14 DAY TRIAL // In a move that is bound to end badly, AT&T blocked portions of the infamous 4chan.org imageboard, more specifically, the /r9k/ and /b/ sections. The blocking only affected DLS and U-Verse subscribers and not mobile users. There was no official explanation from the company at first though some technical issues have been claimed from some AT&T sources. Finally official confirmation from the company came sometime later in the day claiming that the blocking was within its policies. Late last night the Internet provider apparently restored access to the site though 4chan is now down everywhere, likely after a DDOS attack.
“It's come to our attention that AT&T is filtering/blocking img.4chan.org (/b/ & /r9k/) for many of their customers. There is no remedy at this time. If you've been affected, I would advise you call or write customer support and corporate immediately,” Moot, the founder and owner of the site, wrote on the 4chan status blog.
4chan is one of the most notorious and most visited sites on the Internet, with its users collaboratively pulling pranks and even all-out attacks on some sites or organizations. Portions of the imageboard are entirely unmoderated, not surprisingly, leading to a very free environment with all the positive and negative implications of that. The site however has had a profound influence on web culture, with some of the most popular memes including rickrolling and LOLcats. Some of its less harmless stunts include getting Moot, the site's owner, on top of the Time 100 list and 'raids' on sites like YouTube and Twitter pushing explicit words or videos to the top of the trends. The site is also where the Anonymous group that combats Scientology was formed.
Home of some of the best and vindictive hackers on the Internet, it isn't the kind of site you want on your bad side even if you're one of the biggest ISPs in the US. AT&T DSL subscribers make up 15.5 percent of the Internet users in the US so the block affected a large number of them. The only explanation provided by AT&T so far is that attacks coming from the 4chan servers and the lack of response from the site's operators made them take this final measure. 4chan however denies being contacted by the IPS at any one point. So far the site has been encouraging those affected to use the appropriate channels to complain though there may be more drastic measures if things aren't clarified soon.
UPDATE: AT&T has released a statement revealing that a DDOS attack coming from one of the servers connected to 4chan was the reason behind the blocking, also claiming that it would never restrict access to a site based solely on content.
“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,” the statement read.