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Comment by richardwigley | Hacker News Reader

'Porn filters' while getting your attention isn't the whole story. There's a whole list there. Very few adults would tolerate this much censorship.

Categories blocked across the major ISPs include: Dating, Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco, File sharing, Gambling, Games, Pornography, Nudity, Social networking, Suicide and Self-harm, Weapons and violence, Obscenity, Criminal Skills, Hate, Media Streaming, Fashion and Beauty, Gore, Cyberbullying, Hacking and Web-blocking circumvention tools

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Unit...

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Your comment is quite disingenuous. The major ISPs offer parental filters that can be used to block many different types of content, and specific websites, but they are not the default: they are opt-in. The default (opt-out) filter with BT for example is "Light"[1], which only blocks the content you'd expect to be blocked by a "family-friendly" filter. To block Media Streaming, Fashion, Sex Education and File Sharing you have to opt-in to "Strict"[2]. If someone opts out of the default ("mandatory") filter they are opting out of a porn filter, not a sex education filter.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/5IN6VGC.png [2] http://i.imgur.com/PinT3xy.png

My experience was: my ISP was talktalk, under a business account run from home (SOHO?), One day, un-opted, they started censoring sites - dating sites - which would seem to be strict under the BT definition. While that might be as expected for a business it wasn't a service that was asked for.

That’s still so obstructive as to be useless for any normal adult. For example I was banned from seeing the opening times for a local brewery tour by default on my mobile connection; had to phone them up to unblock it.

Your comment is quite disingenuous. The major ISPs parental filters have all suffered numerous false positives and varying commitment to fixing the problems. The porn filters particularly often block access to sex education, anti-bullying, and support sites for young gay/transgender etc (also I believe some charity sites for women suffering from sexual and physical abuse at home). If someone opts out of the default filter they are ensuring that people in their household can access support they may need, not just letting porn in.

Some of those I can definitely see the justification behind them of being "evils of society", but as for Dating, Social networking, Media Streaming, and Fashion and Beauty...?

Makes me wonder what they're really trying to do.

They are offering a product to people who might want that product.

If you do want the product you might go to an ISP that offers it, and thus give them your money.

If you don't want the product, well, it's opt-in so you possibly don't know or care about it.

If you're one of the few people who are aware of over-filtering, and think that any filtering by the ISP (even if currently opt-in) is bad then you might want to spend your money with for example AAISP. Get your wallet ready.

If you blocked all that, what reason on earth would you have to have a connection in the first place? No Facebook, no media.

It leaves wikipedia and email I guess.

Or maybe very many adults actually plan to watch porn, but are generally okay with censorship?

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