[commandlinefan]

> some ISPs might want to block highly illegal content

There is no way - not even a theoretical way - to allow blocking of illegal content (for any definition of illegal) that won't allow for blocking of any other arbitrary content. Censorship is binary. You can accept either none of it, or all of it.

[joosters]

At some level, everywhere has some form of censorship. For any country you could name, there are, or could easily be, content in any kind of media - books, audio, video, games, whatever, that is so abhorrent that it would either not be published, or would be shut down as soon as possible.

So if you say censorship is binary, it's already here, and has been here for ever. But I would guess that few believe that censorship is truly binary like you say.

[searchableguy]

Censorship is fine if it's opt in. I don't use facebook and censor myself from it. I opt in to use a pihole and adblocker. It filters many things I otherwise would see.

You can't often choose your ISP so this makes it extra important for censorship of any kind of to be opt in rather than forced.

[bluGill]

My kids will not opt-in to censoring "Thomas the Train" videos when they should be doing their school work.

I think I just got everyone to take a step down the slippery slope.

[searchableguy]

You can opt in to parental control software :)

https://wellbeing.google/

https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT208982

https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT210387

[a1369209993]

> I think I just got everyone to take a step down the slippery slope.

Hi! Counterexample here!

[dragonwriter]

> There is no way - not even a theoretical way - to allow blocking of illegal content (for any definition of illegal) that won't allow for blocking of any other arbitrary content.

Well, there is: take the person or body that ultimately determines whether content is illegal, and have them review each request and proposed response and decide whether to allow the content through to the requester.

For slightly better scalability, have that body review all content outside of any request-response cycle before it can be published and sign any approved content, then block any content they haven’t signed.

Somewhat more generally, as long as the specific blocking methodology is itself part of the definition of what content is legal, any blocking method can meet the standard of “allows blocking illegal content without allowing blocking of other content”, since any content blocked by the method is, ipso facto, illegal.