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Indeed the filters are very unpopular and the uptake figures haven't significantly changed from July, as far as I know? Claire Perry MP was campaigning for por

Indeed the filters are very unpopular and the uptake figures haven't significantly changed from July, as far as I know? Claire Perry MP was campaigning for porn censorship by default. She's only got that from Sky now, a huge reversal from what they said before, and when you see that not even 10% of their customers who were asked wanted it, it's clear their brand manager's made a huge mistake making it opt-out. I thought then, and think now, that the TalkTalk bias is due to the demographics of the users of that ISP. Everyone with the technical skill to visit SamKnows or ThinkBroadband knows TalkTalk are poorly-rated and thus tends to avoid choosing them, I'd venture. As said before, censorship infrastructure itself presents a very real vulnerability, although this doesn't seem to be fully appreciated by many of the stakeholders.

Someone1234 12y ago
Plus the filters break websites all the damn time. I cannot count the number of times on both hands that Reddit has "disappeared" from the internet, and if you traceroute it it disappears into an IWF box. This has been almost common on Virgin Media. Then there was that time that they "accidently" knocked all of Wikipedia offline because of a single IWF-flagged album cover (and then blocked the page, and then finally removed the block completely). It did spawn an interesting discussion on the difference between "child porn" and "art."
- AlyssaRowan 12y ago
  The jQuery CDN is also a semi-frequent victim of Sky's filter. I pause here simply to note that it's quite possible to use the infrastructure's distinctive behaviour as an oracle to scry a complete list of all blocked sites, and to monitor that over time, given just a few volunteers on each major ISP.
jarek 12y ago
> I thought then, and think now, that the TalkTalk bias is due to the demographics of the users of that ISP. Everyone with the technical skill to visit SamKnows or ThinkBroadband knows TalkTalk are poorly-rated and thus tends to avoid choosing them, I'd venture. I'd be very interested in suggestions for broadband providers who are less bad than TalkTalk while offering £20 (incl "line rental") broadband providing, say, 80 GB monthly
- AlyssaRowan 12y ago
  An interesting point. If you're capping the price that low including the line rental, it is going to be hard to match, yes, as TalkTalk are cheap. (They do their own LLU, but that's a positive from what I've seen.) Sky are roughly competitive on price, but the "less bad" is harder to argue there, of course! Virgin can only match you on an initial deal there, but it goes up after a few months. (uSwitch are probably a good port of call for comparisons.) Which brings up another potential point - that the bias might perhaps be indicative of those who spend less money on broadband, either because it's less important to them as a household, or they have less money. Merely speculation, however, I don't think there's the data to back that up.
  - jarek 12y ago
    Yeah, I just wanted to point out that it's not just a matter of tech skill. We use the broadband all the time, though not very heavily, and I'm not convinced TalkTalk is bad enough to justify £5-10 per month extra plus potential installation charges and switching hassles. Though out of curiosity - what would be considered a better provider from a technical or customer experience point of view, if a bit more expensive? When I looked briefly I got the idea that it's pretty much pick your poison between "meh" providers. We're out of Relish.net range unfortunately.
    - bainsfather 12y ago
      I switched to http://www.zen.co.uk http://www.zen.co.uk 18 months ago. I find them very good - quick sign-up, much better connection than with BT, phone calls answered quickly by people who know what they are talking about, no locked-in contract, ...
    - DanBC 12y ago
      There's a real problem with price-comparison in England at the moment. I want to know the total cost of ownership of a broadband package. This includes engineer setup fees; postal costs of equipment; line rental; time of contract. No sites provide this.

Someone1234 12y ago

Plus the filters break websites all the damn time. I cannot count the number of times on both hands that Reddit has "disappeared" from the internet, and if you traceroute it it disappears into an IWF box. This has been almost common on Virgin Media. Then there was that time that they "accidently" knocked all of Wikipedia offline because of a single IWF-flagged album cover (and then blocked the page, and then finally removed the block completely). It did spawn an interesting discussion on the difference between "child porn" and "art."

AlyssaRowan 12y ago
The jQuery CDN is also a semi-frequent victim of Sky's filter. I pause here simply to note that it's quite possible to use the infrastructure's distinctive behaviour as an oracle to scry a complete list of all blocked sites, and to monitor that over time, given just a few volunteers on each major ISP.

jarek 12y ago

> I thought then, and think now, that the TalkTalk bias is due to the demographics of the users of that ISP. Everyone with the technical skill to visit SamKnows or ThinkBroadband knows TalkTalk are poorly-rated and thus tends to avoid choosing them, I'd venture. I'd be very interested in suggestions for broadband providers who are less bad than TalkTalk while offering £20 (incl "line rental") broadband providing, say, 80 GB monthly

AlyssaRowan 12y ago
An interesting point. If you're capping the price that low including the line rental, it is going to be hard to match, yes, as TalkTalk are cheap. (They do their own LLU, but that's a positive from what I've seen.) Sky are roughly competitive on price, but the "less bad" is harder to argue there, of course! Virgin can only match you on an initial deal there, but it goes up after a few months. (uSwitch are probably a good port of call for comparisons.) Which brings up another potential point - that the bias might perhaps be indicative of those who spend less money on broadband, either because it's less important to them as a household, or they have less money. Merely speculation, however, I don't think there's the data to back that up.
- jarek 12y ago
  Yeah, I just wanted to point out that it's not just a matter of tech skill. We use the broadband all the time, though not very heavily, and I'm not convinced TalkTalk is bad enough to justify £5-10 per month extra plus potential installation charges and switching hassles. Though out of curiosity - what would be considered a better provider from a technical or customer experience point of view, if a bit more expensive? When I looked briefly I got the idea that it's pretty much pick your poison between "meh" providers. We're out of Relish.net range unfortunately.
  - bainsfather 12y ago
    I switched to http://www.zen.co.uk http://www.zen.co.uk 18 months ago. I find them very good - quick sign-up, much better connection than with BT, phone calls answered quickly by people who know what they are talking about, no locked-in contract, ...
  - DanBC 12y ago
    There's a real problem with price-comparison in England at the moment. I want to know the total cost of ownership of a broadband package. This includes engineer setup fees; postal costs of equipment; line rental; time of contract. No sites provide this.