Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

techdirt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 82 posts

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#21

Post by ZoFreX »

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.

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#23

Post by lucian1900 »

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!

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#24

Post by netcan »

ZoFreX wrote: post #21

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 a…

I wouldn't call that "offering content filtering."

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#25

Post by arethuza »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #15
Peroni wrote: post #7

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.

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.

Out of interest, how are you finding GiffGaff - £12 for a plan with unlimited internet and texts and no contract looks too good to be true!

[Edit: thanks to everyone who has replied, I think I will give them a go!]

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#27

Post by jrabone »

arethuza wrote: post #25
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Out of interest, how are you finding GiffGaff - £12 for a plan with unlimited internet and texts and no contract looks too good to be true! [Edit: thanks to everyone who has replied, I think I will give them a go!]

It is. They will collect your personal information, and make it available to their parent (Telefonica, via O2) and one of the other subsidiaries set up specifically to do this, and then re-sell it to the highest bidder. See http://www.fastcompany.com/3002010/telefonica-sell-customer-... for example.

If you then subsequently leave them for another network, you will get more SMS spam than you can possibly imagine.

http://zingongle.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/o2-selling-my-deta... for more details.

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#29

Post by cs02rm0 »

Peroni wrote: post #20
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like EE does have it. Maybe they just don't apply it to company purchased phones? http://help.ee.co.uk/system/selfservice.controller?CONFIGURA...

Interesting. Either it doesn't apply to company phones or their filter is shockingly bad.

Likewise, I've got an EE mobile on my company and I haven't tripped it yet. Not even for political satire.

Re: 3UK treats political satire as porn and blocks it

#30

Post by lloeki »

arethuza wrote: post #25
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Out of interest, how are you finding GiffGaff - £12 for a plan with unlimited internet and texts and no contract looks too good to be true! [Edit: thanks to everyone who has replied, I think I will give them a go!]

Here, the disruptive Free Mobile (mobile.free.fr) is 20€/mo for unlimited calls, text, and data (incl. tethering) gets throttled beyond 3GB/mo. For 2€/mo you get 2h calls, unlimited text while data is made possible via a dedicated SSID (FreeWifi_secure) on every one of their DSL customer routers, with automatic authentication via EAP-SIM. Both contracts can be terminated at any time and will stop at the end of the current month.

£12 looks like surprisingly cheaper.

Post reply on HN