AT & T is Censoring Your Internet
edit: Just to update… AT&T has reversed their decision to censor their subscribers Internet — good move, however I’m sure plenty of damage has already been done. 4Chan looks like the big winner here — their site is now working for AT&T subscribers and they got a whole lot of free publicity.
——
If you’re one of the 15.5% of Americans who subscribe to AT & T wired Internet, know that AT & T is censoring what you see online. No, this wasn’t requested by government like my recent post on Australia Internet censorship — this was something AT & T decided to do all on their own. If you use any of the popular social media sites like Digg or Reddit, you may have come across the article — it has 5600+ diggs and 3300+ upvotes on Reddit at the time of this writing.
The website being blocked is certain sections of 4chan.org, an extremely popular website currently ranked #684 on Alexa. 4Chan is a controversial website (due to some of the content it hosts), however so are thousands of other websites online — should they be blocked as well? There’s really no way to know if there aren’t a whole lot more blocked websites — it came to light so quickly that 4Chan had website sections that were being blocked by AT & T due to the staggering number of people who visit 4Chan, so we might very well hear of other websites being blocked in coming days if AT & T doesn’t wake-up and reverse this decision which is causing rage all over the blogosphere and social media websites.
AT&T is as Un-American as companies come, having invented programs for mass surveillance of US citizens, allowed warrantless wiretapping of AT&T subscribers, are being investigated for price collusion on text message pricing, is being investigated for antitrust violations, and cancelled people’s Internet for saying things online they find “objectionable” (don’t leave a negative comment about AT&T if they’re your ISP!). I could go on — see their Wikipedia article if you’re interested in learning more about AT&T and the way they do business.
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July 27th, 2009 at 5:05 am
I am going to take some heat for this one but hey it is America and last I checked freedom of speech was still in vogue.
There is a disease growing in America and around the world and it is more dangerous than Global warming or whatever other crap is being spewed about ad nauseum. It is calle entertainment addiction
So powerful is this addiction that it blinds those most affected to realities of life and in this case business.
The entire focus of this article seems to be about cencorship but in reality it is about not being able to entertain oneselves for endless hours on end with useless drivel spewed about by armchair quarterbacks everywhere.
Take this link for example to an article about two chaps who have been engaging in fraudulent deceptive behavior and instead of being arrested they are goint to get a movie deal or at least be featured in a documentary. All in the name of entertainment.
When asked where the money to fund these free entertainment meccas (errr social networks) come from the entertainment addicts always use the same sorry excuse “the advertisers”
Can you name the last time you left an entertainment site to go patronize an adversiter? I didn’t think so! So much for that lame excuse.
And where is this magic money that the advertisers are paying (and supposedly will keep paying if you ask the entertainment addicts) coming from? Is anyone watching the news? Have you noticed that businesses are down just a tad?
Any domainer worth their salt should be outraged about free inernet services including these supposed overnight sensation businesses aka social networking sites that are not only time wasters but will die due to their business model and once again leave true domainers and internet business people with a black eye to overcome. Namely the worlds perception that the Internet is not a place you pay but instead a place you go to play. and number two that the Internet is not a good place to have a business (there goes our end user sales) because aside from advertisers you won’t make any money and only them until the advertisers money runs out or they figure out they are wasting their money advertising to entertainment junkies.
July 27th, 2009 at 5:38 am
Here is a link to the article that I omitted in my first comment
New U.S. film shows pranksters battling companies
http://www.reuters.com/article/mediaNews/idUSN2448454320090726
Several companies said the stunts are a serious offense. But Servin and Vamos have never been sued.
The BBC interview in 2004 — their biggest hoax — was picked up by several news organizations and caused Dow Chemical’s shares to tumble 3.4 percent.
“That showed that corporations can’t announce that they are going to do the right thing, because they will be punished for it,” said Vamos. “We have to change the rules.”
Dow Chemical says it bears no responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe that killed at least 8,000 people and poisoned half a million people after lethal gas escaped from a chemical plant into nearby slums 25 years ago in the central Indian city.
The Bhopal factory was owned by Union Carbide, now a Dow subsidiary, which paid $470 million to the Indian government in a 1989 legal settlement.
“While some may find ‘The Yes Men’ entertaining, it is important to realize that these pranksters continue to communicate inaccuracies,” a spokesperson for Dow said in an e-mail.
Allegedly these fools cost Dow hundreds of thousands in lost revenues due to their prank
Some call what they did criminal. Thousands are in prison for far less damaging activities. Entertainment junkies on the other hand consider such activity (Which I am pretty sure involved the use of the internet and social networking sites to perpetrate) harmless entertainment.
There was another culture quite fond of entertainment as I recall from my history lessons. They don’t call them the ancient “ruins” for nothing.
Party on garth, party on Wayne until of couse the parties over!
July 27th, 2009 at 7:30 am
If i were an AT&T client, i wouldn’t be anymore, i wouldn’ give another cent to a Fascist company, all these things are very worring, and it’s a good thing that you tell people about it, people really need to wake up
July 27th, 2009 at 7:54 am
Helder
Amazing when the government monitors phone traffic it is a conspiracy or Big brother watching.
When marketers monitor the social network crowd
ref: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE56N6GJ20090725?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&rpc=22&sp=true
“Targeting consumers via demographics, profiling, and their social networks, “you learn a lot about people and you can identify them,” Miller added.”
its ok
When a company blocks access to content that it may consider objectionable it is cencorship
When a Social networking (aka entertaiment mecca) restricts ones right to speak in more than 140 characters at a time …
well that’s standard operating procedure of course Hmmm? Party on Wayne Party on Garth until the party’s over!
July 27th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Scott,
Great comments. I’m not a big fan of social networking sites myself either, using them only for business reasons. I don’t understand how some people can make hundreds of tweets per day or have thousands of “friends” and still get any work done… I too question how social media will pay for itself — there have been plenty of reports about how much click fraud exists on Facebook for example… I just don’t see a PPC model (or even advertising model) working on social networks long term. Most of the people who use these websites are using them for entertainment. When people visit Google, it’s understandable why a search query such as “laptop prices” has value to advertisers. When placing an ad on Facebook, one really doesn’t know what to expect.
Like you said, it’s not only the government spying on it’s citizens but also marketers and corporations dependent on marketers. I was a bit shocked when Twitter release it’s search function allowing anyone to view other people’s public tweets on certain topics very easily — that’s just asking for scrapers. A few days ago, I noticed that a large portion of the comments I’ve left on other people’s blogs are being scraped by a website — it seems there are more than a few blog comment scrapers out there and far more blog post scrapers still. Bottom line is there’s not much in the way of privacy anywhere online.
The thing which worries m most about AT&T isn’t so much that they’re blocking sections of a controversial website without the consent of their subscribers but rather that it is a slippery slope towards blocking other content AT&T may not approve of. As an example, AT&T blocked out lyrics in a 2007 song by Pearl Jam which were critical of George Bush in a AT&T web-broadcast — that kind of stuff worries me because it really isn’t very far from what the Chinese government is doing in blocking anything they find objectionable.
Helder,
I feel the same way about it as you. My small amount of money will certainly have no effect on AT&T’s bottom line, however I refuse to support a company which cares so little about it’s customers. Part of the reason I’m not very active on social networks is because of what Scott said — both that they tend to be a waste of time and also that they’re selling their customers out to whoever is willing to pay. For domainers who want to build up their credibility, I think there are much better uses of one’s time than social networks — eg. successfully completing domain purchases/sales and attending domain name conferences and/or making your presence otherwise known (such as contributing on domain name forums).
July 28th, 2009 at 1:47 am
A day later, we see why corporations censoring is not the same as government censoring. If you don’t like your ISP, you can change. It’s up to ATT if they want to censor out websites. Seems a bad business move, but it’s their right. On the other hand, we can’t change governments so easily, and their rules are blanket rules.
So far as companies being wicked, it was Yahoo a few years ago that happily turned over the names of innocent Chinese in chatrooms for torture, death and god knows what else. I think both Yahoo and Google have agreed to terms that obligate them in assisting the Chinese government to track down and expose dissenters. That means some college kids will disappear and die, which is a bit worse than just having your internet connection interrupted.
The whole thing about companies being too big to fail. In reality, there is a point where they are too big to do anything right - and they should fail. The same rule should apply to governments.
July 28th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Bill,
Well said. I find it somewhat comical how these institutions are supposedly “too large to fail” — there’s quite a striking correlation between being too large to fail and having donated lots of money to Obama and/or McCain’s presidential campaign
I don’t mean to sound undemocratic, but frankly, I think the biggest failing of democratic societies is that they give everyone a vote when 3/4 of the population is incapable of making a decision the media didn’t tell them to make. That more people do searches (according to Wordtracker) each day for whether Obama is left-handed than pretty much anything related to the recession gives a great deal of insight into how utterly clueless and/or uninterested the average person is in politics or even the health of their nation. This isn’t of course strictly an American problem — we have a surprisingly large number of fools here in Canada that don’t even know who our prime minister is. I think most Americans can at least manage to name their president…
July 28th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Scott, no it’s not okay, i don’t like it, but i recognize there’s a difference, with social media sites i have a choice. I can choose not to use them, i can choose not to give them my info, and i don’t use them it all.
I don’t use them, and it’s not because of the info they gather, it’s because of what you and Reece said, i believe they´re a waste of time, and it has little or no value to me. If when it comes to business, i believe that the so called advantages of social media sites are just over hyped. Also it’s very serious and sad that they sell their costumers information.
Reece i agree with you also about the credibility factor, why did people create the idea that being in a social media site creates credibility? It makes no sense
Bill what you said about Yahoo and Google is true, but unfortunatelly very few people know that or even care about that, and the world keeps looking at yahoo and google like examples of great success, yet they sold themselves for a few more bucks
July 28th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
IMHO, 3/4 of the population is incapable of making a decision between medium or large fries with their cheeseburger, much less choose a president.
I’m fatalistic about this. I think democracies, in fact all successful civilizations, have a self-destruct gene. Life gets good, people get lazy, spoiled and stupid, and forget how really near they are to that nasty thing called harsh reality - until it comes back.
I’m still blown away by the new reality that China is now more capitalist than America, while America is arguably becoming more communist than China. Up is the new down, and nobody in America seems to have noticed. And Chinese companies have far fewer scruples than American companies.
On second thought, maybe you should be angry, Reece. It’s your age group that is going to inherit the bulk of this mess.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I think we’ll find in time that capitalism inevitably leads to plutocracy. Socrates figured out 2300+ years ago that democracy doesn’t work long term…
I have no intention of helping pay back that massive U.S. debt or the debt amassed by us “puppets to the North” whose politicians really can’t think on their own. I’ll probably be moving to Sweden or some other country that still hasn’t been completely corrupted in a few years.
July 29th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
It’s a good choice Reece, north european countries are still an oasis when it comes to politics, things are still balanced between capitalism and social protection.
July 29th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
It’s really amazing how many answers people came up with…. 1000s of years ago even. Only to be forgotten or ignored by modern folk who “know better.”
I wish there was a place to move where you could get away from this stuff, but haven’t found one. Closest I have seen is Australia.