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Comment by Retr0id | Hacker News Reader

I'd appreciate if someone could dump the iOS "adult websites" list (which are blocked by default in the UK unless you submit government ID etc.)

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Wait, are you saying iOS UK Edition blocks adult websites on the OS level?

Yup! Any webkit web view, and iOS doesn't allow any non-webkit web views (in this jurisdiction at least)

This is just a straight-up lie.

Well if it works some other way, please dump it anyway and let us all know how it works?

Edit: I'm reliably informed that it's enforced at the domain level via a bloom filter stored in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/WebContentRestrictions.framework/WCRFilter-2025-09-29.plist

This is an opt-in feature that implements content restrictions (for e.g. parental control).

It's not opt-in in the UK. It's enabled by default and cannot be disabled without age verification.

It's darkly funny that the UK is so far gone these days that people literally do not believe it.

But how does it work in practice? Say someone put a new adult site online right now that’s some random .com - how quickly and by what mechanism is this block list updated? Seems like mainstream sites that are established and/or big enough to care about being taken down would be compliant and easy to block.

And this is just DNS I assumed unless also keep a record of which ip addresses they actually resolve to.

To be clear I’m interested from the technology perspective and not advocating our UK friends evade government pr0n censors as a form of political protest…

It just has to be good enough, like blocking 80% of adult website is better than nothing, I guess that's their view.

In the same Resources folder, a separate allowlist file contains a link to a Gordon Ramsay video recipe for gnocchi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unAOVy92a_8

I'm curious about the story behind this

It is not.

It's not a list, it's a series of ML classifications. Basically, you've got "child mode" locked on. The solution is to not use a UK apple id.

An ML classifier running against the DNS name? Really?

Not really DNS. They're actually checking the entire URL. They also check page content and other metadata.

If you're having distinct dns blocking errors, that's not Apple or it's a profile that's been set on your device.

The error screen I get says "Website not allowed" "'$domain' is a restricted website." - and it's coming from iOS/webkit itself, my network is unfiltered.

That doesn't mean it's DNS, it just means that the presentation is saying domain only.

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