Website Censorship by O2 – Update

Website censorship is real.  Today I updated the second widget in the sidebar at the right, “Recipient of the O2/Symantec Recognition Award”, to reflect that the address had been changed for the O2 URL-checker – by which O2’s website ratings as to whether a given website is rated “Blocked” or not can be checked.

The censorship by O2 is for all practical intents and purposes still in effect.  Certainly, if O2 were to respond to inquiries (they don’t) as to why the blocking of the website of Fathers for Life and that of its blog is still in effect, they would argue that no censorship on their part exists. Nevertheless, consider:

O2 censorship of the website of Fathers for Life
O2 URL-checker results

Anyone using O2’s services and searching for F4L or its blog would not necessarily be aware that the website is blocked, unless they were to try to access a specific URL.  On general searches for any topic, the website of F4L or its blog would simply not show up on search-return lists. No matter how many hits for pages with the searched-for content on the topic of interest would be found by the search engine, it would not show up on the search-return list.  That is censorship.

Someone may wish to access a specific web page at F4L or at its associated blog, and O2 would at best inform the individual trying to access the item that he cannot access the item because it is blocked, unless he goes through O2’s process for verifying his age and thereby proves himself to be of age 18 or older.  He will most likely forego the effort, because it is too much trouble, and the item remains blocked for him.  That is censorship.

It is an important form of censorship.  For the sake of determining its impact, some time ago I checked all of the fathers- or men’s-rights websites in the world I could think of and found that O2 blocked all 90 or so of them.  That is massive censorship.

O2 is not the only corporation engaging in such censorship, and Symantec (the producer of Norton virus checker) is just one of the corporations involved in producing the software with which corporations like O2 can administer the censorship they wish to impose.  There is a discussion of the aspects of such censorship in the U.K. in a Wikipedia article: “Web blocking in the United Kingdom“.  Have a look at that, but look also at this: “Internet censorship“.  That provides a more objective and less politically-correct perspective than the Wikipedia article provides.

Why must censorship that ostensibly protects minors be taken out of the hands of parents and requires to be handled by governments and corporations?  Agencies other than parents are demonstrably not better at doing the censoring than parents are, given that some very objectionable aspects of gender politics are being taught to children of a very young age (on TV), in Kindergarten (lessons on gender re-assignment), and so on.

A very strong case can be made that censorship such as that exercised by O2 is not intended to protect children against bad influences as such, but primarily attempts to circumvent some of the last remnants of the good influence that parents still have on their children. Parents are not only the first teachers of children but also the most important teachers that children can possibly have.

The censorship issue is far more sinister than it appears from the discussion, so far. I used the URL checker to check O2’s ratings for feminist websites with contents comparable to that of the website for Fathers for Life and got what may be considered a surprise but most certainly is not.  Take for example an article such as this one:

Feminist Majority Launches Grassroots Movement to Save Roe

The Feminist Majority is launching a grassroots movement to save Roe v. Wade. The Millions4Roe.org campaign will activate feminists across the country to protect abortion rights on the federal, state and local levels… more

It is not precisely benign reading. It seems that O2 would assign a rating of:

The defining policy for the Age verified O2 customer profile is: Allowed.

The defining policy for the Non age verified O2 customer profile is: Blocked.

That is not the case.  This is the result that the O2 URL checker provided:

O2 rating for the website of Feminist Majority for an article on abortion rights

So, let me get this right.  O2 Internet censorship is unbiased and objective, and it protects minors against adult contents of websites, provided such content is supplied by pro-family and pro-male websites, in which case such websites need to be blocked.  On the other hand, when comparable content is provided by websites that are being owned and operated by radical feminists, it is perfectly alright for minors to be permitted access.

Does anyone still think that O2’s Internet censorship is for the protection of minors and not for their indoctrination with feminist gender politics?

All of that poses a very serious problem, but it can be addressed, to some extent. When it comes to obtaining Internet services, shop wisely.  It is just as and even more important to vote wisely when it comes to the next elections.