Censorship: Telecoms Censoring Links Sent Via SMS

[grarpamp]

This is serious business if someone confirms...


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/just-like-soviet-russia-t-mobile-erasing-links-gateway-pundit-articles-send-text-message/

Just Like Soviet Russia: T-Mobile Is Erasing Links to Gateway Pundit
Articles if You Send Them by Text Message — MORE UPDATES…
By Jim Hoft
Published January 2, 2022 at 8:25am
Comment

Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Communists were known for their
airbrushing. If a top official lost favor with Stalin they were
eliminated and airbrushed from society as if they never existed.

Who would have ever thought this practice would come to our shores one day?

On the last day of 2021,  The Gateway Pundit and Jim Hoft were banned
from Paypal without warning.

Now, we learned the tech giants are using a frightening new method to
censor and control what you are able to see, read and discuss online.

TRENDING: Just Like Soviet Russia: T-Mobile Is Erasing Links to
Gateway Pundit Articles if You Send Them by Text Message -- MORE
UPDATES...

Gateway Pundit reader “Mark from Louisiana” sent us this email on Friday:

    Hi. I live in Louisiana but I have a 949 area code phone from when
I lived in California. When I try sending a text with your website
link in it, the link does not go through to my friends and family. My
sister is in the 225 area code and she can send the link to me without
it being blocked. Just thought I would let you know. Thanks. Mark

We asked Mark to send us more information and this is what he sent back.

    Hi Jim. In one of the screenshots you can see where my sister
tried to send me your website link four times but I never got it. The
other two screenshots it shows me sending a link to one of your
articles, that’s the one with the picture of the fox in it. In the
other screenshot from my sister it shows that she never received the
link. The text message it still has the fox in it. I hope this helps.
But what I realized is it’s actually just my boost T-Mobile carrier
that’s blocking your links. I have a friend in the 949 area code and
he was able to send it to his wife, however, I can only receive it in
a group text. Let me know if you have any more questions. Thanks.
Mark.

Here is a screengrab of the text message Mark sent to his sister.

And here is what she received. The Gateway Pundit link has been “disappeared.”

This was not an isolated case. We have received dozens of these emails
this weekend.

The Gateway Pundit is one of the top 250 websites in the country in
2021. We had over 900,000,000 million page views in 2021. TGP
continually offers breaking news and our reporting is second to none.
As the mainstream media continues to shovel out their lies and refuses
to report the truth, The Gateway Pundit continues to grow year after
year. Because of this, they hate us and do EVERYTHING possible to
destroy us. This weekend Paypal shut down our accounts without
warning.

And now T-Mobile is disappearing our links. You cannot send our links
through T-mobile. They will disappear them. Your friends will not even
know that you sent them a Gateway Pundit article.

If only there was an opposition party in America to confront this madness.

We have several more examples like the one above. We will post them later.

>From reader Tina:

    This is very true. I just tested it. I have been a T-Mobile
customer since 2004 but I will find a new carrier. Possiibly freedom
phone.

>From reader Scott:

    I am on the Sprint network and have to get a new phone to
transition to the T-Mobile network. But the phone I texted recently
went on the T-Mobile network; we live in the 757 area code in
Virginia. And as you can see the link I sent to the article did not go
through. It should be there right before the text that did which just
said Test.

>From reader Melanie:

    Hey, don’t know if this is anything but I was attempting to share
links of a few stories you’ve posted via TEXT to my friend. None of
them went through to her. So, we tried different stories they posted
just fine via text. JUST Gateways story links aren’t going through.
    I have T-mobile Samsung Note 10+,  my friend has Verizon and an
Apple Ios phone. I ended up sending the links through Facebook
Messenger and my friend got them just fine then. I am willing to
contact t-mobile and inquire about why specifically gateway pundits
links aren’t going through but others are.

>From reader Alexander, we asked him to send us a screenshot:

    Maybe this is a tip, maybe it isn’t but my wife and I have been
experimenting with texting links from The Gateway Pundit after she
tried sending me a link to the article about the VA nurse you guys
carried. I never received the link, so we tried sending several URL
links from her T-mobile phone to my Verizon phone and vice versa, and
on both ends we never received the links. I tried sending the link
from my Google voice number to her t-mobile phone and she did not
receive but if I sent it from my google voice to my Verizon phone it
would go through. We’ve now tried this with several other companies
including Breitbart, Fox News, CNN, and The Wallstreet Journal, and
all with no issue. We were also able to replicate this issue with 4
other friends who have T-mobile but faced no issue with friends with
Verizon, ATT, and Spectrum Mobile. It looks like T-mobile may be
blocking The Gateway Pundit links, at least in Los Angeles, CA.

>From Matt:

    I tried to share a link with my wife, my daughter, and a
co-worker. Later we realized it never got sent through. We tried it
again and it didn’t go through. I screenshotted the conversation and
sent that and it went through. All three have iPhones. I have Samsung.
We are all on Sprint/TMobile. When I put extra “w’s” into the link
address it went through to my daughter. They are now censoring news
links via text now. Please hit Tmobile or Apple, please!

>From another reader:

    This is clearly a terrifying new form of censorship of the right
from providers, blocking personal communications containing
information they don’t like.

    I’ve attached screenshots of two sets of messages, one sent from
me and another that was received by the person I was sending to.
Please do not publish these images, in case they contain any personal
information in the image or metadata.

    You will see that any link containing “thegatewaypundit.com” is
not received. The same goes for a link to any individual article.

    I first discovered this when sending a link to someone else that I
was expecting them to react to. I asked why they didn’t reply, and it
turns out they never received the message. Testing it further, it
turns out the text message service on my phone (android, t-mobile
service) will not send or receive any link containing
thegatewaypundit.com. The signal app does allow it, so it must be
android or t-mobile.

    I imagine you all are losing a lot of traffic to this censorship.

Based on the screenshot above, it seems that the word thegatewaypundit
will go through but not the link.
>From David:

    If I share an article link from thegatewaypundit to anyone via my
cellphone, it never arrives despite it saying it was sent. I even just
shared simply www.thegatewaypundit.com, same thing. Had others try
with their phones, same results. It looks like the cell phone
companies are not allowing links of your articles, or even your page
to be sent via text message.

    I am with t-mobile. Samsung galaxy a32 I think. We ran an
experiment at work with Apple devices on Verizon and they were doing
the exact same thing. I do have a screenshot between me and my wife,
she has a galaxy s21. I can send it if you want.

One reader claimed that T-mobile in Philadelphia won’t allow links
from TGP to go through.

    Here in Philadelphia my Tmobile phone won’t allow texts from TGP
to go through and no message indicating it didn’t.

The Gateway Pundit reached out to T-mobile. We will update this post
with any response we receive from the company.

More…

        Dear Mr Hoft,
        Today I saw the article about T mobile erasing GP’s links, I
decided to test it. I sat across from my mom with her phone in hand a
(541) area code sending links from Gateway Pundit to her from my (714)
area NOTHING will go through!! We also tried from her phone to mine
and nothing. So I tried other links National File, Big League Politics
and even a Gardening site all went through instantly. This is very
upsetting and I wanted you to know we will be contacting T mobile
since we aren’t getting what we are paying and they have no right to
do this
        Brianna
        I couldn\’t believe this could happen, so I just texted the
link to this article from my phone to my wife\’s, both 248 area codes
that and numbers that we\’ve had for years. Th entire message
containing the link never went, the very next message went fine. They
deleted not just the link but the entire messge. I guess I\’ll have to
change providers.
        I read your story about t-mobile blocking texts. My wife and I
have sprint/t-mobile so I tested it and sure enough all GP links are
not going through. All other text are going through. I called sprint
to complain. My call is supposedly being escalated but I have been on
hold waiting for a “supervisor” for over 30 mins now.
        I’m furious!  I just read your article and decided to try it
out.  My husband and I both have T-Mobile phones.  I watched his
screen in real time as I sent these texts, and they did not show up!
I have attached the images to this email.
        Please confirm receipt of this email,so that I will know if
Gmail even lets it go through.
        Just for your awareness and more proof. I attempted to send
the very article about T-Mobiles tyranny to my sister in-law and
brother  and had the same results. Please see attached picture of text
time stamp. I sent the message Hey to see  she also tried and the link
did not come through as her snip it of the article she looked up after
I told them.
        Google fi is my phone service. It uses T-Mobile, Sprint and US
Cellular. I have the same problem. I can not receive or send text with
Gateway links. Surprisingly the links go thru on Facebook messenger.
        I stumbled across your article and got curious.  Even here, in
itty bitty rural PA my t-mobile phone said it send the article but the
recipient, sitting next to me (with xfinity mobile) never received
anything.  This is absolutely insane to me.  Have we really hit this
much of a low?! We must be getting close if they are trying this hard
to censor the truth.
        I am a T-Mobile customer and very appalled at them over this.
I did some additional testing on incoming messages with GP link from a
non-T-Mobile customer to a T-Mobile customer. Both via text messaging
and e-mail to text. If either contains a live GP article link T-Mobile
is also preventing it from being delivered from the non-T-Mobile
customer. Unless you had a previous notice from the sender of the
article prior to it being sent, you would never know it. I did a 2nd
test of forwarding the original e-mail to text, but with live link
removed. That email to text was received with no issues. There is a
3rd test that I have not done yet and just thought of, and that would
be the link is attached but removing the hyper link making the link
just words. I just did the test of removing the hyper link, e-mail to
text, and it was not delivered. Is there a way to send you screen
shots showing what I did testing wise? Not sure what good it will do,
but I am sending this issue to not just one of our local tv stations
but the 6 in my home area and also the 4 where I have a 2nd home out
of state. I don\’t normally get overly worked up on most things, but
this is the so-called final straw. I hope enough people become
enlightened to this that if one carrier will do this who will the next
one be to follow in T-Mobile\’s footsteps before anything is done and
it is too late. As a T-Mobile customer I will be looking for a new
carrier immediately. Also, over the last 3 years or so I have
converted about 15 friends and family to switch to T-Mobile, pretty
sure once I apprise them of this, they will be more than willing to
switch to a more friendly carrier. After all, if you are the 1st for
them then who will be next to be censored? Breitbart, The New York
Post, Fox, Just The News, etc… Pretty sure if you were a CNN, New York
Times, WaPo, MSNBC or any of the other alphabet networks or bird cage
liners, etc. the uproar would be so loud that those on the space
station could hear it loud and clear as though they were standing
right in the middle of the commotion. As a side note, have a
conservative friend who found this to be unbelievable. He is a Verizon
customer, he is a believer now. Told him to grab any of your articles
and try sending. He sent your general web link to no specific article.
He sent me a screen shot of it. It was never received.

UPDATE: A reader of Gateway Pundit named Jeremy has called T-mobile
regarding the censorship. He spent an hour on the phone with them. At
some point, the supervisor tried to blame Google. Here’s the excerpt
from his email:

    I read your story about t-mobile blocking texts. My wife and I
have sprint/t-mobile so I tested it and sure enough all GP links are
not going through. All other text are going through. I called sprint
to complain. My call is supposedly being escalated but I have been on
hold waiting for a “supervisor” for over 30 mins now…

    So I ended up spending over an hour on the phone with them. The
“supervisor” claims they do not have the ability to monitor texts and
tried to blame Google. So I asked why would Google have control over
my texts. She assumed I use Chrome. I told her no I use Brave browser.
That shut down the Google blame. Then she had me check some settings
all settings were set correctly. She then wanted me to go through
basic troubleshooting, clear cache…. I refused because as I told her
it’s not just my phone. It’s my wife’s and apparently anyone using
t-mobile. Anyway my issue is being escalated again and I’m supposed to
get a call back in 2-5 business days.

    While on hold I kept hearing a recorded message/commercial saying
we here at t-mobile are family. All I could think is yeah and t-mobile
thinks they are the parents.



UPDATE– Here’s another update… We are getting dozens of emails like
this tonight.

    Hey Jim!

    I am on TMobile in Indiana. I ran a test and sent your “TMobile”
article to my parents who are also in Indiana but on ATT. The text
link was sent separately and did not go through tonight. I can assure
you that this is a recent act of tryanny as I have sent out numerous
GP links to family before the holidays that had no problems. Thank you
for all you do and God Bless

    Jonny in Indiana

Here’s another from reader Larry…

    Hey Jim,
    Ran tests with 7 different people and tgp links wouldn’t go
through. Couldn’t even send the tgp link to myself but had no problem
sending myself a cnn.com link. Go figure. Contacted Tmobile and they
said there was no block on your site. I ensured them that there was
and unless they corrected the situation within 48 hours, I would be
changing carriers. I’ve been a TMobile customer for 15 years and this
is shocking. This isn’t social media, I PAY THEM to deliver my
messages whether they agree or not. Keep up the great work. Many
blessings to you and your family.
    Thank you,
    Larry S