AT&T Blocking Access to Portions of 4chan
 

AT&T Blocking Access to Portions of 4chan (Updated) | CentralGadget.com

Internet Censorship at its finest?

AT&T Has blocked off, 15% of the US's internet population from The 4chan /b/ forum. What kind of madness will come because of this?

What does this mean?

It means that most AT&T users are completely blocked off of the img.4chan.org server. AT&T has admitted that it is there doing and is not an issue with the user..

Let's pretend I am not an expert on 4chan. Why would AT&T want to do something like this, unless there is some sort of threat to them from the areas blocked?

Please pardon my french, but.... WTF IS 4CHAN?

I just went to it...

And I still have no clue what it is.

There is no reason for it that we know of, sure the place has its share of nasty things on it, a lot of sites do, some are even worse than 4chan. But there are also some serious and noteworthy convos going on.

There is no threat to AT&T at 4chan..well, there wasn't anyways, I'm sure they are having a hell of a week now -_-

Its a very popular img board and forum, the main one is "random" and is primarely what AT&T blocked, along with a few other various sections.

Is there a search feature? I see none. Nor do I see a register button. Seems pretty useless to me.


Nope....wait... just saw some breasts. New homepage.

"4chan users have been responsible for the formation and/or popularization of Internet memes such as lolcats, Rickrolling, and "Chocolate Rain". The site's random board is by far its most popular and notorious. Known as "/b/", there are very minimal rules on posted content. Gawker.com once claimed in jest that "reading /b/ will melt your brain".[2]"

"4chan is an English-language imageboard website. Launched on October 1, 2003, its boards are primarily used for the posting of pictures and discussion of manga and anime. Users generally post anonymously and the site has been linked to internet subcultures and activism, most notably Project Chanology."

You dont register, you post as Anon

Still seems pretty confusing...
So is there no search feature?

Well, obviously they didn't do it for no reason. ISPs are companies with competition. If they start limiting access like a Third World country's government, people will move to other options.

Where I live The Dish Network couldn't agree on a contract with ABC, so people with The Dish Network now do not have ABC. What happens? People dump The Dish and start getting cable.

When you are an ISP you are not in the business of blocking information, so, again, there must be a serious reason why they would do something like this.

"In addition, no other internet connections appear to be having an issue accessing 4chan. This appears to negate any other possibility, that the access issue is due to some server or backbone failure or DNS update. If such issues were the culprit, it would be almost impossible for only AT&T customers to be having an issue, and AT&T customers would likely be unable to access any of 4chan, not specifically its most popular board."


This isn't exactly true. If there is a router at the LEC that has gone bad or a server lost it's host file it could cause certain portions to be unavailable with out effecting other portions of a website. A trace route with someone who has AT&T would show exactly where the failure happens.

I mean..it seems like there would be, but at this point there isn't one to point out..even Music Stars like 4chan xD

n 2005, a meme known as the "duckroll" began, after moot used a word filter to change "egg" to "duck" across 4chan. Thus, words such as "eggroll" were changed to "duckroll". This led to a bait and switch in which external links disguised as relevant to a discussion instead led to a picture of a duck on wheels.[36]

"In March 2007, the trailer for the video game Grand Theft Auto IV was released. Its immense popularity caused publisher Rockstar Games' website to crash. An unidentified 4chan user applied the concept of the duckroll to what appeared to be a link to Rockstar Game's site, but changed the end result so that the link wouldn't lead to a duck, but instead a YouTube video for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". Thus, the "rickroll" was born.[36] In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Astley said he found the meme "bizarre and funny".[4][36][37]"

There is..but I dont use it as it mainly used for searching for "pr0nz" and only shows files, there is a site that has 4chan archives, but, I dont use that either, just go on /b/ and lurk for a bit, read the threads, epic lulz are contained thar.

Hmm...
So how do I find this search feature that you speak of?

So it probably isn't "censorship" but just a glitch somewhere, right?

site:dis.4chan.org/ - Google Search

It dosen't have one built in apperantly, use that to search through it though.

I'm calling it censorship, almost all AT&T DSL users cant acsess the /b/ section of the board. And everyone else on other ISP's can?
I know I'm able to -_-

I don't get it. So you sit there and refresh the page over and over again?

There is a very corrupted American telecom company trying to fight against a bunch of techno-anarchist people who adopted a Japanese style BBS system?

They will intimidate AT&T, worse than with the past account with Scien*****y.

Yes. That is the point of 4chan. Think beyond the Western style BBS system.

I have a feeling AT&T is screwed..no matter what they do. I've seen /b/tards do some TERRIBLE things. -_-

AT&T used to be the leader of computer technology (not just communications) with the power of developing several computer languages and UNIX. Now it is one of the worst companies in USA within 20 years.

Welcome to the 21st century.

You're making it seem like this whole site is revolved around Japan.
It's 99% English.

Relax, buddy.

Yeah, AT&T is pretty horrible atm..

The 21st Century rocks!

Thats not what he was getting at, he meant dont use it as you would a normal forum, like JF.

Yes, exactly.

Ah, I see.

Anyways, back to the matter at hand..what reason would AT&T have for banning 4chan?

If there was a DDoS attack originating from or attempting to deny access to that IP it would be better to block that address in order to free up bandwidth. I'd say if AT&T's goal was censorship they would outright block all of 4chan's domain not just img.4chan.org.

"traceroutes indicates that AT&T is dropping img.4chan.org requests in the AT&T network."

Duh, did you not see the news?
It's because after VG posted those pictures of herself,
they deemed it a health hazard.

4chan /b/ seems to be a congregation for child porn sometimes. I visit there a lot still but am disgusted by this part of it. Most of /b/ is just anything-goes mouthing off, often very funny and there is a community, but it seems somewhat lenient to some illegal activities (although technically it is a bannable offence on the board) so that this kind of material pops up semi-regularly.

CP is the nastiest thing ever that gets posted imo and most of the time very shorty after it goes up it is taken down.

What is the /b/ section?

The Random section, very little rules, its pretty much, dont post child porn or beastiality or your banned.

again sorta not
 

Firing one of the first shots in the net neutrality war, AT&T has blocked 4chan’s /b/ image board. AT&T subscribers are unable to connect to /b/ and /r9k/ (both of which are hosted on img.4chan.org). However, subscribers can get on any of the so-called «worksafe» boards that 4chan.org offers.

Pls. note those customers affected - turns out 15.5% of all US internet users use AT&T DSL. note bundled service provider includes telephone/cable/internet service- former AT&T customer (me)

MIT and AT&T / Bell Labs and GE developed unix and this recent salvo has nothing to do with western versus eastern anything. AT&T is not just a ISP company and competition has nothing to do with your ISP or any ISP it's about reducing your choices.
below for your enjoyment as posted LA Metblogs


What traceroute looks like to 4chan on AT&T


flouride:$ traceroute img.4chan.org
traceroute: Warning: img.4chan.org has multiple addresses; using 207.126.64.181
traceroute to img.4chan.org (207.126.64.181), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.1.254 (192.168.1.254) 1.094 ms 0.540 ms 0.646 ms
2 ##-##-##-
#.lightspeed.rcsntx.sbcglobal.
net (##.##.##.#) 22.565 ms 22.093 ms 22.719 ms
3 70.143.229.18 (70.143.229.18) 27.973 ms 23.127 ms 24.098 ms
4 * * *
5 * * *
6 * * *
7 * * *

This is true. I don't know whether this would be reason enough for /b/ to be taken down, but I see it get posted, as I said, semi-regularly, and the community is not hostile to it what-so-ever. These things are possible reasons why an IP might want to block /b/.

But yet..I haven't heard of other sites that are big on some very disturbing things get banned..which is weird.

Possibly because /b/ is pretty infamous?

This is all probably just speculation. You can look at 4chan's status blog where the owner is giving information as it gets to him from at&t.

I guess /b/ is pretty serious..I mean, peoples last words are sometimes typed on /b/ as they An Hero..

It's not really the same company. The current AT&T was formed in 2005 when SBC Communications bought the old AT&T and decided to adopt their name. SBC was originally one of the Bell System's regional subsidiaries; it became an independent company when the Bell System monopoly was broken up in 1984.

As for the old AT&T that developed UNIX, C, and C++, I would say they were just one of many leaders in computer technology, along with IBM, DEC, etc. And AT&T usually failed to capitalize on its own developments. Anyway, that was all within Bell Labs, which was spun off as part of Lucent Technologies in 1996. Bell Labs still exists, but its now part of Alcatel-Lucent, formed in 2006 by the merger of Lucent with the French company Alcatel.

Either way, the current AT&T is still horribly managed with terrible PR.

As I just mentioned above, it's really not the same AT&T any more.