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.