Not American, but funny enough from what I’ve seen, apparently it’s a thing. For my service it’s usually been assumed with no extra fees. But I bought an ESim for Europe and I did notice that while shopping around, probably 1/5 companies had mentioned something about no hotspot/tethering allowed without paying an extra fee.
Where I’m from our Teleco plans are truly shit but I guess we have that over the Americans.
Agreed I read the title as something you’d see a villain nonchalantly do in a comic book/movie series.