7 ms·

3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

79 points by rahoulb 14y ago

jrabone 14y ago
VPN to your own network. It's the only way to fly.
rahoulb 14y ago
I'm on 3 and it once blocked a page on the NME (New Musical Express) - I just thought it was a one-off and couldn't really be bothered digging into it. It appears that I was wrong.
jstanley 14y ago
They have no place censoring the web at all, let alone censoring things that aren't even pornographic.
- chii 14y ago
  indeed no isp or gov't should be allowed to censor any information, unless that information's critical to national defence or something (and even then, i would be really dubious of the claim). Whether it is porn or not doesn't even come into the argument, because the issue is not with the contents, its with censorship itself as a concept.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    If an ISP web filter is the only thing stopping people from accessing classified military documents then I would be very concerned for your national security.
- DanBC2 14y ago
  It's an optional filter. People can ask to have it turned off. It's a voluntary filter that the companies chose to implement before government forced filtering on them. It's baffling to me to see this described as censorship. The content is still there. People can still get the content, they just need to say that they want to get the content. Sometimes they need to prove their age. (In the UK we have some legally mandated minimum ages; when a cinema says '15' it means you're not allowed in if you're under 15.) As I've said, there's a problem with the filter being opt-out rather than opt-in; and there's a problem with the filter being too broad and blocking things that it shouldn't.
Angostura 14y ago
This is excellent news "Yes, I opted out of the filter darling - so I can access satire, you understand."
JosephRedfern 14y ago
I'm with 3UK, and have rang them up to get this filter removed. The person on the phone assured me it would be lifted within 24 hours - it's still the same. This was about 5 months ago.
- Limes102 14y ago
  When I tried to do it, they added a £5/month thing to my account, but then also added a £5/month goodwill, so I wasn't paying for it. I have no idea what it is doing, but there is no filter anymore. I had to phone a few times before it worked though.
  - PJones 14y ago
    Be careful with that, I had them do the same thing to me (after I asked them not to) and the goodwill suddenly ended after a few months. Took hours to get it sorted and refunded, and to top it off they put the flaming restriction back on! Edit: I just checked, and it looks like it was removed again at some point, possibly when I renewed the contract? Ah well.
themanr 14y ago
Does anyone know the censorship policies for all UK network operators? My contract is up.
- ubercow13 14y ago
  All have filters on by default and all will allow you to disable them
Peroni 14y ago
3UK user here. Came up against this block for what I assumed was a relatively normal site. I phoned the company and had to jump through hoops to prove my age after being asked So, just to confirm Mr Buckley, you wish to access adult content on your phone?. Eagerly anticipating the end of my contract next month.
- rahoulb 14y ago
  Good luck with that. The only time I've screamed with rage down the phone at some poor customer service rep (who was just following the script given to her) was trying to end a 3 contract. They are bastards.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - ZoFreX 14y ago
    Watch your bank account after you cancel, too. They have a nasty habit of "forgetting" to stop charging you (happened to a friend of mine who didn't realise until he got back from his deployment in Afganistan)
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  And then join up with who? All of the 3G operators have similar opt-out filters. Orange makes you give them your credit card number. GiffGaff made me give them my drivers licence number. I like that with GiffGaff I didn't need to talk to a person, just do it online, but in general you'll have to deal with this no matter who you sign up with. I think even Imgur (Reddit's image host) was blocked at one stage.
  - Peroni 14y ago
    My work mobile is on the EE network and doesn't appear to have any issue with adult content. The industry I work in requires me to access explicit content occasionally and I've yet to come up against any roadblocks with EE.
speeder 14y ago
And so we continue failing to protect our freedoms, and slowly we remain in the path that will take us to 1984.
- white_devil 14y ago
  The problem with this line of thinking is that "protecting our freedoms" would pretty much require an immediate full-on revolution, everywhere.
Millennium 14y ago
Not that the ISP should be doing this anyway, but it's worth noting that porn as political satire has a long history. The Marquis de Sade, for example, used to write stories featuring politicians of the day finding... creative... uses for the French Constitution.
peteri 14y ago
I just change the APN to 3internet from three.co.uk which gets rid of the censoring. Settings / Wireless and networks More / Mobile networks / Access point names on my Nexus S. So far (nearly two years) no ill effects with billing, I'm on the one plan which allows tethering YMMV. The only gotcha I'm aware of is that bits of three infrastructure such as the MMS server and I think the "mythree" stuff don't recognise the phone anymore but thats no big deal for me. So the couple of times I've received an MMS I've changed the APN back.
robmcm 14y ago
O2 in the UK blocks craigs list... It's a real issue that this stuff is blocked by default, especially when you sign up to a contract where I expect you have to be over 18 anyway!
- iamben 14y ago
  They block lots of non pornographic things. They also told me it's to protect children who have been given a phone by their parents (who would have taken out the contract). Pretty ridiculous.
tomp 14y ago
Among other sites that are blocked is also reddit.com/r/sex . I cannot understand how preventing children to access educational sex-related materials could be construed as "protecting" them.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
  I agree that the filters are overly broad, but in fairness /r/sex isn't just about education. There is educational material on that sub, but there is also "adult" content in the strictest sense. I always viewed these filers as being in place for actual children (age 1 to 11), teenagers (12+) should have them removed. If I had kids I would have no issue with them watching porn (aside from 3G data usage) and I wouldn't want to accidentally stop them from accessing information on sexuality. I think a lot of parents have this strange idea that if you stop kids getting at the information (or condoms) that that will somehow stop them from having sex (or doing other stuff). But the research and statistics are contrary to that. Frankly my biggest concern would be so called "sexting" (i.e. sending erotic pictures or video to their teenage love-interest). Which unfortunately only education can combat, there are no workable technological solutions that I am aware of.
ZoFreX 14y ago
This is Not News. Many mobile networks offer content filtering, and it's often turned on by default until you turn it off (this is true in the UK at least). Just like the crappy filters you had to fight constantly at school these are extremely broad, badly curated lists of sites that they get from a third party. Three hasn't gone "let's block political and sex education sites", they just subscribe to a list made by another organisation, and often that list will mark a site as adult content purely because it has swear words on it.
- netcan 14y ago
  I wouldn't call that "offering content filtering."
89a 14y ago
Why can't parents take responsibility of their kids.
lucian1900 14y ago
Back when I was using them, they blocked almost all Romanian news sites on the same basis (I don't know if they still do). I went through their stupid procedure for proving I'm over 18 and instead of unblocking everything, they opened up their own page where they sell porn!
- vacri 14y ago
  I spent a few months doing general customer support (not technical) for a telco/isp. We had two isp products, a general one 'foo' and a rural-oriented one 'bar'. We could see the homepage for 'foo' and it was helpful in getting customers to the right spot to login (but what they saw after that was a mystery). No dice with 'bar' - our own product. I emailed the management saying "please whitelist 'bar', it's not like we're going to waste time looking at it, and it improves the service". Management droned: "That's not our decision, it's IT's". I emailed IT with the reply and said the same thing to them. "That's not our decision, it's Management's". Ah, the life of a drone. Can't say I miss it. The same place had an email quota so strict that I couldn't keep more than 2-3 weeks worth of emails. It also made me a lot more forgiving of callcentre drones.
gambiting 14y ago
GiffGaff has been doing this as well, couldn't access reddit, 9gag or any of the sites that "might" have adult content. Had to go to my account settings and input my passport number to get the access unlocked.
vacri 14y ago
I've always thought it funny how porn is 'mature' content, but the people who use it are considered 'juvenile'. I've always wanted to hear the voiceover in a cinema say "This film is rated for mature audiences", and have the film be a political thriller of which juveniles wouldn't understand the politics...
belorn 14y ago
ISP today gets to define what approved content is, and there is no end to the methods use to define it. ISP's will continue to expand the sometimes rather arbitrary rules until either government steps in to regulate the industry, or a anti-censorship open by design system will replace the current industry. First the network allowed everything. Then ISPs started with forbidding child porn as the one and only one exceptional rule. Then it was everything except "illegal content", being everything before with the added inclusion of copyright infringements. Then extreme porn was added, because anti-porn can always be advertised to end-users as a mechanism for protecting children. Then it is "mature content", including anything an ISP might get a letter of complain about, but which does not hurt any business partners. This meant that they can cut cost on support, but at the same time protect any revenue from advertisements. That mean items such as tor, political satire, all form of porn, unpopular religious sites and (anti)social hangouts get listed, but things like alcohol, commercials directed to children, political advertizements, violence and sexual hinting content will be left alone. After that, they start to add items to the list which competes with the ISPs' own products, such as VoIP, but also products that put a strain on their network such as video streaming. The last bans tend to be less severe, as to show how slow competing products are with their low quality of service. This also allow for a mechanism to extract levies from larger companies such as Google without going with a full blown ban that might create outcry from ones consumers. The market won't regulate itself. There are too few options of consumers, and there exist a clear asymmetrical information gap between buyer and seller. Lemon laws for services could help here, but it would be the same effort or even more effort than to create industry regulations for ISPs.
- madaxe 14y ago
  Of course, when they first started censoring CP, plenty went, "Well, yes, it's abhorrent, but what about the slippery slope?", and got shouted down by our government, the press, and peers, who all said words to the effect of "Don't be ridiculous, you're hysterical, what are you, a pedophile?". Even now, as we gracelessly tumble down the well-greased-incline, they will merrily argue that there is no slippery slope. As to regulation, there already is, and it actively encourages ISPs to censor. http://www.mobilebroadbandgroup.com/content-code.pdf http://www.mobilebroadbandgroup.com/content-code.pdf
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Herald_MJ 14y ago
Orange UK have a similar overenthusiastic filter - I've noticed it blocking online dating websites, a beer festival website and even reddit, in it's entirety. It's also opt-out, and although this can be done through their mobile app, it has the annoying habit of occasionally re-enabling itself. Very annoying.
Herald_MJ 14y ago
An interesting side-effect of "cloud browsers" (browsers that proxy your traffic through their servers and compress the data on the mobile data end) like Opera Mini and Amazon Silk is they completely bypass these filters.
dan1234 14y ago
Is this block only for PAYG users? There doesn't seem to be any block on my 3UK Pay Monthly deal.
- rahoulb 14y ago
  Sort of - you need to prove your ID to them (and contracts include that ID). But I was using a 3 contract broadband SIM in my phone and that wouldn't let me access stuff on the phone's browser.
DanBC2 14y ago
>First, because many people will be unaware that this kind of "mature content" censorship is taking place at all, and therefore won't ask for it to be stopped. You get a huge interstitial page telling you that the site is being blocked and telling you what you need to do to have it turned off. I agree that the block should be off by default. Sellers could ask the customer if they wanted the block turned on when the phone is bought. I agree that the blocks are too broad. T-Mobile didn't ask for any ID. I guess I'm pretty obviously over 18. They did ask for my name and address.
billpg 14y ago
Dear operators. I would like it very much if you'd block any malware sites. I don't even mind if there's a reasonable number of false positives caught in the mix when a new exploit is found and I might not have updated my software yet. Apart from that, please don't block anything. I am an adult and the sole user of the account.

79 points by rahoulb 14y ago

VPN to your own network. It's the only way to fly.

I'm on 3 and it once blocked a page on the NME (New Musical Express) - I just thought it was a one-off and couldn't really be bothered digging into it. It appears that I was wrong.

jstanley 14y ago

They have no place censoring the web at all, let alone censoring things that aren't even pornographic.

chii 14y ago
indeed no isp or gov't should be allowed to censor any information, unless that information's critical to national defence or something (and even then, i would be really dubious of the claim). Whether it is porn or not doesn't even come into the argument, because the issue is not with the contents, its with censorship itself as a concept.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  If an ISP web filter is the only thing stopping people from accessing classified military documents then I would be very concerned for your national security.
DanBC2 14y ago
It's an optional filter. People can ask to have it turned off. It's a voluntary filter that the companies chose to implement before government forced filtering on them. It's baffling to me to see this described as censorship. The content is still there. People can still get the content, they just need to say that they want to get the content. Sometimes they need to prove their age. (In the UK we have some legally mandated minimum ages; when a cinema says '15' it means you're not allowed in if you're under 15.) As I've said, there's a problem with the filter being opt-out rather than opt-in; and there's a problem with the filter being too broad and blocking things that it shouldn't.

Angostura 14y ago

This is excellent news "Yes, I opted out of the filter darling - so I can access satire, you understand."

JosephRedfern 14y ago

I'm with 3UK, and have rang them up to get this filter removed. The person on the phone assured me it would be lifted within 24 hours - it's still the same. This was about 5 months ago.

Limes102 14y ago
When I tried to do it, they added a £5/month thing to my account, but then also added a £5/month goodwill, so I wasn't paying for it. I have no idea what it is doing, but there is no filter anymore. I had to phone a few times before it worked though.
- PJones 14y ago
  Be careful with that, I had them do the same thing to me (after I asked them not to) and the goodwill suddenly ended after a few months. Took hours to get it sorted and refunded, and to top it off they put the flaming restriction back on! Edit: I just checked, and it looks like it was removed again at some point, possibly when I renewed the contract? Ah well.

themanr 14y ago

Does anyone know the censorship policies for all UK network operators? My contract is up.

ubercow13 14y ago
All have filters on by default and all will allow you to disable them

Peroni 14y ago

3UK user here. Came up against this block for what I assumed was a relatively normal site. I phoned the company and had to jump through hoops to prove my age after being asked So, just to confirm Mr Buckley, you wish to access adult content on your phone?. Eagerly anticipating the end of my contract next month.

rahoulb 14y ago
Good luck with that. The only time I've screamed with rage down the phone at some poor customer service rep (who was just following the script given to her) was trying to end a 3 contract. They are bastards.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  Watch your bank account after you cancel, too. They have a nasty habit of "forgetting" to stop charging you (happened to a friend of mine who didn't realise until he got back from his deployment in Afganistan)
UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
And then join up with who? All of the 3G operators have similar opt-out filters. Orange makes you give them your credit card number. GiffGaff made me give them my drivers licence number. I like that with GiffGaff I didn't need to talk to a person, just do it online, but in general you'll have to deal with this no matter who you sign up with. I think even Imgur (Reddit's image host) was blocked at one stage.
- Peroni 14y ago
  My work mobile is on the EE network and doesn't appear to have any issue with adult content. The industry I work in requires me to access explicit content occasionally and I've yet to come up against any roadblocks with EE.

speeder 14y ago

And so we continue failing to protect our freedoms, and slowly we remain in the path that will take us to 1984.

white_devil 14y ago
The problem with this line of thinking is that "protecting our freedoms" would pretty much require an immediate full-on revolution, everywhere.

Millennium 14y ago

Not that the ISP should be doing this anyway, but it's worth noting that porn as political satire has a long history. The Marquis de Sade, for example, used to write stories featuring politicians of the day finding... creative... uses for the French Constitution.

peteri 14y ago

I just change the APN to 3internet from three.co.uk which gets rid of the censoring. Settings / Wireless and networks More / Mobile networks / Access point names on my Nexus S. So far (nearly two years) no ill effects with billing, I'm on the one plan which allows tethering YMMV. The only gotcha I'm aware of is that bits of three infrastructure such as the MMS server and I think the "mythree" stuff don't recognise the phone anymore but thats no big deal for me. So the couple of times I've received an MMS I've changed the APN back.

robmcm 14y ago

O2 in the UK blocks craigs list... It's a real issue that this stuff is blocked by default, especially when you sign up to a contract where I expect you have to be over 18 anyway!

iamben 14y ago
They block lots of non pornographic things. They also told me it's to protect children who have been given a phone by their parents (who would have taken out the contract). Pretty ridiculous.

tomp 14y ago

Among other sites that are blocked is also reddit.com/r/sex . I cannot understand how preventing children to access educational sex-related materials could be construed as "protecting" them.

UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
I agree that the filters are overly broad, but in fairness /r/sex isn't just about education. There is educational material on that sub, but there is also "adult" content in the strictest sense. I always viewed these filers as being in place for actual children (age 1 to 11), teenagers (12+) should have them removed. If I had kids I would have no issue with them watching porn (aside from 3G data usage) and I wouldn't want to accidentally stop them from accessing information on sexuality. I think a lot of parents have this strange idea that if you stop kids getting at the information (or condoms) that that will somehow stop them from having sex (or doing other stuff). But the research and statistics are contrary to that. Frankly my biggest concern would be so called "sexting" (i.e. sending erotic pictures or video to their teenage love-interest). Which unfortunately only education can combat, there are no workable technological solutions that I am aware of.

ZoFreX 14y ago

This is Not News. Many mobile networks offer content filtering, and it's often turned on by default until you turn it off (this is true in the UK at least). Just like the crappy filters you had to fight constantly at school these are extremely broad, badly curated lists of sites that they get from a third party. Three hasn't gone "let's block political and sex education sites", they just subscribe to a list made by another organisation, and often that list will mark a site as adult content purely because it has swear words on it.

netcan 14y ago
I wouldn't call that "offering content filtering."

89a 14y ago

Why can't parents take responsibility of their kids.

lucian1900 14y ago

Back when I was using them, they blocked almost all Romanian news sites on the same basis (I don't know if they still do). I went through their stupid procedure for proving I'm over 18 and instead of unblocking everything, they opened up their own page where they sell porn!

vacri 14y ago
I spent a few months doing general customer support (not technical) for a telco/isp. We had two isp products, a general one 'foo' and a rural-oriented one 'bar'. We could see the homepage for 'foo' and it was helpful in getting customers to the right spot to login (but what they saw after that was a mystery). No dice with 'bar' - our own product. I emailed the management saying "please whitelist 'bar', it's not like we're going to waste time looking at it, and it improves the service". Management droned: "That's not our decision, it's IT's". I emailed IT with the reply and said the same thing to them. "That's not our decision, it's Management's". Ah, the life of a drone. Can't say I miss it. The same place had an email quota so strict that I couldn't keep more than 2-3 weeks worth of emails. It also made me a lot more forgiving of callcentre drones.

gambiting 14y ago

GiffGaff has been doing this as well, couldn't access reddit, 9gag or any of the sites that "might" have adult content. Had to go to my account settings and input my passport number to get the access unlocked.

vacri 14y ago

I've always thought it funny how porn is 'mature' content, but the people who use it are considered 'juvenile'. I've always wanted to hear the voiceover in a cinema say "This film is rated for mature audiences", and have the film be a political thriller of which juveniles wouldn't understand the politics...

belorn 14y ago

ISP today gets to define what approved content is, and there is no end to the methods use to define it. ISP's will continue to expand the sometimes rather arbitrary rules until either government steps in to regulate the industry, or a anti-censorship open by design system will replace the current industry. First the network allowed everything. Then ISPs started with forbidding child porn as the one and only one exceptional rule. Then it was everything except "illegal content", being everything before with the added inclusion of copyright infringements. Then extreme porn was added, because anti-porn can always be advertised to end-users as a mechanism for protecting children. Then it is "mature content", including anything an ISP might get a letter of complain about, but which does not hurt any business partners. This meant that they can cut cost on support, but at the same time protect any revenue from advertisements. That mean items such as tor, political satire, all form of porn, unpopular religious sites and (anti)social hangouts get listed, but things like alcohol, commercials directed to children, political advertizements, violence and sexual hinting content will be left alone. After that, they start to add items to the list which competes with the ISPs' own products, such as VoIP, but also products that put a strain on their network such as video streaming. The last bans tend to be less severe, as to show how slow competing products are with their low quality of service. This also allow for a mechanism to extract levies from larger companies such as Google without going with a full blown ban that might create outcry from ones consumers. The market won't regulate itself. There are too few options of consumers, and there exist a clear asymmetrical information gap between buyer and seller. Lemon laws for services could help here, but it would be the same effort or even more effort than to create industry regulations for ISPs.

madaxe 14y ago
Of course, when they first started censoring CP, plenty went, "Well, yes, it's abhorrent, but what about the slippery slope?", and got shouted down by our government, the press, and peers, who all said words to the effect of "Don't be ridiculous, you're hysterical, what are you, a pedophile?". Even now, as we gracelessly tumble down the well-greased-incline, they will merrily argue that there is no slippery slope. As to regulation, there already is, and it actively encourages ISPs to censor. http://www.mobilebroadbandgroup.com/content-code.pdf http://www.mobilebroadbandgroup.com/content-code.pdf

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Herald_MJ 14y ago

Orange UK have a similar overenthusiastic filter - I've noticed it blocking online dating websites, a beer festival website and even reddit, in it's entirety. It's also opt-out, and although this can be done through their mobile app, it has the annoying habit of occasionally re-enabling itself. Very annoying.

Herald_MJ 14y ago

An interesting side-effect of "cloud browsers" (browsers that proxy your traffic through their servers and compress the data on the mobile data end) like Opera Mini and Amazon Silk is they completely bypass these filters.

dan1234 14y ago

Is this block only for PAYG users? There doesn't seem to be any block on my 3UK Pay Monthly deal.

rahoulb 14y ago
Sort of - you need to prove your ID to them (and contracts include that ID). But I was using a 3 contract broadband SIM in my phone and that wouldn't let me access stuff on the phone's browser.

DanBC2 14y ago

>First, because many people will be unaware that this kind of "mature content" censorship is taking place at all, and therefore won't ask for it to be stopped. You get a huge interstitial page telling you that the site is being blocked and telling you what you need to do to have it turned off. I agree that the block should be off by default. Sellers could ask the customer if they wanted the block turned on when the phone is bought. I agree that the blocks are too broad. T-Mobile didn't ask for any ID. I guess I'm pretty obviously over 18. They did ask for my name and address.

billpg 14y ago

Dear operators. I would like it very much if you'd block any malware sites. I don't even mind if there's a reasonable number of false positives caught in the mix when a new exploit is found and I might not have updated my software yet. Apart from that, please don't block anything. I am an adult and the sole user of the account.