The Electronic Frontier Foundation caught T-Mobile and its bombastic CEO John Legere in a huge lie, and instead of addressing the findings, Legere is quickly becoming unhinged. Here's the short version: T-Mobile has been claiming that its "BingeOn" program, which offers some free video from select partners to customers, and also downgrades the quality of all other video as part of an opt-out program, is collectively a form of video "optimization." Three days ago, the EFF published an investigation that exposed T-Mobile's marketing language for the euphemistic misdirection it is: instead of "optimizing" video streams, the company has been identifying video traffic and then throttling that traffic to 1.5Mbps.

In other words, it's the biggest fuck you to net neutrality that any company has dared since the FCC passed new rules in 2015. And John Legere wants you to thank T-Mobile for it.



In response to criticism of the company's BingeOn scheme, including signals that the FCC is looking into T-Mobile's program, Legere released a dubious video this morning full of marketing spin and misdirection. In a printed version of Legere's rant, he repeated the lie in the face of evidence to the contrary:

There are people out there saying we’re "throttling." That's a game of semantics and it's bullshit! That's not what we're doing. Really! What throttling is is slowing down data and removing customer control. Let me be clear. BingeOn is neither of those things.

Later, Legere started answering questions from the public on Twitter. After several nonsensical responses to questions about the program, Legere directly went after EFF in an astonishing display of ignorance and hubris.



"Part B of my answer is, who the fuck are you, anyway, EFF?" Legere said. "Why are you stirring up so much trouble, and who pays you?" You can watch the full response below:

We're happy to answer Mr. Legere's question with two seconds of Google searching, which reveals that the super-majority of EFF's public support comes from direct and indirect contributions from individuals. And if the CEO of a major US telecom doesn't even know what the EFF is, don't worry: there are already plenty of people lining up to help.

