28 ms·

The Wayforward Machine

288 points by watchdogtimer 5y ago

0x456 5y ago
This seems very likely extrapolating from current trends.
themanmaran 5y ago
- Put in URL - It loads for a bit, then shows some fake ads. - "Imagine a future without access to knowledge..." And then some blurbs on campaigning for 'Open access to knowledge'.
einpoklum 5y ago
If you type in www.google.com, it says "Loading the internet of the future", and in the background there's a Google 404 page. Conclusion: In the future, Google will have some service outage :-P ---- If you type in "news.ycombinator.com", you get a recent HN main page snapshot in the background while "loading the internet of the future". Then you get prompted to prove that you are over 18... but really, who would be dumb enough to upload their driver's license to some untrusted website for this purpose? Conclusion: In the future, 18-year-olds will be less intelligent than they are today (or I have an overly high expectation of people's intelligence).
- sva_ 5y ago
  In Germany, a law was proposed some time ago that would require websites with "adult content" to do a biometric age verification. They even discussed forcing OS developers to implement this on OS level.
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  > who would be dumb enough to upload their driver's license to some untrusted website ... Facebook has blocked an account of mine before, requesting government issued photo ID. I never gave any, so my account is now deactivated. But I suspect many people do cave so they can get access to Facebook again. And, if, in the future it's a common requirement, then sure, people would do it, since it's the only way to use useful(or fun, or work-related) websites. I what about China's system - Since the government ID is tied to almost everything, I'm sure it's common over there to give out your government ID to get access to websites. (I don't know any of that for sure - I don't live there).
  - einpoklum 5y ago
    > Facebook You got me there I guess... I mean, I could suggest not using Facebook, but I suppose that's not very realistic. Still, Facebook and the WayforwardMachine aren't of the same caliber.
    - 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
      I will clarify, to be fair, that account wasn't under my real name. HOWEVER I thought requesting goddamn government ID was a bit much. Just let me have my burner FB account...
codetrotter 5y ago
Came across this too the other day. For a moment I was hoping that they'd trained some machine learning algorithm on the past evolution of the sites in their archive in order to extrapolate how sites may change in the future, and that they'd have thrown in some futuristic design elements in the mix. But the way that this thing works is pretty satisfying too. In terms of conveying a message about our future I mean.
- kordlessagain 5y ago
  I like the idea of having a model look at a page and then rework the look and style to be simple and free of ads or JavaScript.
  - mountainriver 5y ago
    This is a great idea
  - rubyist5eva 5y ago
    reader mode
- nefitty 5y ago
  I hoped it was something that fanciful, but didn't expect it. Your comment brought to kind something. I wonder if GPT3 et al could be used to invent or predict futures. I know AI is being used to work on domains in science and having some success. It seems like those spaces have rules that can be followed to make new discoveries. Could we set an AI on certain social/economic/technological simulations and have it spit out various possible outcomes? One sort of simulation that comes to mind is the Transition Integrity Project. Could an AI have arrived at realistic conclusions given the right rules? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Integrity_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Integrity_Project
  - oakfr 5y ago
    GPT3 and other deep models cannot predict the future. They can only generate alternative presents.
prvc 5y ago
Wait, are we expected to trust the chat popup that refers to us as "comrade"?
- Spivak 5y ago
  Wild! I didn’t think anything of it since in my social circle being ironically not-ironically communist is totally normal. Using lingo like “comrade” or more extremely stuff like “Daddy Stalin” is just counterreactionary and an attempt to “own the label” when people accuse you of being a communist or socialist for wanting the mildest of progressive policies. Edit: Not sure why the downvotes for what is basically a candid, “hey if you’re confused about the wording it’s because it’s a very specific political activism shibboleth.”
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    The Chinese equivalent to comrade also fills the role queer does in modern English in Hong Kong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongzhi_(term)#Usage_in_contemporary_Macau_and_Hong_Kong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongzhi_(term)#Usage_in_contem...
    - Spivak 5y ago
      That’s really cool, I love it!
  - acheron 5y ago
    I would guess the downvotes are because talking about how you and your friends “ironically” praise one of the worst mass murderers in history is not as cute as you apparently think it is.
    - Spivak 5y ago
      It’s not really meant to be cute exactly, it’s more meant to take away the power of silencing tactics like, “oh so you’re a communist then?” by leaning into it and responding with absurdity. Nobody who calls you a socialist like that is trying to have a rational reasoned argument — they’re trying to put you on the defensive and shut down your argument using some mouth sounds they’ve memorized. But the trick and why these silencing tactics work is because if you try to take the high road and engage with them intellectually at all you lose. You spend all your energy on the defensive trying to explain why that’s so wrong it’s not even funny and it looks like they win because nobody is paying any attention after the snappy communist quip. But if you lean into it and say something like “yeah obviously, I want that big Mao Zedong” observers know that you’re being absurd but the accusation just rolls off and now you control the direction of the argument. This is basically how to publicly engage with people who argue in bad faith 101.
jacques609 5y ago
> HTTP Version Not Supported > Your browser is using HTTP version HTTP/1.1. We only support version 2.0 or newer. The future runs on HTTP/1.1?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sysihyk 5y ago
Clenched fist? Seriously? I'd better buy shares in these scary "fact copyrighting corporations"
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
raldi 5y ago
Site’s overloaded. Anyone got a screenshot?
- WallyFunk 5y ago
  Ughh how ironic: https://web.archive.org/web/20210930161453/https://wayforward.archive.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210930161453/https://wayforwar...
  - raldi 5y ago
    I can get that far; the site isn’t responding beyond the point in that capture.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Do you have JS enabled for archive.org? Seems that's necessary, sadly.
agumonkey 5y ago
between this trend and the gemini opposite, I sense some overall negative sentiment around the webs.
cube00 5y ago
Given it's working on generic popups alone with no connection to the URL provided, it seems unnecessary to ask the user to enter a URL at all for the sake of a blurred background image. You'd get a greater impact if you presented a search engine front page with some suggested "trending" search terms then show how they can be misconstrued and get you put onto the relevant thought crime fixated persons list while showing the user "filtered" and "approved" results from the central bureaucracy. A search engine with its 1st results page only listing .gov TLDs should get a few people thinking.
sanketsarang 5y ago
This is very strange. Just tried it, and I got a message flashed on the screen supposedly from the Ministry of Truth. This site contains information that is currently classified as Thought Crime in your region. If you are the owner of this site, please contact your local Ministry of Truth at your earliest convenience. I am the owner! And I believe currently = 2046? This is hilarious, so contact now or in 2046? Website: https://blobcity.com https://blobcity.com
- RavlaAlvar 5y ago
  This will literally happens if you try to open some site with the in-app browser in WeChat.
  - sanketsarang 5y ago
    Yeah, but that is not what I did. I tried on Safari on Mac.
everyone 5y ago
I just get "loading" Is it meant to be a commentary that future websites will have so much javascript they will take an infinite time to load?
mortenjorck 5y ago
I love the Internet Archive, but they’re fighting the last war here. There will never be any scary, Orwellian ministry of truth in our timeline, because there’s no need for one when all the power is concentrated in a few oligopolistic platform providers whose risk appetite is such that deplatforming is the only acceptable measure when that appetite is exceeded. Furthermore, the calls (for censorship) are coming from inside the house at this point. In a rush to combat genuine issues like health misinformation, even organizations like the ACLU have come to support platforms clamping down on speech - and certainly they have a point; these are private companies, not the government. I don’t have any solutions to this, but the future to worry about is not what’s dramatized here. It’s something much tidier, less threatening, and more insidious.
- phreeza 5y ago
  Never is a long time, and the US is not the only country in the world.
  - cube00 5y ago
    "Australia gave police power to compel sysadmins into assisting account takeovers – so they plan to use it" https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/14/identify_and_disrupt_bill_australia/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/14/identify_and_disrupt_...
  - tchalla 5y ago
    It’s surprising how many US citizens I meet throughout the world whose talking points are filled worth US solipsism. A recent example was a few days ago when, I had a discussion with a Texas “communist” who wanted to butt heads against the police force in a European city due to police brutality. I asked the person if he had checked up on police brutality cases in the city and he hadn’t. I’m amazed at their self confidence and world view.
    - mynegation 5y ago
      I was in total disbelief when I found out that majority of British police force does not even carry a weapon. I am now watching British police drama “Line of Duty” and they show their “SWAT” outings and the amount of procedure around this is insane. The cherry on top is how they chase an extremely dangerous suspect in a Mercedes van. A van! Such a stark contrast with militarized SWAT teams in North America, their weapons, tactics, and vehicles.
ohmnfgsx 5y ago
"Please make sure you have all privacy settings and firewalls disabled" - we don't need to travel to 2046 for this, this has been practiced by google and cloudflare for years.
cabaalis 5y ago
This is a lot of effort to express opposition to repealing section 230. Their timeline starts with that event.
drummer 5y ago
This is brilliant.
bjowen 5y ago
Cute. There is already a News Corp doing monopoly stuff and regulatory capture, so that doesn’t seem too far fetched.
lawwantsin17 5y ago
yay! in the future we figured out how to sue Google and Facebook out of existence. I love the future.
judge2020 5y ago
Maybe this could be called "The move to PRC machine" since blocks by the GFW are already a thing.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I did not expect that the search for XSLT would be behind the content truth gateway.
reflexe 5y ago
Ok. That was anticlimactic (And in general, the web archive is a bit hypothetical since downloading saved websites is disallowed according to their tos)
- kevingadd 5y ago
  It's not as if they invented copyright law. Even if their ToS didn't say that it would still effectively be disallowed
  - reflexe 5y ago
    But it is not their content. Their whole goal is to save other people's content. But then they won't allow 9ther people to download this content.
smoyer 5y ago
This is a great not-so-subtle look at the direction we're heading - the only thing that was missed is continuously and invisibly reloading the page so that I can't use my browser history to get back to HN.
ModernMech 5y ago
I thought this was going to be a deep learning AI that took the history of a website like Apple.com, and tried to predict what it would look like in the future. Like, would it figure out to put out an iPhone 14 announcement right around when Apple would releases such a thing? And would it have new features, like being thinner and having a longer battery than predecessors? Would be pretty neat.
jrootabega 5y ago
I can't get Twisted Eye to install, anyone have any luck?
Igelau 5y ago
Wow. That was a really long wait for some really lame popups.
Multiplayer 5y ago
Bitcoin fixes this. Few understand this.
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  How does a decentralized currency prevent websites doing what this page suggests? Maybe Namecoin or similar, but Bitcoin?
bilater 5y ago
lol
JesusRobotics 5y ago
Can someone please tell me about blobcity cloud?
- sanketsarang 5y ago
  We offer Jupyter Notebooks on the cloud. We share infra across users, thereby allowing for unlimited runtime on GPUs at a starting price of $75/m.
quocanh 5y ago
You can get around the paywall with incognito. Pretty lax security here.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
Does not look significantly more intrusive than the Internet in 2021.
wackget 5y ago
Archive.org - including the Wayback Machine - is already blocked by many major UK ISPs and has been for many years: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/internet-archive-wayback-machine-blocked-vodafone-three-o2-ee-can-change-that/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/internet-archive-... Not sure if that's ironic or not, in light of the warnings on "The Wayforward Machine" page.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  That's surprising, thanks for mentioning it.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  Those ISPs mentioned are mobile phone service providers, not fixed-line home/biz ISPs, and different (but still dumb) regs apply to those. The situation needs improvement, but it isn’t as bad as I think you’re making it sound.
- cameronh90 5y ago
  It's blocked because it contains adult content. I just checked and archive.org indeed does archive adult content, unsurprisingly. In the UK, anyone can walk in to a shop and buy a phone and SIM card without ID or proof of age, so internet plans by default have a filter enabled. I don't really see this as a problem... I'd rather we do that than require ID to buy a SIM?
  - mindwok 5y ago
    Can you disable the filter easily?
    - cameronh90 5y ago
      Takes a couple minutes if you're willing to input your credit card number (which you probably already do to top it up), or you can go into the shop with photo ID. At the moment, those are the only two ways of proving your age in the UK.
  - 5y ago
aasasd 5y ago
Pffffft, the popups are really bogus—in twenty, or more likely ten years nobody will need them. There will be a standard protocol for the ISP to present the user's identity to the website. Case closed. De-anonymization of the web solves (or ‘solves’) plenty of current annoyances, like comment spam and likely email spam too; foreign trolls skewing the national agenda, or just stupid people spreading various bullshit or bullying someone; perhaps also some security attacks. So it's practically inevitable that it will keep bobbling on the tips of people's tongues, just waiting for some kind of web 9/11 to happen. It probably won't even start as a government thing, but a thing for Google to prove to Amazon that the user is not some shady schmuck. Then perhaps the government will step in and say that this time Google really tries to do too much—why not just let the ISPs do that instead.
ohiovr 5y ago
In the future all stories about 2 + 2 = 4 are banned. 2+2 = whatever the party says it is.

288 points by watchdogtimer 5y ago

This seems very likely extrapolating from current trends.

- Put in URL - It loads for a bit, then shows some fake ads. - "Imagine a future without access to knowledge..." And then some blurbs on campaigning for 'Open access to knowledge'.

einpoklum 5y ago

If you type in www.google.com, it says "Loading the internet of the future", and in the background there's a Google 404 page. Conclusion: In the future, Google will have some service outage :-P ---- If you type in "news.ycombinator.com", you get a recent HN main page snapshot in the background while "loading the internet of the future". Then you get prompted to prove that you are over 18... but really, who would be dumb enough to upload their driver's license to some untrusted website for this purpose? Conclusion: In the future, 18-year-olds will be less intelligent than they are today (or I have an overly high expectation of people's intelligence).

sva_ 5y ago
In Germany, a law was proposed some time ago that would require websites with "adult content" to do a biometric age verification. They even discussed forcing OS developers to implement this on OS level.
0xdeadb00f 5y ago
> who would be dumb enough to upload their driver's license to some untrusted website ... Facebook has blocked an account of mine before, requesting government issued photo ID. I never gave any, so my account is now deactivated. But I suspect many people do cave so they can get access to Facebook again. And, if, in the future it's a common requirement, then sure, people would do it, since it's the only way to use useful(or fun, or work-related) websites. I what about China's system - Since the government ID is tied to almost everything, I'm sure it's common over there to give out your government ID to get access to websites. (I don't know any of that for sure - I don't live there).
- einpoklum 5y ago
  > Facebook You got me there I guess... I mean, I could suggest not using Facebook, but I suppose that's not very realistic. Still, Facebook and the WayforwardMachine aren't of the same caliber.
  - 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
    I will clarify, to be fair, that account wasn't under my real name. HOWEVER I thought requesting goddamn government ID was a bit much. Just let me have my burner FB account...

codetrotter 5y ago

Came across this too the other day. For a moment I was hoping that they'd trained some machine learning algorithm on the past evolution of the sites in their archive in order to extrapolate how sites may change in the future, and that they'd have thrown in some futuristic design elements in the mix. But the way that this thing works is pretty satisfying too. In terms of conveying a message about our future I mean.

kordlessagain 5y ago
I like the idea of having a model look at a page and then rework the look and style to be simple and free of ads or JavaScript.
- mountainriver 5y ago
  This is a great idea
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  reader mode
nefitty 5y ago
I hoped it was something that fanciful, but didn't expect it. Your comment brought to kind something. I wonder if GPT3 et al could be used to invent or predict futures. I know AI is being used to work on domains in science and having some success. It seems like those spaces have rules that can be followed to make new discoveries. Could we set an AI on certain social/economic/technological simulations and have it spit out various possible outcomes? One sort of simulation that comes to mind is the Transition Integrity Project. Could an AI have arrived at realistic conclusions given the right rules? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Integrity_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Integrity_Project
- oakfr 5y ago
  GPT3 and other deep models cannot predict the future. They can only generate alternative presents.

prvc 5y ago

Wait, are we expected to trust the chat popup that refers to us as "comrade"?

Spivak 5y ago
Wild! I didn’t think anything of it since in my social circle being ironically not-ironically communist is totally normal. Using lingo like “comrade” or more extremely stuff like “Daddy Stalin” is just counterreactionary and an attempt to “own the label” when people accuse you of being a communist or socialist for wanting the mildest of progressive policies. Edit: Not sure why the downvotes for what is basically a candid, “hey if you’re confused about the wording it’s because it’s a very specific political activism shibboleth.”
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  The Chinese equivalent to comrade also fills the role queer does in modern English in Hong Kong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongzhi_(term)#Usage_in_contemporary_Macau_and_Hong_Kong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongzhi_(term)#Usage_in_contem...
  - Spivak 5y ago
    That’s really cool, I love it!
- acheron 5y ago
  I would guess the downvotes are because talking about how you and your friends “ironically” praise one of the worst mass murderers in history is not as cute as you apparently think it is.
  - Spivak 5y ago
    It’s not really meant to be cute exactly, it’s more meant to take away the power of silencing tactics like, “oh so you’re a communist then?” by leaning into it and responding with absurdity. Nobody who calls you a socialist like that is trying to have a rational reasoned argument — they’re trying to put you on the defensive and shut down your argument using some mouth sounds they’ve memorized. But the trick and why these silencing tactics work is because if you try to take the high road and engage with them intellectually at all you lose. You spend all your energy on the defensive trying to explain why that’s so wrong it’s not even funny and it looks like they win because nobody is paying any attention after the snappy communist quip. But if you lean into it and say something like “yeah obviously, I want that big Mao Zedong” observers know that you’re being absurd but the accusation just rolls off and now you control the direction of the argument. This is basically how to publicly engage with people who argue in bad faith 101.

jacques609 5y ago

> HTTP Version Not Supported > Your browser is using HTTP version HTTP/1.1. We only support version 2.0 or newer. The future runs on HTTP/1.1?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sysihyk 5y ago

Clenched fist? Seriously? I'd better buy shares in these scary "fact copyrighting corporations"

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

raldi 5y ago

Site’s overloaded. Anyone got a screenshot?

WallyFunk 5y ago
Ughh how ironic: https://web.archive.org/web/20210930161453/https://wayforward.archive.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210930161453/https://wayforwar...
- raldi 5y ago
  I can get that far; the site isn’t responding beyond the point in that capture.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Do you have JS enabled for archive.org? Seems that's necessary, sadly.

agumonkey 5y ago

between this trend and the gemini opposite, I sense some overall negative sentiment around the webs.

cube00 5y ago

Given it's working on generic popups alone with no connection to the URL provided, it seems unnecessary to ask the user to enter a URL at all for the sake of a blurred background image. You'd get a greater impact if you presented a search engine front page with some suggested "trending" search terms then show how they can be misconstrued and get you put onto the relevant thought crime fixated persons list while showing the user "filtered" and "approved" results from the central bureaucracy. A search engine with its 1st results page only listing .gov TLDs should get a few people thinking.

sanketsarang 5y ago

This is very strange. Just tried it, and I got a message flashed on the screen supposedly from the Ministry of Truth. This site contains information that is currently classified as Thought Crime in your region. If you are the owner of this site, please contact your local Ministry of Truth at your earliest convenience. I am the owner! And I believe currently = 2046? This is hilarious, so contact now or in 2046? Website: https://blobcity.com https://blobcity.com

RavlaAlvar 5y ago
This will literally happens if you try to open some site with the in-app browser in WeChat.
- sanketsarang 5y ago
  Yeah, but that is not what I did. I tried on Safari on Mac.

everyone 5y ago

I just get "loading" Is it meant to be a commentary that future websites will have so much javascript they will take an infinite time to load?

mortenjorck 5y ago

I love the Internet Archive, but they’re fighting the last war here. There will never be any scary, Orwellian ministry of truth in our timeline, because there’s no need for one when all the power is concentrated in a few oligopolistic platform providers whose risk appetite is such that deplatforming is the only acceptable measure when that appetite is exceeded. Furthermore, the calls (for censorship) are coming from inside the house at this point. In a rush to combat genuine issues like health misinformation, even organizations like the ACLU have come to support platforms clamping down on speech - and certainly they have a point; these are private companies, not the government. I don’t have any solutions to this, but the future to worry about is not what’s dramatized here. It’s something much tidier, less threatening, and more insidious.

phreeza 5y ago
Never is a long time, and the US is not the only country in the world.
- cube00 5y ago
  "Australia gave police power to compel sysadmins into assisting account takeovers – so they plan to use it" https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/14/identify_and_disrupt_bill_australia/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/14/identify_and_disrupt_...
- tchalla 5y ago
  It’s surprising how many US citizens I meet throughout the world whose talking points are filled worth US solipsism. A recent example was a few days ago when, I had a discussion with a Texas “communist” who wanted to butt heads against the police force in a European city due to police brutality. I asked the person if he had checked up on police brutality cases in the city and he hadn’t. I’m amazed at their self confidence and world view.
  - mynegation 5y ago
    I was in total disbelief when I found out that majority of British police force does not even carry a weapon. I am now watching British police drama “Line of Duty” and they show their “SWAT” outings and the amount of procedure around this is insane. The cherry on top is how they chase an extremely dangerous suspect in a Mercedes van. A van! Such a stark contrast with militarized SWAT teams in North America, their weapons, tactics, and vehicles.

ohmnfgsx 5y ago

"Please make sure you have all privacy settings and firewalls disabled" - we don't need to travel to 2046 for this, this has been practiced by google and cloudflare for years.

cabaalis 5y ago

This is a lot of effort to express opposition to repealing section 230. Their timeline starts with that event.

drummer 5y ago

This is brilliant.

bjowen 5y ago

Cute. There is already a News Corp doing monopoly stuff and regulatory capture, so that doesn’t seem too far fetched.

lawwantsin17 5y ago

yay! in the future we figured out how to sue Google and Facebook out of existence. I love the future.

judge2020 5y ago

Maybe this could be called "The move to PRC machine" since blocks by the GFW are already a thing.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

I did not expect that the search for XSLT would be behind the content truth gateway.

reflexe 5y ago

Ok. That was anticlimactic (And in general, the web archive is a bit hypothetical since downloading saved websites is disallowed according to their tos)

kevingadd 5y ago
It's not as if they invented copyright law. Even if their ToS didn't say that it would still effectively be disallowed
- reflexe 5y ago
  But it is not their content. Their whole goal is to save other people's content. But then they won't allow 9ther people to download this content.

smoyer 5y ago

This is a great not-so-subtle look at the direction we're heading - the only thing that was missed is continuously and invisibly reloading the page so that I can't use my browser history to get back to HN.

ModernMech 5y ago

I thought this was going to be a deep learning AI that took the history of a website like Apple.com, and tried to predict what it would look like in the future. Like, would it figure out to put out an iPhone 14 announcement right around when Apple would releases such a thing? And would it have new features, like being thinner and having a longer battery than predecessors? Would be pretty neat.

jrootabega 5y ago

I can't get Twisted Eye to install, anyone have any luck?

Igelau 5y ago

Wow. That was a really long wait for some really lame popups.

Multiplayer 5y ago

Bitcoin fixes this. Few understand this.

colejohnson66 5y ago
How does a decentralized currency prevent websites doing what this page suggests? Maybe Namecoin or similar, but Bitcoin?

bilater 5y ago

lol

JesusRobotics 5y ago

Can someone please tell me about blobcity cloud?

sanketsarang 5y ago
We offer Jupyter Notebooks on the cloud. We share infra across users, thereby allowing for unlimited runtime on GPUs at a starting price of $75/m.

quocanh 5y ago

You can get around the paywall with incognito. Pretty lax security here.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

Does not look significantly more intrusive than the Internet in 2021.

wackget 5y ago

Archive.org - including the Wayback Machine - is already blocked by many major UK ISPs and has been for many years: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/internet-archive-wayback-machine-blocked-vodafone-three-o2-ee-can-change-that/ https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/internet-archive-... Not sure if that's ironic or not, in light of the warnings on "The Wayforward Machine" page.

unityByFreedom 5y ago
That's surprising, thanks for mentioning it.
DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
Those ISPs mentioned are mobile phone service providers, not fixed-line home/biz ISPs, and different (but still dumb) regs apply to those. The situation needs improvement, but it isn’t as bad as I think you’re making it sound.
cameronh90 5y ago
It's blocked because it contains adult content. I just checked and archive.org indeed does archive adult content, unsurprisingly. In the UK, anyone can walk in to a shop and buy a phone and SIM card without ID or proof of age, so internet plans by default have a filter enabled. I don't really see this as a problem... I'd rather we do that than require ID to buy a SIM?
- mindwok 5y ago
  Can you disable the filter easily?
  - cameronh90 5y ago
    Takes a couple minutes if you're willing to input your credit card number (which you probably already do to top it up), or you can go into the shop with photo ID. At the moment, those are the only two ways of proving your age in the UK.
- 5y ago

aasasd 5y ago

Pffffft, the popups are really bogus—in twenty, or more likely ten years nobody will need them. There will be a standard protocol for the ISP to present the user's identity to the website. Case closed. De-anonymization of the web solves (or ‘solves’) plenty of current annoyances, like comment spam and likely email spam too; foreign trolls skewing the national agenda, or just stupid people spreading various bullshit or bullying someone; perhaps also some security attacks. So it's practically inevitable that it will keep bobbling on the tips of people's tongues, just waiting for some kind of web 9/11 to happen. It probably won't even start as a government thing, but a thing for Google to prove to Amazon that the user is not some shady schmuck. Then perhaps the government will step in and say that this time Google really tries to do too much—why not just let the ISPs do that instead.

ohiovr 5y ago

In the future all stories about 2 + 2 = 4 are banned. 2+2 = whatever the party says it is.