Am I missing the good stuff on MetaTalk?

September 6, 2013 5:21 AM

I will, I confess, spend a lot of my "waiting for that ball to get lobbed back over the net into my side of the court" time at work on Metafilter, including metatalk. A couple days ago, Metatalk suddenly got blocked by my office's net filter as "pornography." The blue and the green were fine, but not this one. No, sir. Now, obviously, it's just as suddenly back on the okay side of the line. So is this something the mods have to actually manage? Did you know this had happened? Is there someone whose job is to call these various companies up every few days and go "what, me, porn?" Or do these things just flicker in and out of existence without interference for some mysterious reason? (probably related to quantum foam)
posted by Naberius to MetaFilter-Related at 5:21 AM (29 comments total)

It happened to me, too. I think it was the Metatalk post about the fec@l transpl@nt question that triggered the pornography filter on campus.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:25 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

That's definitely the question that keeps on giving. But wouldn't that have gotten AskMe swept up into the paddy wagon too?
posted by Naberius at 5:29 AM on September 6, 2013

I think it moved off the AskMeta front page fast enough to evade the filter. The Metatalk post was on the front page for days and days.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:30 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Yeah, one other person aside from ThePinkSuperhero let us know it was blocked for them, too, and that's all we can imagine (the thing TPS said)... which is kind of goofy. We don't necessarily contact the net filters, though perhaps it's something we might do if it were a persistent problem.
posted by taz (staff) at 5:31 AM on September 6, 2013

This kinda piggybacks on something I have been wondering of late... I have been using Feedly's RSS reader for a few months, and noticed that it occasionally assigns some photo to each post when using their "magazine view." The image for yesterday's birthday post for jessamyn showed a chocolate cake and it looked like the image on the cake had writing and an outline of a woman (like those ones seen on truck mud flaps).

More often than not the image is a cropped version of the logos associated with the different sections of the site, but there are still odd photos that get assigned to each post, I assume based on text in the post.

When this Meta was posted, I wondered if the cake (yes, I know there is no cake) had perhaps triggered the poster's filter. Doubtful, but I am curious.

*shrug*
posted by terrapin at 5:49 AM on September 6, 2013

A porn filter? It that like a metafilter? Because I have a great idea for an awesome FPP!
posted by cjorgensen at 5:54 AM on September 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

The image for yesterday's birthday post for jessamyn showed a chocolate cake and it looked like the image on the cake had writing and an outline of a woman (like those ones seen on truck mud flaps).

!!! I wonder where that came from. I do not recall ever having been the recipient of such a cake.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:09 AM on September 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

I contacted the filter to have the page reclassified, and it took about two days, but they did reclassify the page. Whether or not it would have fallen out of that filter on its own, I don't know.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:14 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Do you have a MetaFilter Gold account? If not, then yes you are missing the good stuff on MetaTalk. Hard core taters. All day, every day.

Also, my next MetaTalk post will be titled "Barely Legal Teens" just to fuck with y'all.
posted by charred husk at 6:24 AM on September 6, 2013 [6 favorites]

Ha. Ha. Ha.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:25 AM on September 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

It tickles when you fuck with me. Stop it.
posted by Hobgoblin at 6:30 AM on September 6, 2013

"Barely Legal Teens" just to fuck with y'all.

Well, once the search engines pick up on those tasty little words, I imagine there will be a lot more traffic here on MetaTalk.... (AND.... you lucky few are blocked, again!)
posted by HuronBob at 6:43 AM on September 6, 2013

I know there is no cake

So you're saying it's a lie?
posted by desjardins at 6:49 AM on September 6, 2013 [3 favorites]

charred husk: " Hard core taters. All day, every day."

Those of you who missed out on the twice-baked yams, well, I tell ya...
posted by Karmakaze at 7:05 AM on September 6, 2013

a few years ago i worked for a place that was suddenly blocking any lgbt content as pornography which was a bummer because i was doing letter writing activism stuff and picking up ladies when i wasn't too busy on calls. but, i really couldn't complain on those grounds since those aren't good uses of my work time probably. instead i just pointed out to my manager that if you searched for innocuous terms +gay, it was blocked and maybe that was a discrimination issue. then they had me do a little research, send it off to hr and a day or so later that filter was lifted and i was back to wooing and writing.

which is to say, if you find things that are suddenly blocked - find other things that are blocked, but easier to argue against.
posted by nadawi at 7:06 AM on September 6, 2013 [6 favorites]

???? I've been masturbating to MetaTalk for years.
posted by nathancaswell at 7:28 AM on September 6, 2013 [2 favorites]

I have been posting a lot of dick pics lately.
posted by mintcake! at 7:39 AM on September 6, 2013

Sorry guys, I'll lay off posting all that donkey porn again.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 7:42 AM on September 6, 2013

Metaporn, huh? What would that even entail?
posted by C'est la D.C. at 7:58 AM on September 6, 2013

I experienced the same temporary block.
posted by DWRoelands at 7:59 AM on September 6, 2013

This kinda piggybacks on something I have been wondering of late... I have been using Feedly's RSS reader for a few months, and noticed that it occasionally assigns some photo to each post when using their "magazine view." The image for yesterday's birthday post for jessamyn showed a chocolate cake and it looked like the image on the cake had writing and an outline of a woman (like those ones seen on truck mud flaps).

It's a weird tie-in with the weird Google magic seen by non-logged in users who search the site, as confirmed by zombieflanders.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:03 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

I also submitted a review request to SonicWall several days ago.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:10 AM on September 6, 2013

SonicWall, that was the filter affecting me, too.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 10:01 AM on September 6, 2013

Here, we have Barracuda.
posted by box at 10:40 AM on September 6, 2013

I didn't even see that I got a reply several days ago:

---
[e-mail]

You submitted the following rating request to SonicWALL CFS Support:
Rate metatalk.metafilter.com as "31.Web Communications" at 2013-09-03 15:25:00.787

The request has been reviewed and rated as:
"27.Information Tech/Computers" at 2013-09-03 15:50:12.043

You should see this rating change reflected within 1 to 3 business days.

Thank you for your request,
SonicWALL CFS Support
---

I had kind of assumed most of the common VPNs were sharing blacklists, though they all act like they're not.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:30 AM on September 6, 2013

Lyn Never, i'm fairly convinced of this as well.

On the admin side you get to choose what categories are blocked, but amusingly the categories seem to be either identical or just slightly rephrased between all the major filtering services/FW companies.

I'm suspicious that there's some big service they all subscribe to which sends them quarterly revisions or something, and then they individually edit from there and add exceptions for their own services and patch those on to any updated DB they get.

The functionality for whitelisting sites on your own network should be easier(specifically talking about sonicwall here, since i manage that at work) but oh well.
posted by emptythought at 2:24 PM on September 6, 2013

Dear MetaTalk, I know you won't believe this, I could barely believe it myself. I had been secretly lusting after Mrs Mulcahy all summer, ever since I started cleaning their pool the previous spring ...
Yeah, I can see this.
posted by From Bklyn at 5:16 PM on September 6, 2013

Metaporn, huh? What would that even entail?

The blink tag. I'm out.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 9:39 PM on September 6, 2013

"He reclassifies the web content filter?"
"Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey."
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:18 AM on September 7, 2013 [1 favorite]