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Comment by grendelt | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I was recently discussing firearms with my brothers via FB Messenger and sites for finding ammo were blocked. We then tried several other types of sites to see if they were blocked. A lot of firearm related stuff, ammoseek, and piracy. PirateBay was blocked. Tor and Scihub were not. Porn sites were not but antivax sites were. Marijuana sites were not, but random liquor distillers were. Total hit and miss.

But a lot of gun-related stuff was.

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I stumbled upon a website of furries discussing 3D-printed firearms. sent a link to my friend. blocked. other 3D-printed arms websites were not. I wonder if they do some network analysis and automatically determine the furries are scarier? no idea.

Conversely, I never had gun-related stuff censored in FB messenger, but links to some websites about weed would be blocked. Looked very weird, too - no message, no error, the (web) app just hangs.

I think they have some kind of blocklist that is, shall we say, "dynamic" wrt the current political environment.

It must be really dynamic. I tried a number of URLs, and one of them, jacobinmag.com, went from blocked to unblocked to blocked over the span of an hour.

Perhaps the algorithm blocking takes into account individual activity. I almost never send SMSes, and now my phone is sending dozens at midnight.

How were they blocked? When you sent a message containing "www.blocked-domain.com", what did the sender and recipient get? An (honest?) error message, or silent failure?

Late reply, but Facebook and Facebook Messenger both prompt the user that the URL you’re trying to send is not permitted. The message is never sent, you have to remove the URL. The URL checker even follows redirects, so e.g. a URL shortener won’t cut it.

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