Cell phone providers are many and varied, with a new company seemingly popping up daily. This is weird to me because there are so many “big boy” companies like Verizon and T-Mobile. One would imagine competing with massive corporations would be extremely difficult, yet people do it.

Yet it would get a whole lot easier if companies start infringing on our right to speak freely.

While they could probably do it legally–the First Amendment prevents the government from restricting speech, not private parties from doing it–it would be a terrible decision from a business standpoint.

And last week, word started floating around that T-Mobile was going to do just that.

Where it originated is unknown, but it was amplified by social media influencer Laura Loomer who posted this on X.

BREAKING: @TMobile has quietly updated their TOS to include fines for content they don’t agree with.

Beginning on January 1, 2024, they will be fining users who commit perceived violations on their bandwidth.

Who knew in America that the phone providers would now be policing… pic.twitter.com/spdzxGxtjx

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) December 24, 2023

Loomer followed this up with this:

So basically @TMobile is admitting they have been reading our private messages.

Nice to know! https://t.co/z5MofK2r5x

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) December 24, 2023

And, honestly, this is troubling. However, as you can see in the community note, there’s more going on here than Loomer suggests.

YouTuber Liberty Doll took a swing at this and has a really good video about this post.

In short, no. T-Mobile is doing no such thing.

What’s happening is a company that provides bulk texting services–in other words, a spam provider–is being restricted in what it can specifically market. Basically, if it’s illegal in one state, they can’t spam text people with the ad.

One example from the video is that if a company is marketing 30-round magazines, that might cause an issue.

Now, I’m not saying that I agree with this. I don’t. It’s a stupid rule, after all, but I get where it’s coming from.

It’s also a far cry from restrictions on people like you or me talking with our friends about Second Amendment issues. T-Mobile isn’t going to punish anyone for our political advocacy. At least, not as things currently stand.

For most people, the worst thing they’re going to see with this rule are fewer spam text messages offering them deals from places of dubious legitimacy. Seriously, I treat all spam texts as scams until proven otherwise, and I usually don’t even bother trying to look any deeper in order to find out one way or another.

So no, Loomer was not correct with her accusations regarding T-Mobile. While Liberty Doll is willing to give Loomer and others the benefit of the doubt, I’m not. My guess is that Loomer went off half-cocked and didn’t bother to research any deeper. She did the same with Comcast when a campaign text was rejected during her congressional campaign.

I got why she got worked up then and I can see why she was so prepared to jump the gun on this one, too. Pro-gun people often find themselves on the outside looking in, with most companies more than willing to shut us down than gun control advocates.

But we’re not there yet and no one covers themselves in glory when they go off and blame one company for what another company is actually doing and saying.