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Verizon Blocking 4chan

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the and-nothing-of-value-was-lost dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to 4chan's owner and administrator 'moot,' Verizon has explicitly blocked all traffic on their network from boards.4chan.org, where all of 4chan's boards are located. Moot explains that only traffic to and from port 80 is being dropped and they were able to confirm that it was intentional. 4chan's downtime for Verizon users has been in effect for at least 72 hours since Saturday, February 7."

10 of 677 comments (clear)

  1. DOOMED I say... DOOMED! by Q-Hack! · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Rules #5, #6, and #7

    Verizon, you are doomed. Pissing off 4chan is probably the worst thing you can do on the Internet.

    --
    Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
    1. Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! by toastar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Sorry, your analogy doesn't work as it doesn't reference cars in any way.

      Indeed, ISP's are more like Cab Drivers.

      Imagine if you flag down a cab at the airport, You tell him to go to the west side of town. Half way to your destination you tell him you're going to a strip club. He says he can't take you there. What do you do?
      I'd say get out, Refuse to pay, and call another cab.

      In this case If i couldn't access the site after complaining I'd cancel the service and refuse to pay the bill as they refused to provide unfiltered internet access as they agreed.
      It's the same shit as when they block port 25. Call them and complain and if they can't fix it, go somewhere else.

      Besides who needs to access 4chan from their phone anyway

    2. Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! by sanosuke001 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Regardless of his poor understanding of US law; ISP's should be considered common carriers whether they want to or not. ISP's should not be in the business of censoring anything.

      --
      -SaNo
    3. Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! by jtownatpunk.net · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's not that they've pissed of 4chan. They've pissed off ME. And I don't know what 4chan is beyond a reputation that it's supposedly more childish than fark and slashdot combined. All I know is Verizon's decided I'm not allowed to view a site that doesn't appear to be breaking any laws.

      And if that wasn't bad enough, customer service is pushing it under the rug. I just spent 20 of the stupidest minutes on the phone with Verizon listening to some smarmy shit apologize that I mistakenly perceived that I was being blocked. This is clearly a device issue as he can access boards dot 4chan dot org on two devices with no trouble at all. But he wouldn't even consider opening a ticket until I'd gone through every troubleshooting step in the book. Including a HARD RESET. (For those who aren't familiar with the lingo, that's the one where you reset the device to factory fresh.) Only then would he have opened a ticket. And the whole time, he's insisting that Verizon isn't blocking the site, saying I shouldn't trust blogs. Nevermind the fact that Verizon has admitted that they're blocking traffic and plan to lift the block tonight. After playing along with his bullshit for 20 minutes, I just couldn't stay on the phone any longer without calling him a lying sack of shit so I hung up.

      Which, of course, is exactly what Verizon wants. They didn't have to open a ticket documenting a problem. My call just got logged as an uncooperative customer who refused to complete the troubleshooting process.

      The worst part is they could have had the same effect if they'd just said, "We apologize for the inconvenience. Some of 4chan's affiliates were staging network attacks and we chose to block traffic from that site until the problem was resolved. There have been no attacks coming from that network today so we're going to restore access this evening." That's it. A simple statement that tells the customer what is going on, doesn't require opening a ticket, and ends with a happy customer. Perhaps even grateful. Or at least one who isn't pissed off.

      Oh, and the best part of the call came a couple minutes after I hung up. "FREE VZW MSG-DO NOT REPLY:Start > Settings > All Settings > System tab > Memory > Clear Storage tab Enter 1234, tap OK in upper right of screen Display: Confirm"

      Yep, that text message popped up on my phone shortly after I hung up on the tech. WinMo folks should recognize the Hard Reset instructions. I don't suggest you follow those instructions as it will wipe your WinMo phone clean. No explanation or warning came with that message. I assume he sent it for the lolz, hoping I'd follow the instructions blindly.

      BTW, if you call Verizon's Network Repair Bureau at (866) 298-5373 as advised by 4chan, they won't do anything for you unless you have a ticket which you must get by calling Customer Care at 800-922-0204. Of course, it'll take you a good half hour of bullshit (and hard-resetting your phone!) to get a ticket assigned. But I suggest every Verizon customer who gives a shit about censorship should call anyway and let them know how you feel about censorship.

    4. Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! by Red+Flayer · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yes, they are. Demonstrably. They would have long ago forced ISPs to filter if they weren't.

      Please show me the documentation demonstrating that any single ISP, or any group of ISPs, or ISPs in general, have common carrier status.

      The modern ISP marketplace is defined by the very fact that they are NOT common carriers, and thus not subject to regulation under Title II of the Communications Act. This is why we do not have choice in broadband suppliers at the local level.

      Instead, some of the benefits of common carrier status have been conferred upon ISPs via the Communications Decency Act, which made them not liable for 3rd-party communications across their networks. Common-carrier status, however, has not been ascribed.

      The key here is that ISPs get most of the benefits of common carrier status, without any of the drawbacks. They escape the kind of regulation that opens them up to competition in providing data service, and the kind of oversight that would require them to provide decent service... yet they can pick and choose what packets get delivered at what speed (if at all) and at what cost.

      If ISPs had common carrier status, they could not throttle certain users based upon inequitable usage. They could not choose to deprecate certain kinds of data. Data transmission would need to be 100% content-agnostic. I think it makes sense -- but they'd need to shift to a different pricing model, a tiered one based on usage volume, to make it work.

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
    5. Re:DOOMED I say... DOOMED! by BronsCon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And if I were new here (perhaps a displaced /b/tard) and had RTFA, I would have known that the block actually only affects VZW.

      Here's where 4chan organizes, everyone buys a 3G card and plan from VZW, and torrents like mad. When VZW's entire 3G network comes to a grinding halt, the message will have been made. I'd post this idea directly to /b/ (not really!!) but I'm in the last 5 days of a 2 week ban... meh... w/e.

      But, you say, Verizon will be more than happy to take money from a bunch of /b/tards. Right, but will they be happy to lose business when their Droid, BlackBerry, and WinMo users have no access for a week, while AT&T's iPhone, BlackBerry, and WinMo users are unaffected? Will they be delighted at the lost income when tens of thousands of tweens and teens can't send MMS messages (remember, those are a data service, not sent via the control channel like SMS)?

      Also, don't forget the likelihood that many of the type of people who would willingly participate in such a scheme are likely to:
      A) Open the account with fraudulent or stolen identity information
      or B) Not give two craps about their credit and just not pay the bill

      In the end, should something like this occur, it would be BAD for Verizon.

      --
      APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
  2. Fraud? by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So Verizon sold me internet service. Implicit in that is service to all internet hosts.

    Has Verizon criminally defrauded me?

  3. rebellion? by Lord+Ender · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Didn't some kid just get three years in jail for participating in an anti-Scientology DoS attack which was organized on 4chan?

    Will that be enough to keep the users in line?

    --
    A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  4. Re:I feel split in this matter by Jeng · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I would imagine all this does is give 4chan something to bitch about.

    The main downside is that there are people trying to reach 4chan who cannot, and therefor will visit other parts of the internet. Before now they were contained, now Verizon broke containment.

    --
    Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
  5. Re:I feel split in this matter by jgtg32a · · Score: 4, Interesting

    4chan is the radio active waste dump of the internet and for the most part all of their shenanigans tend to stay at 4chan, when you close 4chan it spreads.