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Comment by ZGDUwpqEWpUZ | Hacker News Reader

Parental controls are now the default on (most?) UK mobile providers, so a lot of archive/user-driven sites get blocked if you don't login to your provider's portal to tick the "I'm over 18" box. IIRC this has been the case since David Cameron's government made threatening noises about bringing in legislation to force it.

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Honestly, I think that's one good thing. I believe that isp's should provide more content controls and allow fine grained controls for account owners to block content in categories. And they should have at least adult content blocked by default with an opt out.

It's insane to me that parents have to be network admins to be able to make even do basic content filtering for their children in the US.

When I bought a throwaway GiffGaff SIM while I was waiting months for BT to set up my broadband, it had content blocking on by default. They wanted me to send a picture of my driver's license to lift the restrictions.

I'm not sure what I'm more disgusted by: the fact I need to give away my identity to have unfiltered (except the outright blocked stuff) access to the internet, or that I caved and gave it to them anyway.

I guess I should be happy proof of identity wasn't required to buy or activate the SIM in the first place.

There's a huge leap between 'parents have to be network admins' and all devices you buy are censored by default.

I'm admittedly pretty cynical about these things, but i think blocking adult content by default is mostly to help pedophiles and predators. The internet is a dangerous place for kids, why else would you want to make it look safer, while leaving the real dangers (people) in place?

Kids shouldn't have unsupervised access to the internet. This has become a controversial statement, mostly due to a false sense of security brought on through censorship.

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