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« 226th anniversary of the ratification of the Constitution | Main | L.A. Gangbangers head to Syria »

Explanation of school blocking progun websites but not Brady and others

Posted by David Hardy · 21 June 2014 04:13 PM

David Codrea has the scoop.

The school tried to blame the company making the blocking software, but the company says, no, it's a product of the school's chosen settings. The company recognizes sites that it has rated and classified by content, and sites that it has not gotten to. These are evaluated based on internet popularity -- more popular sites get first place in the priority for evaluation.

One of the categories evaluated is "politics/advocacy groups." The school chose to block these (I suppose that says something about how much they want their students exposed to the world and to diverse ideas in general). The default is to not block these. The school also chose to unblock unrated sites. The default is to block these, too much risk of malware and viruses.

Since sites are given priority for ratings based on popularity, what this amounts to is -- progun and conservative sites are very popular, and thus apt to be evaluated and tagged "policy/advocacy," while the antiguns sites are not very popular, and thus apt to be left without evaluation.

3 Comments | Leave a comment

Harold | June 22, 2014 8:16 AM | Reply

I find that explanation somewhat lacking when it's applied to sites beyond gun politics ones, specifically:

Lampart investigated further, by broadening his search terms to Connecticut’s political parties.

“I immediately found out that the State Democrat web site was unblocked but the State GOP web site was blocked.”

Lampart even looked at Web sites focusing on abortion issues and religion. He found that “right-to-life” groups were blocked by the public school firewall but that Planned Parenthood and Pro-Choice America were not. He also tried to get on web sites such as Christianity.com and the Vatican’s web site but both were blocked. Islam-guide.com he found, was not.

The explanation demands we believe Planned Parenthood is neither popular or scored as a politics/advocacy site. It would also be curious that in a very Blue state the Democratic party's site is not popular.

Rich | June 23, 2014 1:36 PM | Reply

"These are evaluated based on internet popularity -- more popular sites get first place in the priority for evaluation."
Yeah right, I find it hard to believe that the Vatican site is that popular that it was given priority for evaluation.

chris | June 24, 2014 12:45 AM | Reply

This may well be an issue with the blocking software. I have had to deal with black-list companies before and there are always issues. Most common are educational or academic sites auto-blocking based on content, and false reports to block lists by users who don't like what a given site/person has to say. Its easy to get a site on a list, but very difficult to have one removed. access to porn and games is never really hindered.

censorship is antithetical to education.

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