Posts falsely claim T-Mobile will police direct messages, impose fines

"T-Mobile has just updated their terms of service and now if you post any content they don't agree with they will fine you," says a woman in a December 26, 2023 Instagram video with 31,700 likes.

"They have an acronym called SHAFT, this stands for sex, hate, alcohol, firearms and tobacco. This is going to be implemented January 1st and the fines that they will fine you is in the thousands," she continues. "Since when does a company get to determine what you are allowed to talk about in a private text message to a friend?"

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Screenshot of an Instagram post taken January 2, 2023

Similar posts circulated on Facebook, TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter.

But the claims are false and users sharing them misrepresent the wireless carrier's new policy, which impacts businesses conducting mass messaging campaigns, not individual consumers.

"The change only impacts third-party messaging vendors that send commercial mass messaging campaigns for other businesses. The vendors will be fined if the content they are sending does not meet the standards in our code of conduct, which is in place to protect consumers from illegal or illicit content and aligns to federal and state laws," a T-Mobile spokesperson told AFP in a January 3, 2023 email.

"We don't censor or even review content in customers' personal messages. We only have filters that protect our customers from unwanted texts that could contain malware and other fraudulent or malicious activities such as phishing," the spokesperson said.

The new fees aim to protect consumers from potentially harmful content or deceptive marketing in line with standards (archived here) set by the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA), an industry group that includes T-Mobile and other major carriers such as Verizon and AT&T.

The fines also apply to marketing texts that contain SHAFT content, if the messages violate federal law or are sent without an age verification system.

Although T-Mobile decision to implement fines related to this form of prohibited content is new, this is not an update to the company's general terms of service (archived here). These standards were already outlined as violations of commercial use in the company's code of conduct published in 2020 (archived here).