>It's not government censorship if the government isn't providing a list of banned sites.

First, it's still censorship.

Second, the government can start supply a list of banned sites at any time.

Third, the way telcos/ISPs work with governments (and how they have to work with them, in order to get certain contracts, favors, bandwidth etc) it's very easy for government agencies to supply lists (not only of "adult content" but also of "extremist content", whatever that is), under the table. Who will let you know that the sites ISP x blocks were given to them by government agencies?

>And the filter is optional - selling adult magazines in modesty sleeves isn't censorship.

Well, the very role of "modesty sleeves" IS censorship. It might be to censor those covers from childrens eyes, and we might agree with that, but it still is censorship.

>I genuinely don't understand how some companies voluntarily providing filters to their customers, that those customers can chose to use or not to use, can possibly be censorship.

1) That the companies provide it "voluntarily" doesn't matter at all.

For one, the government asked them to do it (and they want to have good relations with the government, it's good for business).

Second, the government threatened them that if it's not satisfied with their "voluntary" progress, it will make it into law.

Third, even if a single company, totally voluntarily, filters content, it's still censorship. Censorship is not just about totally blocking access to content: it's also about intimidating people that want to see certain content, which is what the need to go on record and opt-in does.

And that's just for the head of a household. Do you think their spouses or kids will have much say about if they want to opt-in or not themselves?

>It's fucking insulting to people living with real censorship.

Let's not pull the "there are people having it worse" defense. Shouldn't, say, blacks protest in the USA in the sixties because other blacks had it much tougher in South Africa?

What would actually be insulting to people living with real censorship (if they cared about us in the first place, which they don't much) is that we are ready to accept any form of censorship ourselves willingly.

I genuinely don't understand how some companies voluntarily providing filters to their customers, that those customers can chose to use or not to use, can possibly be censorship.

It's fucking insulting to people living with real censorship.

I've lived in countries with what seemed like real censorship to me.

I guess there were warehouses of people somewhere with black marker pens, it was interesting to see the way they took different approaches as individuals applying the rules. Adjacent Nirvana Nevermind albums stick in my mind; one with a perfect rectangle drawn over the naked baby, one with swimming trunks creatively drawn on.

There's nothing amusing about this, no creativity to find in the black. It stinks of blanket censorship on a very inhuman level to me. But maybe my idea of censorship still isn't real enough. How much further does it have to go before it's real, how close should we get to that?

What changes need to be made to the uk system to make it more like proper censorship?

1: make it mandatory for all ISPs to provide it.

2: make it mandatory for all people to use it.

3: have a government supplied list of banned material

4: have penalties for being in possession of such material.

At the moment ISPs are chosing to offer these filters (albeit with the threat of potential legislation).

People don't have to use the filters. Not everyome is opted in by default, and for those who are there are proceedures to opt out.

The government isn't supplying any lists of what to ban, they've just asked ISPs to make sure that under 18s are not getting access to pornography.

And there are no penalties for possessing any content blocked by these filters. Someone can have terabytes of this stuff with no problems.

You added a word: "government censorship".

This is the same argument that companies like to use when they shift blame onto a third-party contractor.

Back to my question though. Third party or not, how is this not censorship?

(Your example of modesty sleeves is a bad one: the filter doesn't apply only to "adult magazines" (porn sites, here) but to lots of other non-"adult" content too.)

The filters are optional. It isn't censorship if it's voluntary.

The filters are different on each ISP. It's not censorship if the customer can shop around.

Individual companies cannot censor something. There are no penalties for accessing this material even if you do so without turning the filter off.

> It's not government censorship if the government isn't providing a list of banned sites.

By that definition, the Chinese government isn't censoring internet access either - they leave compiling an actual list of banned sites to internet providers, which is why what's blocked varies depending on your provider.