Yesterday, TechCrunch and Slashdot, among others, reported that AT&T users were unable to access img.4chan.org; one of the subdomains hosting the infamous “b” board.
If you’re unfamiliar with 4chan, do not google it. I have not provided a link to the site in the blog, and that is for very good reason. It is rather disgusting.
Still, while crude, 4chan has had a profound influence on Web culture, and is one of the largest participatory Web sites out there – so large that Time.com did a profile on its founder, Moot, who was named Time Magazine’s Most Influential Person of the Year… after 4chan rallied enough followers to completely dominate the online poll rankings so that the first letter of each of the top 21 people on the list spelled out a secret message.
Here’s the problem: AT&T blocked part of 4chan in order to cut off a DDoS attack in its tracks last night.
AT&T made a statement to TechCrunch this morning, explaining exactly what happened.
Beginning Friday, an AT&T customer was impacted by a denial-of-service attack stemming from IP addresses connected to img.4chan.org. To prevent this attack from disrupting service for the impacted AT&T customer, and to prevent the attack from spreading to impact our other customers, AT&T temporarily blocked access to the IP addresses in question for our customers. This action was in no way related to the content at img.4chan.org; our focus was on protecting our customers from malicious traffic.
Overnight Sunday, after we determined the denial-of-service threat no longer existed, AT&T removed the block on the IP addresses in question. We will continue to monitor for denial-of-service activity and any malicious traffic to protect our customers.
However, none of the users of the site – nor its owner – understood why the site was blocked for AT&T users. (AT&T claims that they tried to contact Moot, Moot says he was never contacted.) In the absence of solid information, a conspiracy theory popped up that AT&T decided to “censor” 4chan. Within hours, 4chan denizens, known collectively as “Anonymous” made plans to take on AT&T, much like they took on Scientology, though it looks like with this morning’s disclosure, those plans are on hold – though individual 4chan users may still make decisions – like cancelling service – based on bad information. It’s a misguided effort, of course, considering that already, the site is back up, AT&T has explained their position, and there was no harm meant by the temporary blockage.
But the damage has been done. That’s the problem with making networking changes without informing people – if you block a particular site, or make a major network change affecting tons of people, you owe it to your users in order to explain why you’ve made that decision.
A post by “anonimouse” on the Project AT&T web site sums it up:
Why is img.4chan.org blocked?
That is the question you should be asking. Without a why we don’t have a reason to do anything. Now, we know this is not a mistake from the customer service convos but we don’t know exactly why it is banned.
If it’s about Net Neutrality, they have a war coming on.
If it’s about the DDoS like the rumor says, we are getting out panties in a bunch for nothing.
If you’re messing with the Web experience anyway, wouldn’t it make sense to return, as a small HTML page something explaining what the problem is and why the decision was made? In fact, the statement AT&T made to TechCrunch would have explained everything – if AT&T had disclosed the information to 4chan’s userbase instead of trying to communicate through the tech media after-the-fact.
When you don’t explain why you’ve made changes to the network, people will assume the worst about what you’re doing – in this case, that AT&T censored out of sheer spite. We’ve seen this with Bilderberg. We’ve seen this with the undersea internet cables accidentally cut by ships’ anchors. Now we see this with AT&T.
Because there wasn’t a little disclosure, a millions-large community of Internet users are now suddenly more aware of the net neutrality issue and likely to support regulation of companies like AT&T – or, in extreme cases, just interested in making life difficult for AT&T in general. Either way – this is not good from AT&T’s perspective.
No comments yet.