries. Their elections are more honest than what we've been going through in this country. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace. >And I'd love to have if those tens of thousands of people would be allowed. The military, the secret service. And we want to thank you and the police law enforcement. Great. You're doing a great job. But I'd love it if they could be allowed to come up here with us. Is that possible? Can you just let him come up, please? >And he looked at Mike Pence, and I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so. >For years, Democrats have gotten away with election fraud and weak Republicans. And that's what they are. There's so many weak Republicans. And we have great ones. Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they're out there fighting. The House guys are fighting. But it's, it's incredible. >No third-world countries would even attempt to do what we caught them doing. And you'll hear about that in just a few minutes. >The American people do not believe the corrupt, fake news anymore. They have ruined their reputation. But you know, it used to be that they'd argue with me. I'd fight. So I'd fight, they'd fight, I'd fight, they'd fight. Pop pop. You'd believe me, you'd believe them. Somebody comes out. You know, they had their point of view, I had my point of view, but you'd have an argument. >I read it about Bill Barr, that he's my personal attorney. That he'll do anything for me. And I said, "You know, it really is genius." Because what they do is that, and it makes it really impossible for them to ever give you a victory, because all of a sudden Bill Barr changed. If you hadn't noticed. I like Bill Barr, but he changed, because he didn't want to be considered my personal attorney. >So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn't listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he's listening to. >We won in a landslide. This was a landslide. They said it's not American to challenge the election. This the most corrupt election in the history, maybe of the world. >So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give. >The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. >So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-s...
rootusrootus 5y ago
Interestingly, there's an older discussion on the t-mobile subreddit that goes into quite a lot more analytical detail and is much less reactionary than HN is. What a role reversal.
- sdwvit 5y ago
- lopatin 5y ago
  PSA: "Reactionary" doesn't mean what it sounds like it means. re·ac·tion·ar·y (of a person or a set of views) opposing political or social liberalization or reform. "reactionary attitudes toward women's rights" Edit: Here's the T-Mobile subreddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/rskfmx/video_evidence_of_tmobiles_sms_blocking_the_more/ https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/rskfmx/video_evide...
lynndotpy 5y ago
Relevant conversation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28554400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28554400 Turns out .xyz domains are regularly blocked by carriers as well. I'm on T-Mobile and I can't send my own personal blog, because it's a .xyz. (I really need to change that...) In my experience, T-Mobile also blocks messages over ddosecrets.com. They also block leftist sites such as Jacobinmag.com or itsgoingdown.org, so it'd be an interesting study to see what the cause is and if it's biased. (I confirmed these three and my own site just now.)
- JobDestroyer 5y ago
  I was unable to replicate the block of Jacobinmag.com nor itsgoingdown.org. I was able to replicate the block on ddosecrets.com.
  - lynndotpy 5y ago
    This is really weird. They were blocked once, but I tried these again ~40 minutes after my original test, and they went through. Then, when writing this comment, I tried a third time, and they were blocked again. First run: odysee.com, jacobinmag.com, itsgoingdown.org were blocked. I did these just before midnight EDT. This second run: odysee.com, and freethestates.com (didn't try it the first time) were blocked, but jacobinmag.com and itsgoingdown.org are not anymore. I double-checked for spelling mistakes, etc. I also checked covidcarealliance.org and lichess.org, also blocked. I also checked goo.gl URLs (previously notoriously blocked by T-Mobile) and they are not blocked. I did some looking into this, and T-Mobile employees have been surprisingly open about URL filtering in the past on their support forums. One example (see https://community.t-mobile.com/accounts-services-4/tmobile-is-blocking-my-messages-sent-to-customers-32893 https://community.t-mobile.com/accounts-services-4/tmobile-i...) > I’m taking care of this right now. I must say the domain is very amusing and creative! It’s flagging for a combination of issues: collocated with Amazon AWS with 5k other domains, registrar to Namecheap (poor reputation with DGA generated domains), and inserting both URL and email address in message body. (double whammy). Otherwise, you are following proper protocol with Twilio A2P messaging. > > I’ll have the vendor reputation resolved in a few hours. Thanks! It's surprising to me that AWS and NameCheap are named as contributing factors. In fact, writing this comment took so long that I tried the strange URLs a third time. jacobinmag.com was blocked again but not itsgoingdown.org. So, jacobinmag.com has flipped from blocked, to not blocked, to blocked again in the span of an hour.
lettergram 5y ago
For those curious Facebook does the same thing in private messages https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Facebook-censoring-private-messages?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Facebook-censoring-private-mess... Politicians have been supportive of censoring text messages https://nypost.com/2021/07/12/dnc-biden-allies-want-phone-carriers-to-vet-anti-vax-messages/ https://nypost.com/2021/07/12/dnc-biden-allies-want-phone-ca...
- calderwoodra 5y ago
  I've seen specific Jordan Peterson YouTube videos URLs blocked on messenger as well. Sometimes they're completely non-controversial as well.
- grendelt 5y ago
  Yeah, I was recently discussing firearms with my brothers via FB Messenger and sites for finding ammo were blocked. We then tried several other types of sites to see if they were blocked. A lot of firearm related stuff, ammoseek, and piracy. PirateBay was blocked. Tor and Scihub were not. Porn sites were not but antivax sites were. Marijuana sites were not, but random liquor distillers were. Total hit and miss. But a lot of gun-related stuff was.
  - jevoten 5y ago
    How were they blocked? When you sent a message containing "www.blocked-domain.com", what did the sender and recipient get? An (honest?) error message, or silent failure?
    - lelandfe 5y ago
      Late reply, but Facebook and Facebook Messenger both prompt the user that the URL you’re trying to send is not permitted. The message is never sent, you have to remove the URL. The URL checker even follows redirects, so e.g. a URL shortener won’t cut it.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    Conversely, I never had gun-related stuff censored in FB messenger, but links to some websites about weed would be blocked. Looked very weird, too - no message, no error, the (web) app just hangs. I think they have some kind of blocklist that is, shall we say, "dynamic" wrt the current political environment.
akersten 5y ago
Most likely machine learning gone wrong where enough people report messages with the same link as spam to cause anti-spam systems to auto-block it. Makes sense that the links are all political, these are the most likely type of domains someone would want to perform an ideologically-motivated confused-deputy attack on. I doubt it's nefarious purposeful censorship. But the anti-spam system does need to be fixed to prevent this sort of abuse.
- throwawaymanbot 5y ago
  Stop spreading doubt about it being nefarious. AI is trained. And if this is the future it’s still censorship regardless of if there’s an algorithm to blame or a human.
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    and regardless what the stated purpose was. You're still just as dead from friendly fire.
  - themitigating 5y ago
    He should be censored for spreading doubt
    - Brian_K_White 5y ago
      That comment was neither censorship nor advocating censorship. It was meeting speech with other speech.
  - egberts1 5y ago
    A poorly designed AI can appear to be … nefarious.
- ribosometronome 5y ago
  How do you report an SMS message as spam to T-Mobile? Is that even something you can do? I've been receiving annoying blatant phishing texts from e-mail addresses as of late.
zenexer 5y ago
I performed the following tests for odysee.com, which is mentioned in the video. Google Voice is on a paid Google Workspace plan. AT&T is a Small Business plan. All others are typical consumer plans. Visible is a Verizon subsidiary. Google Fi is an MVNO that routes texts through T-Mobile. Google Voice -> T-Mobile: blocked T-Mobile -> Google Voice: blocked Google Voice -> AT&T: allowed AT&T -> Google Voice: allowed Visible -> Google Voice: allowed Google Voice -> Visible: allowed AT&T -> Google Fi: blocked Google Fi -> AT&T: blocked T-Mobile appears to be the only provider blocking that particular website. (Google Fi routes SMS through T-Mobile.) But it gets better. Odysee appears misspelled at first glance, so I decided to look it up to make sure it wasn’t a phishing site. I typed it into DuckDuckGo and… …nothing. Just a bunch of completely unrelated websites. Not even a Wikipedia article. I tried again a few more times—same results. Tried again about 10 minutes later, and I’m finally seeing limited results. The Odysee website appears, but third-party sources discussing it, including Wikipedia, are nowhere to be found. It’s pretty clear this is a controversial website, but I don’t appreciate this. It makes it orders of magnitude more difficult for someone such as myself to research the matter and communicate with other researchers. Not only is the site itself being censored, but information about the site is being censored. I’ve noticed this happening quite a bit with DDG lately, particularly with right-leaning and libertarian websites. Google and Bing both show the expected results, but DDG will censor the bulk of it for about 10 minutes. Disabling safe search has no impact, but retrying repeatedly eventually yields valid results. I’m curious whether this is intentional censorship or an unrelated technical issue.
- lynndotpy 5y ago
  Are you sure about Odysee? When I search it on DDG, it shows Odysee as the first result. Every subsequent result on the first page is a post or article about Odysee, except for a URL to lbry. FWIW I have safe search and advertisements turned off, region set to "All Regions" and language set to English. Re-trying with safe search strict and I still get the same results.
  - zenexer 5y ago
    Yes, I’m sure. It’s been happening to me a lot with DDG lately. Unfortunately, I haven’t been keeping track of the circumstances, but it seems to correlate with my usage of iCloud Private Relay. I suspect it happens when I’m routed through either Cloudflare or Akamai, but not both. Waiting 10 minutes tends to result in a new route. It’s very odd behavior, but when it happens, it’s as though a particular organization is scrubbed from the search results. I’m regularly researching controversial organizations, so I find this particularly inconvenient, but at least it’s conspicuous. Occasionally it’ll happen to mainstream sites such as Hulu. That leads me to believe it may be some sort of regional or safe search glitch, but the correct results will eventually reappear without changing any settings. Regardless of the cause, it comes across as censorship—even Wikipedia will be missing from the results.
champagnois 5y ago
The censorship is an inevitable result of tollerating these tech companies and their promotion of content moderation. If we are under attack from a foreign adversary, then the logical thing to do would be to firewall our social medias off into national siloes. Instead, they use their positions to censor our speech amongst eachother, promote their own political ideologies, and cause everyone to live in a state of unknowingly being censored, shadow banned, algorithmicly limited, etc for having a very human opinion that differs from that which the platform seeks to amplify.
- buddhaofdoubt8 5y ago
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mattwilsonn888 5y ago
The censorship is something but I think what we have to me more worried is these two young men having so much interest in all these anti-women's choice websites to begin with. MaYbE ThEy ShOuLd Be CeNsOrEd
xyst 5y ago
Devil's advocate -- is it possible T-Mobile's anti-spam system is being overly aggressive? If this was truly a C-level executive decision to push some political agenda, wouldn't both the "freethestates" and "studentsforlife" sites be blocked? Looks like the "studentsforlife" went through despite having the same "pro life" themes. Although, at first glance the "freethestates" site does appear to have a very extreme anti-abortion view. Refers to the act of abortion as equivalent to the Holocaust.
arthur6667 5y ago
I'm not seeing any of this on T-mobile cellualar or otherwise. This leads me to think it is either something enforced by the USA inside the USA, or something only allowed in the USA. (I'm in the EU to be specific)
- josephcsible 5y ago
  You tried sending and receiving links to those exact sites over SMS, and the messages all came through? I ask because multiple other people in this thread accidentally tried just accessing those sites over T-Mobile's cellular data, which isn't what's blocked.
AniseAbyss 5y ago
SMS lol what year is it...
- _trampeltier 5y ago
  Sometimes it is the only thing to do. For ex. I have no Whatsup (because I don't wanna have anything from Facebook), just Signal, Threema and Telegram. So sometimes SMS is the only possible way to send a message to other people.
ryanmercer 5y ago
In my experience as a moderator of several subs, Reddit actively blocks zerohedge links, they'll appear in our moderator queues and even if you manually approve them they just sit there in the queue, the only option that works is to remove them or mark them as spam. They do some others too but zerohedge is the one I see every few days in /r/silverbugs and /r/prepperintel, and the only one I can remember by name.
_trampeltier 5y ago
Does anybody ever heard of something like this on EMail? Both SMS and Email are not encrypted, so it could affect both. And why they even bother to censor SMS. Almost nobody does use SMS anyway. So why?
shephardjhon 5y ago
Some censorship needs to be accepted as anti terror measures. If you white people were ok with random brown people being pulled aside by TSA for random checks after 9/11, I as a brown progressive am ok with your Christian white Taliban organizing and propaganda being censored after 1/6.
- logic_beats_pro 5y ago
  Do we even need a back and forth to point out how un-related these two things are and how they shouldn't be treated the same. No, censorship should not be accepted.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  OK, George Bush. Better opinion: both of those are bad policies.

The same thing happened to .win sites including a popular one, post election. I posted proof here (using another account) but it was immediately flagged because nobody cared. In fact many were happy about it.

ycIsGarbage 5y ago
dmead 5y ago
for anybody reading. he means thedonald.win. this entire thread is about t-moble censoring right wing and alt-right (white supremacist) websites. hats off to them for doing the moral thing.
- WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  I wouldn't call this "the moral thing". If it was a setting as part of their spam filter that you can turn on or off, then maybe it should be permitted, but it should definitely not be the default.
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  How do you discuss, examine, learn how bad something is, or what exactly makes it so bad, if you can't even refer to it? This is a more idiotic position even than the positions espoused on those sites.
  - dmead 5y ago
    that already happened, en masse. that forum used to be a subreddit that was thoroughly understood and read by the entire internet. perhaps you need another reading of mein kampf, just to be sure?
    - showerrain 5y ago
      Any association to mein kampf shows a profound misunderstanding of that forum.
      - dmead 5y ago
        There is no association other than these ideas are both clear rejects. I believe my point stands.
        Brian_K_White 5y ago
        You had no point. Your question implied that no one needs to read mein kompf, thus proving that it's ok to censor it, thus showing that it's ok to censor anything else you don't like. Since all of those things your attempt at a point stands on are false, the point in fact does not stand. It's not only wrong, it's unbelivably ignorant. Perhaps I'm misremembering from so long ago in 1979 or 80, but I feel like they explained the fundamental problems with censorship, including reasoning such as you present, as early as 4th or 5th grade. That's why I say unbelievably ignorant. How is an adult saying something that a 5th-grader k ows better? I guess literally I can believe that they allow kids to reach adulthood without ever being made to understand something so important, but I sure don't want to.
        dmead 5y ago
        I think you're being ignorant to the realities of modern communication. Censorship of libraries and press in the pre-internet era is completely different than preventing new copies of stormfront being shoved down everyone's proverbial throat on a daily basis.

perryizgr8 5y ago

thakoppno 5y ago
It’s the public’s invisible light.

ars 5y ago

Censoring in SMS messages. Certain anti-abortion links, and a distributed youtube alternative are censored.

josephcsible 5y ago
In particular, the links they tried were: * https://odysee.com/ https://odysee.com/ * https://freethestates.com/ https://freethestates.com/ * https://freethestates.org/ https://freethestates.org/ * https://freethestates.org/who-we-are/ https://freethestates.org/who-we-are/ Any SMS, whether incoming or outgoing, with any of these links is silently dropped.
- megraf 5y ago
  It's the free part. Twilio will also flag patterns like this. We built a contactless workflow that was being censored, and it was due to a similar substring appearing in the link. It was a pain in the ass to figure out
  - jlund-molfese 5y ago
    From the Reddit thread and my own testing, links like “ https://free-test.com/” https://free-test.com/” go through fine from a T-Mobile phone. These URLs T-Mobile blocks appear to be individually treated differently, for whatever reason.
    - megraf 5y ago
      Interesting, thanks for checking it out!
  - markovbot 5y ago
    Other sites like ddosecrets.com and itsgoingdown.org are also affected. Neither have the string "free" in them
- JobDestroyer 5y ago
  Other sites that are blocked are ddosecrets.com, canadiancovidcarealliance.org

mc32 5y ago

The result of the banality of slow-creep censorship which lots of people winked at because it was censorship they could live with. Don't worry, they said platforms have a right to censor the content they carry, they are not "dumb pipes" and many other ways people dismissed the threat from censorship. Now we have "dumb pipes" censoring certain services as well as content. Of course politicians love this. They will not oppose censorship. Power loves censorship.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
ISPs are not platforms. If they want to meddle with traffic they should lose all common carrier indemnity.
- javagram 5y ago
  T-Mobile is supposed to block spam and scam texts like all providers, I thought? The instructions from the FCC for responding to text spam include forwarding the message to shortcode SPAM on the cellular provider, which presumably is to give them a database of spam to block in the future. https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2020/03/02/mobile-phone-texts-spam-and-scams https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2020/03/02/mobile-phone...
  - mc32 5y ago
    This is not that. It censors alternatives to youtube for example --The landing page not any particular content. Also, what ARE they doing (not doing) about scam/SPAM telephone calls? Nothing!
    - RL_Quine 5y ago
      That sounds like bad toupee fallacy. You don't know what the situation would be like if they were doing nothing.
    - wmf 5y ago
      AFAIK T-Mobile was the first carrier to implement STIR/SHAKEN to verify caller ID.

daveevad 5y ago

Someone on this board probably has access to the entire list of these domains?

bkallus 5y ago

They also block all .xyz links. This is why I spent the extra money on a .org

dheera 5y ago
I thought .com .net .org are the cheapest ... They're like $9 on NameCheap and I think I've seen $3 elsewhere
- Thorrez 5y ago
  Namecheap says .xyz is $1 for the first year.
- bkallus 5y ago
  I thought .org was more expensive than .xyz for the name I was looking for. Could be wrong.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  A lot of registrars were offering .xyz domains at fire-sale promotional prices (like, $1 for the first year, or outright free with the purchase of another domain). This made them extremely popular with spammers. The same goes for a lot of other new gTLDs.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - Rizz50 5y ago
    This is wild because I just saw an article about xyz on techcrunch. I even checked Spamhaus and they have a lower score than .com in spam. Im weary of these outdated filters than block new gtlds because they're new and automatically considered bad.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Really depends on the domain - a short(ish) word or name combo won't be, and many .com, .net, .org domains are already taken. My personal blog is on .me ( Montenegro), the .com is parked and advertised at $4k, the .net is taken but unused and the .org is taken and used.

x3n0ph3n3 5y ago

Can confirm -- I've attempted to replicate this with multiple messages with and without URLs to my wife (on the same account). Messages with the documented URLs are consistently blocked while others are not.

tambeb 5y ago
For what it's worth, messages I just sent to and from my Google Voice number to my Fi number (while on T-Mobile underlying) went through fine.
- tata71 5y ago
  Via SMS to a forwarder? Or GVoice app/webapp?
  - tambeb 5y ago
    Between Messages app (Fi with RCS enabled, vs. the special Fi syncing system [1]) and GV app. [1] https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6188337?hl=en&ref_topic=6216184 https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6188337?hl=en&ref_topic...
- jlund-molfese 5y ago
  Interesting, messages sent from my T-Mobile to Google Voice number are being filtered out as the video describes. Maybe Fi has a special deal the other MVNOs don’t?
  - tambeb 5y ago
    My results were what I expected, and what I would expect for any MVNO. Are other non-Fi MVNOs being filtered/censored? I think that'd be a pretty big deal, unless it's just Boost Mobile or whoever it is they own that really isn't, practically speaking, an MVNO anymore.
- silisili 5y ago
  IIRC, SMS on Fi is handled like gvoice. I'd be highly surprised if TMO had much interaction at all with the message.

finite_jest 5y ago

According to the video, links to Odysee (a YouTube alternative) and Free The States (an anti-abortion websites) are blocked. People on Reddit [1] also corroborate this. Corporate censorship exists, it is generally biased politically, and is not OK. [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/GoldandBlack/comments/rs2wqr/apparently_tmobile_is_censoring_the_url/ https://old.reddit.com/r/GoldandBlack/comments/rs2wqr/appare... --- PS. Here are a couple of things that I think are worth clarifying: * This about them blocking links to the websites in an SMS message, not DNS blacklisting or deep packet inspection. * Their blocking system seems pretty dumb in general. Apparently, it is even blocking lichess.org [2], the whole .xyz TLD, and stochastically Jacobin (the National Review of the left). [2]: Thanks to @lynndotpy for confirming this.

selimthegrim 5y ago
The Reuters story linked in the Reddit thread has the FCC reassuring us this authority is for bulk messages only.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  To be clear, for the benefit of those who are reading these comments before watching the video, this censorship happens even to single messages sent between individuals' personal phones, so it doesn't fall within that authority.
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xeromal 5y ago
I just tested this with my wife and odysee is being blocked over SMS. If you send it over RCS, it works fine.
- finite_jest 5y ago
  That makes sense, as Google's extension to RCS does have a form of "end-to-end" encryption.

nichos 5y ago

Another reason to use signal, briar, etc...

poletopole 5y ago

58x14 5y ago
I can't figure out why you linked this user's threads.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  Probably meant to link their most recent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29733051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29733051
  - Acrobatic_Road 5y ago
    Hmn, not sure why anyone would care about my post history.
- poletopole 5y ago
  It's not because I'm calling BS, just the timing of it, because it's not just domains and not just T-mobile. I got a random text message from an HN user I don't know personally, a few weeks back, but took a screenshot of the account's only comment several days BEFORE I received the text, because it was odd (the account is now deleted). I didn't even take the screenshot with my phone. It does grow more absurd, but I signed up for this so to speak. Well, three years of data down the drain... Edit: I wasn't pointing fingers at the user in particular, but be wise HN, that's all.
  - ribosometronome 5y ago
    Not sure I am reading this correctly, are you saying that you received a text from someone who your only interaction with them had been visiting their HackerNews profile and taking a screenshot?

Reubend 5y ago

Is it possible these were just anti-spam measures that are accidentally getting discovered by normal people as well?

jlund-molfese 5y ago

I’m seeing the same thing on outgoing T-Mobile SMS messages. The really nefarious thing is that T-Mobile doesn’t reject the text outright or notify the user. Instead, it pretends it was processed and the recipient just decided not to respond.

Brian_K_White 5y ago
That might be the worst aspect of this worse than the censorship itself.

lettergram 5y ago

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WoahNoun 5y ago
Quotes from his Jan 6 speech: >And by the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? He had 80 million computer votes. It's a disgrace. There's never been anything like that. You could take third-world countries. Just take a look. Take third-world countries. Their elections are more honest than what we've been going through in this country. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace. >And I'd love to have if those tens of thousands of people would be allowed. The military, the secret service. And we want to thank you and the police law enforcement. Great. You're doing a great job. But I'd love it if they could be allowed to come up here with us. Is that possible? Can you just let him come up, please? >And he looked at Mike Pence, and I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so. >For years, Democrats have gotten away with election fraud and weak Republicans. And that's what they are. There's so many weak Republicans. And we have great ones. Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they're out there fighting. The House guys are fighting. But it's, it's incredible. >No third-world countries would even attempt to do what we caught them doing. And you'll hear about that in just a few minutes. >The American people do not believe the corrupt, fake news anymore. They have ruined their reputation. But you know, it used to be that they'd argue with me. I'd fight. So I'd fight, they'd fight, I'd fight, they'd fight. Pop pop. You'd believe me, you'd believe them. Somebody comes out. You know, they had their point of view, I had my point of view, but you'd have an argument. >I read it about Bill Barr, that he's my personal attorney. That he'll do anything for me. And I said, "You know, it really is genius." Because what they do is that, and it makes it really impossible for them to ever give you a victory, because all of a sudden Bill Barr changed. If you hadn't noticed. I like Bill Barr, but he changed, because he didn't want to be considered my personal attorney. >So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. And I hope he doesn't listen to the RINOs and the stupid people that he's listening to. >We won in a landslide. This was a landslide. They said it's not American to challenge the election. This the most corrupt election in the history, maybe of the world. >So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give. >The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. >So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-speech-a-key-part-of-impeachment-trial https://www.npr.org/2021/02/10/966396848/read-trumps-jan-6-s...

rootusrootus 5y ago

Interestingly, there's an older discussion on the t-mobile subreddit that goes into quite a lot more analytical detail and is much less reactionary than HN is. What a role reversal.

sdwvit 5y ago
lopatin 5y ago
PSA: "Reactionary" doesn't mean what it sounds like it means. re·ac·tion·ar·y (of a person or a set of views) opposing political or social liberalization or reform. "reactionary attitudes toward women's rights" Edit: Here's the T-Mobile subreddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/rskfmx/video_evidence_of_tmobiles_sms_blocking_the_more/ https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/rskfmx/video_evide...

lynndotpy 5y ago

Relevant conversation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28554400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28554400 Turns out .xyz domains are regularly blocked by carriers as well. I'm on T-Mobile and I can't send my own personal blog, because it's a .xyz. (I really need to change that...) In my experience, T-Mobile also blocks messages over ddosecrets.com. They also block leftist sites such as Jacobinmag.com or itsgoingdown.org, so it'd be an interesting study to see what the cause is and if it's biased. (I confirmed these three and my own site just now.)

JobDestroyer 5y ago
I was unable to replicate the block of Jacobinmag.com nor itsgoingdown.org. I was able to replicate the block on ddosecrets.com.
- lynndotpy 5y ago
  This is really weird. They were blocked once, but I tried these again ~40 minutes after my original test, and they went through. Then, when writing this comment, I tried a third time, and they were blocked again. First run: odysee.com, jacobinmag.com, itsgoingdown.org were blocked. I did these just before midnight EDT. This second run: odysee.com, and freethestates.com (didn't try it the first time) were blocked, but jacobinmag.com and itsgoingdown.org are not anymore. I double-checked for spelling mistakes, etc. I also checked covidcarealliance.org and lichess.org, also blocked. I also checked goo.gl URLs (previously notoriously blocked by T-Mobile) and they are not blocked. I did some looking into this, and T-Mobile employees have been surprisingly open about URL filtering in the past on their support forums. One example (see https://community.t-mobile.com/accounts-services-4/tmobile-is-blocking-my-messages-sent-to-customers-32893 https://community.t-mobile.com/accounts-services-4/tmobile-i...) > I’m taking care of this right now. I must say the domain is very amusing and creative! It’s flagging for a combination of issues: collocated with Amazon AWS with 5k other domains, registrar to Namecheap (poor reputation with DGA generated domains), and inserting both URL and email address in message body. (double whammy). Otherwise, you are following proper protocol with Twilio A2P messaging. > > I’ll have the vendor reputation resolved in a few hours. Thanks! It's surprising to me that AWS and NameCheap are named as contributing factors. In fact, writing this comment took so long that I tried the strange URLs a third time. jacobinmag.com was blocked again but not itsgoingdown.org. So, jacobinmag.com has flipped from blocked, to not blocked, to blocked again in the span of an hour.

lettergram 5y ago

For those curious Facebook does the same thing in private messages https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Facebook-censoring-private-messages?share=1 https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Facebook-censoring-private-mess... Politicians have been supportive of censoring text messages https://nypost.com/2021/07/12/dnc-biden-allies-want-phone-carriers-to-vet-anti-vax-messages/ https://nypost.com/2021/07/12/dnc-biden-allies-want-phone-ca...

calderwoodra 5y ago
I've seen specific Jordan Peterson YouTube videos URLs blocked on messenger as well. Sometimes they're completely non-controversial as well.
grendelt 5y ago
Yeah, I was recently discussing firearms with my brothers via FB Messenger and sites for finding ammo were blocked. We then tried several other types of sites to see if they were blocked. A lot of firearm related stuff, ammoseek, and piracy. PirateBay was blocked. Tor and Scihub were not. Porn sites were not but antivax sites were. Marijuana sites were not, but random liquor distillers were. Total hit and miss. But a lot of gun-related stuff was.
- jevoten 5y ago
  How were they blocked? When you sent a message containing "www.blocked-domain.com", what did the sender and recipient get? An (honest?) error message, or silent failure?
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    Late reply, but Facebook and Facebook Messenger both prompt the user that the URL you’re trying to send is not permitted. The message is never sent, you have to remove the URL. The URL checker even follows redirects, so e.g. a URL shortener won’t cut it.
- int_19h 5y ago
  Conversely, I never had gun-related stuff censored in FB messenger, but links to some websites about weed would be blocked. Looked very weird, too - no message, no error, the (web) app just hangs. I think they have some kind of blocklist that is, shall we say, "dynamic" wrt the current political environment.

akersten 5y ago

Most likely machine learning gone wrong where enough people report messages with the same link as spam to cause anti-spam systems to auto-block it. Makes sense that the links are all political, these are the most likely type of domains someone would want to perform an ideologically-motivated confused-deputy attack on. I doubt it's nefarious purposeful censorship. But the anti-spam system does need to be fixed to prevent this sort of abuse.

throwawaymanbot 5y ago
Stop spreading doubt about it being nefarious. AI is trained. And if this is the future it’s still censorship regardless of if there’s an algorithm to blame or a human.
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  and regardless what the stated purpose was. You're still just as dead from friendly fire.
- themitigating 5y ago
  He should be censored for spreading doubt
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    That comment was neither censorship nor advocating censorship. It was meeting speech with other speech.
- egberts1 5y ago
  A poorly designed AI can appear to be … nefarious.
ribosometronome 5y ago
How do you report an SMS message as spam to T-Mobile? Is that even something you can do? I've been receiving annoying blatant phishing texts from e-mail addresses as of late.

zenexer 5y ago

I performed the following tests for odysee.com, which is mentioned in the video. Google Voice is on a paid Google Workspace plan. AT&T is a Small Business plan. All others are typical consumer plans. Visible is a Verizon subsidiary. Google Fi is an MVNO that routes texts through T-Mobile. Google Voice -> T-Mobile: blocked T-Mobile -> Google Voice: blocked Google Voice -> AT&T: allowed AT&T -> Google Voice: allowed Visible -> Google Voice: allowed Google Voice -> Visible: allowed AT&T -> Google Fi: blocked Google Fi -> AT&T: blocked T-Mobile appears to be the only provider blocking that particular website. (Google Fi routes SMS through T-Mobile.) But it gets better. Odysee appears misspelled at first glance, so I decided to look it up to make sure it wasn’t a phishing site. I typed it into DuckDuckGo and… …nothing. Just a bunch of completely unrelated websites. Not even a Wikipedia article. I tried again a few more times—same results. Tried again about 10 minutes later, and I’m finally seeing limited results. The Odysee website appears, but third-party sources discussing it, including Wikipedia, are nowhere to be found. It’s pretty clear this is a controversial website, but I don’t appreciate this. It makes it orders of magnitude more difficult for someone such as myself to research the matter and communicate with other researchers. Not only is the site itself being censored, but information about the site is being censored. I’ve noticed this happening quite a bit with DDG lately, particularly with right-leaning and libertarian websites. Google and Bing both show the expected results, but DDG will censor the bulk of it for about 10 minutes. Disabling safe search has no impact, but retrying repeatedly eventually yields valid results. I’m curious whether this is intentional censorship or an unrelated technical issue.

lynndotpy 5y ago
Are you sure about Odysee? When I search it on DDG, it shows Odysee as the first result. Every subsequent result on the first page is a post or article about Odysee, except for a URL to lbry. FWIW I have safe search and advertisements turned off, region set to "All Regions" and language set to English. Re-trying with safe search strict and I still get the same results.
- zenexer 5y ago
  Yes, I’m sure. It’s been happening to me a lot with DDG lately. Unfortunately, I haven’t been keeping track of the circumstances, but it seems to correlate with my usage of iCloud Private Relay. I suspect it happens when I’m routed through either Cloudflare or Akamai, but not both. Waiting 10 minutes tends to result in a new route. It’s very odd behavior, but when it happens, it’s as though a particular organization is scrubbed from the search results. I’m regularly researching controversial organizations, so I find this particularly inconvenient, but at least it’s conspicuous. Occasionally it’ll happen to mainstream sites such as Hulu. That leads me to believe it may be some sort of regional or safe search glitch, but the correct results will eventually reappear without changing any settings. Regardless of the cause, it comes across as censorship—even Wikipedia will be missing from the results.

champagnois 5y ago

The censorship is an inevitable result of tollerating these tech companies and their promotion of content moderation. If we are under attack from a foreign adversary, then the logical thing to do would be to firewall our social medias off into national siloes. Instead, they use their positions to censor our speech amongst eachother, promote their own political ideologies, and cause everyone to live in a state of unknowingly being censored, shadow banned, algorithmicly limited, etc for having a very human opinion that differs from that which the platform seeks to amplify.

buddhaofdoubt8 5y ago
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mattwilsonn888 5y ago

The censorship is something but I think what we have to me more worried is these two young men having so much interest in all these anti-women's choice websites to begin with. MaYbE ThEy ShOuLd Be CeNsOrEd

xyst 5y ago

Devil's advocate -- is it possible T-Mobile's anti-spam system is being overly aggressive? If this was truly a C-level executive decision to push some political agenda, wouldn't both the "freethestates" and "studentsforlife" sites be blocked? Looks like the "studentsforlife" went through despite having the same "pro life" themes. Although, at first glance the "freethestates" site does appear to have a very extreme anti-abortion view. Refers to the act of abortion as equivalent to the Holocaust.

arthur6667 5y ago

I'm not seeing any of this on T-mobile cellualar or otherwise. This leads me to think it is either something enforced by the USA inside the USA, or something only allowed in the USA. (I'm in the EU to be specific)

josephcsible 5y ago
You tried sending and receiving links to those exact sites over SMS, and the messages all came through? I ask because multiple other people in this thread accidentally tried just accessing those sites over T-Mobile's cellular data, which isn't what's blocked.

AniseAbyss 5y ago

SMS lol what year is it...

_trampeltier 5y ago
Sometimes it is the only thing to do. For ex. I have no Whatsup (because I don't wanna have anything from Facebook), just Signal, Threema and Telegram. So sometimes SMS is the only possible way to send a message to other people.

ryanmercer 5y ago

In my experience as a moderator of several subs, Reddit actively blocks zerohedge links, they'll appear in our moderator queues and even if you manually approve them they just sit there in the queue, the only option that works is to remove them or mark them as spam. They do some others too but zerohedge is the one I see every few days in /r/silverbugs and /r/prepperintel, and the only one I can remember by name.

_trampeltier 5y ago

Does anybody ever heard of something like this on EMail? Both SMS and Email are not encrypted, so it could affect both. And why they even bother to censor SMS. Almost nobody does use SMS anyway. So why?

shephardjhon 5y ago

Some censorship needs to be accepted as anti terror measures. If you white people were ok with random brown people being pulled aside by TSA for random checks after 9/11, I as a brown progressive am ok with your Christian white Taliban organizing and propaganda being censored after 1/6.

logic_beats_pro 5y ago
Do we even need a back and forth to point out how un-related these two things are and how they shouldn't be treated the same. No, censorship should not be accepted.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
OK, George Bush. Better opinion: both of those are bad policies.