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Yesterday’s Quick 10 looked at memorable moments in music censorship. Last night, our legendary intern Andréa Fernandes informed me of another incident of censorship closer to home:
A friend of mine always visited our site while he was bored at work over the summer. But upon returning to work during Christmas break, he discovered mental_floss had been blocked. When he asked a coworker why it had been blocked, the coworker replied, “Too many people spent too much time on that site, so the VP caught on and blocked it.”
This doesn’t bode well for our traffic stats. The bored at work crowd is a key demographic. Besides the obvious porn & gambling examples, are there any unexpected sites banned in your office?
Comments (54)
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I’m a teacher, at a high school, so some days it feels like everything is banned. Gaming sites, Sports Illustrated (because of the swimsuit addition), You Tube, pinkisthenewblog.com, and countless others.
posted by Kristin on 1-7-2009 at 11:25 am
addition = edition. Nice. I never said I was an English teacher.
posted by Kristin on 1-7-2009 at 11:26 am
my company actually blocks all the pictures and videos on mental_floss. of course, they also block any streaming video, sports, and entertainment. so, USAtoday, mental_floss, and gmail are pretty much my day…
posted by theYerg on 1-7-2009 at 11:27 am
I can’t click on the side links anymore at my work because we filter message boards and forums and the links are categorized at such. Bummer!
posted by Jeffrey on 1-7-2009 at 11:38 am
for the longest time, i seemed to be the only person at my work that wasnt blocked from any website. but in the last month or so, it seems like IT caught on and now i’m blocked from a lot of websites….including one of my favorite time-waster quiz sites http://www.sporcle.com (which i found through Mental Floss). Plus, i can see any of the pics and videos on mentalfloss.com, but at least i can still read all the articles. I dont knwo what i’d do if i couldnt get my daily floss-fix at work.
I normally dont put the recaptcha at the end of my comments, but this time i thought it was pretty funny (at least for me)
I got:
La Farmhouse…which we all know is Spanish for…The Farmhouse
posted by andy on 1-7-2009 at 11:47 am
they banned NPR at my high school because the teachers were downloading the audio files. we still had youtube because we used it for class presentation (instead of NPR) though it’s probably gone by now.
posted by Claire on 1-7-2009 at 11:47 am
I am still able to get to MentalFloss (whoo hoo) but no YouTube, photos on misscellania are blocked, no sites with ‘blog’ in the address. There have been times I get the message ‘blocked for adult content’ when it is a totally SFW site. Not sure what keywords they are filtering for other than that but, so far, it seems to be a crapshoot
posted by JaneM on 1-7-2009 at 11:47 am
I am a law enforcement officer, and I was trying to do research, at work, for a work presentation. When I tried to look at a KKK-related site, I got blocked. Funny how it was ok to look up sites about the Bloods, Crips, MS-13, etc….
posted by katie on 1-7-2009 at 11:50 am
I still have access to mental_floss, but all personal email sites (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc..) are blocked, along with sites like YouTube. Or anything that’s flagged as gambling, porn, rude humor, and other “adult content”.
posted by Rebecca on 1-7-2009 at 11:58 am
My comments in this thread and others have disappeared.
On the newest thread I don’t even get the option to comment.
Did you kick me off without telling me?
C’mon, the inaugural balls joke wasn’t that bad.
posted by BassMan on 1-7-2009 at 12:02 pm
Oops! Wrong censorship thread.
Still, all those other things are true.
posted by BassMan on 1-7-2009 at 12:04 pm
My corporate office job blocks streaming radio sites, including NPR and the BBC, but allows one of the local Top 40 stations.
IT also blocks random links under the umbrella classification “tasteless”.
posted by Chelsea on 1-7-2009 at 12:07 pm
I work for an investment firm that I will not name. Blogs, personal email, youtube, myspace type sites, among others are all blocked. Recently they blocked http://www.pandora.com which is cruel to say the least.
posted by Bryan on 1-7-2009 at 12:14 pm
I’m a researcher for a men’s magazine, so IT can’t really block Web sites, since I look all over the internet to fact check.
However, as a suggestion to those who had Mental_Floss blocked: When you’re home, add the RSS feed for Mental_Floss to your Google Reader (or whatever reader you use at work). That sort of bi-passes the system. Hope that helps.
posted by Emily on 1-7-2009 at 12:15 pm
Like others, pics & videos on Mental_floss are blocked. A select few (the gambling pool kingpin primarily) in our office can access sports but we’re not able to acess any recipes & quota time must be used if we need to look at personal accounts or shop. I think it’s funny when we’re told to bow our heads to pray after meetings. Sports gambling access is OK, but its a sin to look up a cake recipe.
posted by TC on 1-7-2009 at 12:16 pm
Our company banned the website for the PA Lottery. Not surprising since it’s gambling, unless you consider the fact that the PA Lottery is one of our major clients. It took an act of god for the IT department to unblock the site.
On an even more strange note, our company decided to hold a competition last year for all of its employees. Cash and prizes were awarded based on various criteria. It was a pretty big deal and they even set up a website for it…but oops! The WebSense filter blocked the site and nobody was unable to access it for the first few days of the contest. The reason? “Games.” Someone printed a screenshot of it and it hangs on our department bulletin board to this day.
posted by dying_alive on 1-7-2009 at 12:25 pm
For about a week, there were a handful of sports sites that were blocked from my work computer (Sports Illustrated, ESPN, etc). After that time, they all magically came back. My assumption was one of the higher ups got mad that he couldn’t check his sports scores.
posted by Bryan on 1-7-2009 at 12:26 pm
I work for a hedge fund and, somehow, NOTHING IS BLOCKED. Nothing at all. They say our analysts need access to everything for “research”. I’ve never tried to access porn and online gambling sites, but pretty sure those aren’t restricted either…
posted by Jenna on 1-7-2009 at 12:31 pm
For some reason, YOUTUBE is accessible at work. But mentalfloss is too. =)
posted by Mary on 1-7-2009 at 12:31 pm
They block the pretty common things here (youtube, gambling, sports, etc), but they also block blogs, many shopping sites (amazon is still available), webmail sites, and anything classified as “humor”. Luckily I can still get to mentalfloss. They also strip out any video file from websites, so I have to watch all of those at home.
posted by kp on 1-7-2009 at 12:31 pm
I work as a reporter at a newspaper and before the paper was bought, we couldn’t check any third party e-mail (yahoo or gmail) or even bank accounts online.
At our new office, we’re not blocked from much of anything. And, of course, when I visit my Facebook page about 20 times a day, it’s always for research.
Thought my recaptcha was funny: Chang Movement, which of course refers to Donna Chang from Seinfeld who Jerry thought was chinese.
posted by Shelly on 1-7-2009 at 12:35 pm
Mine blocks jezebel but not any of the other Gawker sites. It also blocks MTV and VH1.
posted by Erin on 1-7-2009 at 12:42 pm
My work blocks a lot of the ones mentioned, but the one that really burns me is http://www.homestarrunner.com
I love that site.
posted by Dave on 1-7-2009 at 12:42 pm
I’m also a reporter and absolutely nothing is blocked. All in the name of research. I like to think it’s about protecting the first amendment, but probably not…
My Captcha was: injunction Hodge — from conjunction junction?
posted by Tracie on 1-7-2009 at 12:46 pm
I worked for a jet engine manufacturer a few years back, that you could say was, um, (P)rofessional & (W)orldwide, that actually banned the site for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, w/ a “reason” of nudity!!! To be fair, for the most part, they actually promoted web surfing for most any type of arcane info/interests employees had.
posted by hgonc2 on 1-7-2009 at 12:47 pm
I work for a school districts, so besides the usual, I have things like crossword puzzles and fantasy sports blocked. What am I supposed to do when students are working on assignments?
posted by Kyle on 1-7-2009 at 12:53 pm
All streaming for the most part, which sucks when we have to do mandatory ethics training because we have to read through all of the material instead of watching the video. The Travisty, Rotten, Jib Jab, I am Bored (well of course they do). I try not to click on random links, because if it’s blocked I know they log that stuff.
posted by Ftssoad on 1-7-2009 at 1:02 pm
I’m a high school teacher so the usual is blocked. However, I’ve also had a few totally school-related sites blocked such as the local PBS station. The one that made me laugh most was the local NBC station’s website being blocked because it was tagged as “pornography”. It kind of sucks when you’re trying to be a creative teacher and show kids something that they’ll latch onto, only to have it blocked. I do a surprising amount of research for my lessons, but not as much at this school (I started here this year after having taught at another school for 4 years).
At least I still get to read (no video for me, either) mental_floss. Though, to be honest, I probably wouldn’t be doing that as much at work if I had the other websites available to me.
posted by Tomas on 1-7-2009 at 1:09 pm
I work at a very small rural hospital (23 beds). Nothing was blocked then one day the system crashed because of excessive myspace and youtube useage. Now anything considered social networking, live streaming, and the like are blocked. I can’t log into comics sites, but my comics can still come via email- except Dilbert for some odd reason. Thankfully the Floss is still okay. I had to lobby hard to get google restored. I plead my case that I needed to be able to runa query and be able to access all the hits (in the name of work related research) so I can gmail with impunity! Huzzah!
posted by qt314159265 on 1-7-2009 at 1:12 pm
My place of employment, a giant insurance company, doesn’t block mental_floss (and apparently it even lets me post comments), but it does block two sites extremely relevant to my interests — ghostbusters.net and ninjaturtles.com. Why, I don’t know, unless there’s a whole community of us dorks here that just don’t know about one another…
posted by Aaron on 1-7-2009 at 1:38 pm
When we got our new SonicWall, xanga (back in the day), myspace and facebook were all blocked. Fortunately, one of the nerds is rather friendly, so he showed me how to access the Sonic Wall and unblock those sites. Mwah-ha-ha.
I did find that when I was researching birth control, I was blocked because it was considered “sex education.” Weird.
posted by Heather Dawn on 1-7-2009 at 1:41 pm
I work for a major University so sensorship, by principle in a no-no.
I can see blocking some sites or protocols for bandwidth conservation (although there are ALWAYS methods to get around them – guess what field I work in) but blocking Mentalfloss is just wrong. Don’t they know that it makes you smarter and more interesting to be around?
posted by SDK on 1-7-2009 at 2:14 pm
I work for a high school and I was suprised when the district decided to block fastweb.com. I actively encourage my students to apply for scholarships and often would dedicate class time to applications. Some of my students do not have internet at home leaving their only opportunity to complete scholarship applications at school. When I asked the school board why they had blocked it, they said it was unnecessary for students to be accessing that site from school.
posted by Danny on 1-7-2009 at 2:31 pm
I work with kids and can not get onto sites with color pages on it or list of kid friendly games. This made my last assigment very hard as that was all I did, look for stuff for kids to do.
posted by Kimberly on 1-7-2009 at 2:51 pm
I went to catholic high school where we all had laptops. One day freshman year, Yahoo was blocked because of a headline with the word “abortion” in it.
posted by Zach on 1-7-2009 at 3:08 pm
http://www.musictheory.net is blocked at our school. The reason listed…”music”. By the way, I’m a music teacher.
posted by Jim on 1-7-2009 at 3:35 pm
Our school district blocked musictheory.net. The posted reason was “music”. By the way, I’m a band director.
posted by Jim on 1-7-2009 at 4:00 pm
I work for a large state agency. All general e-mail is blocked, including my facebook inbox, but not facebook itself (no games, though).
Most annoying is that I’m the webmaster for this large state agency and any video I want to add to our site, I have to do out of our building so I can bypass the proxy server and access our YouTube channel, which is, of course, blocked in the building.
I thank Mental_Floss for telling me about Meebo.com so I can have my Google Chat at work!
posted by Lindsey on 1-7-2009 at 4:08 pm
fark was blocked suddenly, so I told the administrators that it was a news site, back up the next day.
posted by matt on 1-7-2009 at 4:24 pm
My corporate office blocks all hte obvious ones … youtube, facebook, myspace etc. plus anything deemed to include “lude” topics.
A few months ago while trying to decide what breed of dog I was going to adopt I did a search for information on cocker spaniels and you guessed it … all the results were blocked b/c the program thought the content was “adult” in nature.
posted by censored on 1-7-2009 at 4:53 pm
Anything with Christian or Catholic in the keywords gets blocked in the school where I am employed.
posted by Kathy B on 1-7-2009 at 4:58 pm
Maybe you could a quick 10: 10 things your IT department doesn’t want you to know
such as…how to use proxy sites to get around blocked sites.
Just a thought.
posted by Dominique on 1-7-2009 at 5:09 pm
Like SDK, I work for a University so we have access to everything. I even get some pretty scandalous NSFW pictures if I do a google search on a term that should be relatively harmless.
At my last job, we weren’t even allowed to have internet on our computers. That led to a lot of twiddling of thumbs and chit chat, so I’d say that any access, no matter how censored, is still pretty good!
posted by CK on 1-7-2009 at 5:33 pm
Dominique, I like how you think.
I’d love the _floss to run that.
posted by Anonymoose on 1-7-2009 at 6:16 pm
At my high school we have some sites blocked for “educational content”. Also, it blocks Flickr and most blogs for being “online storage”.
posted by Elizabeth on 1-7-2009 at 6:30 pm
My e-mail is blocked. A co-worker has AOL, and he’s not blocked. Facebook, youtube, any streaming video. I can get CNN and Mental floss. Lottery website just got blocked recently.
posted by Vickey on 1-7-2009 at 7:09 pm
My work does the umbrella thing too: many things are “tasteless”, but it also blocks humor, games, dating, social networking, and so on. Often times, the categories the sites are listed under are very far reaching, but there’s nothing I can do. Therefore, I have no Myspace, no Facebook, no YouTube (nothing with video at all, actually… we don’t even have SPEAKERS!!) but dear mental-floss is still accesible, albeit without the vids.
However, through trial and error, many of my co-workers and I have found ways to circumnavigate, and access our favorite sites. And for those who are desperate, happy holidays:
https://vtunnel.com
Type it in exactly as you see it, and surf sneakily away. Not as good as the real thing, but it’s still something.
P.S. I consider myself lucky enough to have sweet talked one of our I.T. guys into installing Snood on my computer. Small victories!
posted by Cassie on 1-7-2009 at 9:04 pm
We’ve got the usual bannings – youtube and facebook during workhours, along with streaming video, adult, gambling etc. The usual page is blocked message comes up, but it also has on it the reason why its blocked – games, adult and all that, but the one I love is having a site blocked for the reason of being “tasteless” – http://www.cracked.com was one that got hit with that label.
posted by peid on 1-7-2009 at 9:30 pm
Most everything is blocked at my school (we can’t even view google images anymore!), but my connections with the computer science team have made such restrictions less of a problem.
posted by Michaela on 1-7-2009 at 11:38 pm
Almost everything is accessible here, for some reason (not complaining!). The only things my company have blocked are music streaming sites. Somehow, a phone card site was also blocked (perhaps calls can be made through the site?), so I have to top up the card at home.
posted by Dawn on 1-8-2009 at 12:10 am
My work blocks many of the usual suspects for the usual reasons. My least favorite is that eBay is blocked. I quickly found that eBay.ca is NOT blocked and I can handle most transactions through it. Still did my Christmas shopping there.
posted by Dave on 1-8-2009 at 6:25 am
At my job (a hospital) its more fun whats NOT blocked. Craigslist is not blocked, but all the personal pages are… Minus the men seeking men page.
posted by Kayla on 1-8-2009 at 6:27 am
Another teacher – I teach Gifted & Talented students, so by definition, need more than the usual “kill and drill” textbook type lessons.
But anything with “creativity” or “music” or even (my favorite) “personal productivity” gets blocked.
How are we supposed to get our kids ready for the real world, when we are not allowed to show them what’s out there?
posted by Linda on 1-8-2009 at 7:38 pm
At my high school I had to look up things for a history project, and a lot of things were blocked. I saw a foreign phrase on one of the not yet found sites, and found all translators were blocked. At school!
I’ve even found links on their homepage to be blocked, which is just crazy. Never tried seeing if mental floss is blocked.
posted by Cooper on 1-8-2009 at 8:56 pm