Back in 2013, it was announced that ISPs in the UK would soon start to filter porn by default. This is by no means considered a censorship of porn in the country, it’s just that porn would be filtered by default to prevent minors from stumbling upon it accidentally. However if you wanted to opt in, you’d actually have to call in and ask them to remove the filter.
So with that ruling in place, how has it been received so far? Well as it turns out, not very well because despite the filters being put into place, a recent report from Ofcom has suggested that pretty much everyone has opted in to viewing porn online. The numbers, if accurate, are actually pretty shocking.
According to their findings, 4% of Virgin Media customers have opted to leave the filters in place, 5% of BT, and 8% of Sky. However before you start wondering about the implications, it should be noted that Ofcom is basing their findings on new customers who are offered the choice of enabling/disabling the filter at the time of registration.
It does not take into account current subscribers who might choose to enable it at a later date. However as for current subscribers, Ofcom found that 42% of them already had broadband filters at home already, so it is possible that they did not want to have a double layer of censorship and it would be a bit redundant.
At the end of the day, we suppose there are alternate ways of blocking porn, such as installing parental controls and monitoring your kids while they surf the net, but what do you guys think? Are you surprised that so little new customers had opted to have the filter enabled by default?
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