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by DanBC 4044 days ago
That kind of stuff has been happening forever. Of course it's more common now - every UK customer is now covered. But anyone who's been behind filters at work or school can tell you that filters have always had false positives.

Focussing on those cases is probably a mistake. They're caught in filters by accident, and the people responsible say "whoops!" then tweak the filters to unblock the charity sites. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

And we've seen this rhetoric from politicians - "this is complicated; mistakes do get made; but we adjustthe filters when mistakes are made; and we need the filters because TERRORISTS or EXTREME PORNOGRAPHY".

1 comments

Yet mysteriously other countries and the UK for decades have been fine without them.

https://www.blocked.org.uk/faq

You are aware they block things like dating sites as a matter of policy unless you opt-in to the "perv list", yeah?

So what? You call it a perv list, but you also point to the high rate of false positives. So someone opting out of the filters isn't chosing to view porn but is chosing to view a false positive.

You seem to think that I think the filters are a good idea. I don't. I do know that using factually wrong information when talking about the filters does not help when you're trying to change law.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/22/war_on_erupts_in_bri...

Its a term that was used for years in relation to the filter that it was about "perverts".

For someone dedicated to factual accuracy, the fact you seem to think commonly used terms in relation to something are "wrong" is proof you really don't get it.