O2 UK Accused of Political Censorship by Male Human Rights Websites

Mobile operator O2 UK has been accused of unfair sexism and political censorship after its mobile broadband platform was found to still be blocking over 100 websites that promote equality for men and or which have dedicated themselves to helping male victims of domestic violence and rape.

Admittedly some of the anti-feminist style websites are controversial and might perhaps have no trouble straying over some peoples perception of a red line (site list), which could make a tiny portion of them compatible with O2s definition of a hate site (you can check if a website is blocked on O2 here http://urlchecker.o2.co.uk/).

But many others are far from deserving of such a classificationand could raise questions about the risks from abuse by overzealous internet filtering systems that impose restrictions without a proper review. Not that any of these concerns are new to O2, which is no stranger to such controversy (here).

John Kimble,Male Human Rights Activist, told ISPreview.co.uk:

My research on this matter and the response Ive had from O2 suggests theyve confused feminism with females as a whole, and thus they mistakenly regard any criticism of feminism (a political ideology) as criticism of women. No other ideology gets the same immunity from criticism that O2 give feminism and the likes of capitalism, socialism, communism etc. are all (quite rightly) fair game for critique.

Its also worth noting that highly contentious feminist sites are not blocked, for example http://femitheist******.blogspot.com promotes castration of all males. Even mainstream and popular feminist sites such as Jezebel.com are at least as controversial as any on the list.

O2 counters that all mobile operators in the United Kingdom are using the same approach and they claim that this is supported by the Independent Mobile Classification Body (IMCB). The sites listed within the links youve sent over have been correctly categorised by us following the IMCB classifications, said a spokesperson for O2.

Furthermore O2 notes that it is still possible to remove the block but this requires a credit card (not every adult has one of those) and disables all of the censorship measures through an age verification system (https://ageverification.o2.co.uk). A second option also exists that asks the customer to take a photographic ID into one of O2s store, which could cause some embarrassment.

An O2 Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk:

We respect our customers freedom to choose the material that they access. But at the same time, we want to protect young people from seeing things they shouldnt. So our approach is to protect our younger customers and apply a default block that restricts access to adult content, but that can easily be removed by customers who are over the age of 18.

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O2 UK Accused of Political Censorship by Male Human Rights Websites